Oh, don’t get me wrong, the democratic party as a whole isn’t great on the whole imperialism/colonialism schtick, but the Dems at least have people willing to go after countries like Israel (who are openly and illegally colonizing Palestine).
But on the "increasingly censorious, moralising, controlling, repressive, petulant, joyless, self-victimising, trivial and status-quo-perpetuating” front, there’s no comparison. The only real point he has is that the Dems are big on keeping the status quo, where the reps just want to burn it down and institute Der Orange Fuhrer as president for life. The right objectively is worse on every other point than the left, which was more of the point I was trying to get across.
Agreed on all this, with the small point that some (and I emphasize it’s mostly a very noisy, but mostly powerless minority) on the left spend way too much time on doing things I don’t think are helpful at all: the oppression olympics games, tone policing everyone and looking for the slightest difference of opinions of those around them on the left and spring into attack mode, and spend nearly all their time on culture war stuff (rather than spend much time on uniting us on issues of class) and I really do think some of this might just help create more Republicans due to their sanctimony and unwillingness to flex on anything - it’s absurd to think that everyone is going to tick all the checkboxes of certain types of identity in order to be in a position of leadership in the movement, nevermind even be able to voice their opinion without being told their opinion doesn’t count as much, etc…
As much as I now loathe the likes of Greenwald (and Maher and others like this) I wish I could say I’ve never experienced what they are talking about, but unfortunately I have seen this.
Now plenty of this type have told me that they won’t change their ways because they apparently seem to not care about how off-putting this all is or that they may actually be giving fascists a huge assist. I just don’t get it. If I was more conspiracy-minded, I’d assume some of them are plants in order to do exactly that - make leftists look extremely ridiculous and intolerant, and push just enough people into the arms of the alt-right rabbit hole. Some of them have told me that they don’t care about winning hearts and minds, and that I shouldn’t either. Apparently, everyone will naturally reach the proper mode of thinking - as they see it - and they don’t have to explain themselves to anyone? Or the world will burn, I guess.
I’m pretty far on the left and I’d debate that Democrats are also very fond of the status quo. But your point stands.
I wasn’t trying to say that they’re the same, I just think it’s important to be weilding the same analysis for “allies” as for “enemies”. Otherwise you get into a situatiin like the US, telling the world that Russia is a war criminal for using cluster munitions, then sending Ukrain cluster munitions.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, the democratic party as a whole isn’t great on the whole imperialism/colonialism schtick, but the Dems at least have people willing to go after countries like Israel (who are openly and illegally colonizing Palestine).
But on the "increasingly censorious, moralising, controlling, repressive, petulant, joyless, self-victimising, trivial and status-quo-perpetuating” front, there’s no comparison. The only real point he has is that the Dems are big on keeping the status quo, where the reps just want to burn it down and institute Der Orange Fuhrer as president for life. The right objectively is worse on every other point than the left, which was more of the point I was trying to get across.
Agreed on all this, with the small point that some (and I emphasize it’s mostly a very noisy, but mostly powerless minority) on the left spend way too much time on doing things I don’t think are helpful at all: the oppression olympics games, tone policing everyone and looking for the slightest difference of opinions of those around them on the left and spring into attack mode, and spend nearly all their time on culture war stuff (rather than spend much time on uniting us on issues of class) and I really do think some of this might just help create more Republicans due to their sanctimony and unwillingness to flex on anything - it’s absurd to think that everyone is going to tick all the checkboxes of certain types of identity in order to be in a position of leadership in the movement, nevermind even be able to voice their opinion without being told their opinion doesn’t count as much, etc…
As much as I now loathe the likes of Greenwald (and Maher and others like this) I wish I could say I’ve never experienced what they are talking about, but unfortunately I have seen this.
Now plenty of this type have told me that they won’t change their ways because they apparently seem to not care about how off-putting this all is or that they may actually be giving fascists a huge assist. I just don’t get it. If I was more conspiracy-minded, I’d assume some of them are plants in order to do exactly that - make leftists look extremely ridiculous and intolerant, and push just enough people into the arms of the alt-right rabbit hole. Some of them have told me that they don’t care about winning hearts and minds, and that I shouldn’t either. Apparently, everyone will naturally reach the proper mode of thinking - as they see it - and they don’t have to explain themselves to anyone? Or the world will burn, I guess.
I’m pretty far on the left and I’d debate that Democrats are also very fond of the status quo. But your point stands.
I wasn’t trying to say that they’re the same, I just think it’s important to be weilding the same analysis for “allies” as for “enemies”. Otherwise you get into a situatiin like the US, telling the world that Russia is a war criminal for using cluster munitions, then sending Ukrain cluster munitions.