Calling someone a liberal is not the same as accusing them of acting in bad faith
Did you respond to the wrong comment? At no point have I ever claimed that people on .ml don’t call people libs, so your comment seems like a complete non sequitor.
No it isn’t. We believe that you believe the things you say, we just classify those beliefs as liberalism. Richard Spencer says he’s not a fascist while expressing beliefs that I would classify as fascism, so I call him a fascist. Everybody does that, as well they should, and I have never denied anyone doing this.
What we don’t do is claim that you don’t actually believe your stated positions at all and secretly believe something completely different and are doing some kind of elaborate coordinated psyop where you pretend to hold beliefs you don’t. That is what’s pretty much unique to liberals.
I know liberalism from leftism. You know nothing of my political beliefs, and yet you confidently say that they are liberalism. How would you know? Someone on .ml said I was so you assume they know my beliefs better than I do? You’re either calling me a liar or an idiot.
You’re trying to equate disagreeing on the definition of terms to accusing someone of being entirely disingenuous about what they believe. I do not make a distinction between someone who believes in unconditionally and indefinitely supporting the democratic party as a lesser evil and someone who believes in doing the same because they agree with what it stands for (since they are, for all practical purposes, the same thing), so based on your expressed beliefs which I accept that you genuinely hold, I consider you a liberal. That doesn’t make you “a liar or an idiot” for disagreeing with that classification, it makes you someone who defines certain terms differently from me.
In the same way, as I said and as you’ve completely failed to acknowledge or address, if Richard Spencer tries to tell me he’s not a fascist based on some distinction that I consider completely arbitrary, them I’m going to call him a fascist anyway (since he is, for all practical purposes, a fascist), as any reasonable person would.
Don’t pretend that you don’t understand the difference between that and accusing us of all being involved in some convoluted psyop conspiracy where we don’t believe anything we say at all.
someone who believes in unconditionally and indefinitely supporting the democratic party
I didn’t say that though. I said to support the Democratic party in 2024 because there was, at that time, no other viable electoral alternative to Trump, and Trump is worse for more people. You extrapolated that “unconditionally and indefinitely” from your own preconceptions. You do realize that that exactly is the problem we’re talking about right?
It’s not about whether you say the exact string of words “you’re acting in bad faith”, it’s the presupposition that the person you’re talking to doesn’t know the meaning of the words they’re using (or that your personal definition is fundamentally more valid), and the extrapolation of their own stated beliefs into the most uncharitable possible interpretation.
Oh, so you don’t believe in supporting the democratic party unconditionally? What would it take for you to not support them? Say, for example, they were actively arming a genocide, would that do it?
Or you don’t believe in supporting them indefinitely? How long then, should we continue supporting them unconditionally before we’re allowed to try something different? Let me guess, at some vague, indefinite point in the future when conditions have changed (not by anyone defecting from the democrats to build an alternative, ofc, but when somehow a powerful enough third party emerges despite nobody voting for it).
You can play coy all you want but my assumptions are entirely reasonable based on what you’ve said.
and the extrapolation of their own stated beliefs into the most uncharitable possible interpretation.
Except what liberals do is not only “extrapolate our stated beliefs into uncharitable interpretations” they completely reject that we hold our stated beliefs at all and assign us completely different beliefs based on whatever they make up. These things are very obviously and categorically different.
Whether it’s right or wrong to support the democrats unconditionally and indefinitely is a seperate question from whether that’s the position being described (which it is).
Personally, I would argue that it’s an incredibly short-sighted, ineffective, and illogical tactic. It sacrifices every ounce of bargaining power before negotiations have even begun.
The “logic” of lesser-evilism is easily disproven. We are given $100 to split, I make an offer, you choose whether to accept or refuse, if you refuse, neither of us get anything. What value should you accept? According to lesser-evilism, you should accept even if I offer a $99-$1 split, because $1 is the lesser evil to $0. But if I know that you’ll accept $1, that’s all I’ll ever offer you. In reality, when this experiment has been tried in practice, most people reject offers below about $30, and few people do the $99-$1 split because they know it’ll get rejected. The “optimal” strategy of lesser-evilism only makes sense if the game is not repeated, otherwise, it makes much more sense to set an absolute minimum condition and reject any offers below that number.
The position that y’all argue for is accepting the $99-$1 split in a political context, of having no conditions, no negotiations, nothing. It’s absurd! If we can present a credible threat that a critical mass of voters won’t go along with a certain policy (like genocide), then the party will have no choice but to give it to us if it wants to remain relevant. And if it refuses anyway, then, conveniently, the same action let’s us build up a third party towards potentially replacing them with someone more cooperative.
Lesser-evilism is presented as if it were obviously correct and indisputable. In reality, it is a specific tactic and one that has proven itself completely ineffective, and also doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. It is a choice to subscribe to lesser-evilism, and at least in my view, the wrong choice.
What would it take for you to not support them? Say, for example, they were actively arming a genocide, would that do it?
If there was a party that didn’t want to arm that genocide poised to potentially get enough votes to win, I would vote for them. In reality, unfortunately there were only two parties poised to get enough votes to win, and both aimed to actively arm the same genocide. So, I voted for the one less likely to disappear critics of that genocide, or push to raze Gaza to put up a resort with their name on it. I wish that I had a better option, but we can only pay the hand we’re dealt, so I promoted lesser evil.
How long then, should we continue supporting them
Right up until the exact moment there’s a better alternative with enough support to win. I thought I made that clear.
You can play coy all you want but my assumptions are entirely reasonable based on what you’ve said.
Again, this is exactly what people are talking about. You misinterpreted exactly one political stance and now you’ve justified your prejudices to yourself, and I can be tossed into the “lib” bin to be discarded.
they completely reject that we hold our stated beliefs at all and assign us completely different beliefs based on whatever they make up
So you won’t put a single concrete condition on your support and you won’t give a time or plan of action that will ever lead to you not supporting them. “Until a third party (somehow) emerges as viable” you say while not giving them the support they would need to work towards that point and arguing against those who do. That is indefinite, unconditional support, objectively.
I see no reason to entertain your arbitrary distinction that if you had a magical genie at your disposal the things you would wish for would be different from the people you believe in supporting unconditionally and indefinitely. No more than I would entertain Richard Spencer’s arbitrary distinction about how he’s totally not a fascist.
The irony is palpable.
At no point have I accused you of not believing the things you say. So no, there is no “irony.” You think that just because you want different things from liberals, it makes you different from them; I think that because you act exactly like a liberal in practice, that makes you a liberal. It’s a difference on how we define the term, whether it is based on ideas or on actions.
Did you respond to the wrong comment? At no point have I ever claimed that people on .ml don’t call people libs, so your comment seems like a complete non sequitor.
I am not a liberal and communicated that fact. I was called a liberal anyway. That is an accusation of acting in bad faith.
No it isn’t. We believe that you believe the things you say, we just classify those beliefs as liberalism. Richard Spencer says he’s not a fascist while expressing beliefs that I would classify as fascism, so I call him a fascist. Everybody does that, as well they should, and I have never denied anyone doing this.
What we don’t do is claim that you don’t actually believe your stated positions at all and secretly believe something completely different and are doing some kind of elaborate coordinated psyop where you pretend to hold beliefs you don’t. That is what’s pretty much unique to liberals.
I know liberalism from leftism. You know nothing of my political beliefs, and yet you confidently say that they are liberalism. How would you know? Someone on .ml said I was so you assume they know my beliefs better than I do? You’re either calling me a liar or an idiot.
You’re trying to equate disagreeing on the definition of terms to accusing someone of being entirely disingenuous about what they believe. I do not make a distinction between someone who believes in unconditionally and indefinitely supporting the democratic party as a lesser evil and someone who believes in doing the same because they agree with what it stands for (since they are, for all practical purposes, the same thing), so based on your expressed beliefs which I accept that you genuinely hold, I consider you a liberal. That doesn’t make you “a liar or an idiot” for disagreeing with that classification, it makes you someone who defines certain terms differently from me.
In the same way, as I said and as you’ve completely failed to acknowledge or address, if Richard Spencer tries to tell me he’s not a fascist based on some distinction that I consider completely arbitrary, them I’m going to call him a fascist anyway (since he is, for all practical purposes, a fascist), as any reasonable person would.
Don’t pretend that you don’t understand the difference between that and accusing us of all being involved in some convoluted psyop conspiracy where we don’t believe anything we say at all.
I didn’t say that though. I said to support the Democratic party in 2024 because there was, at that time, no other viable electoral alternative to Trump, and Trump is worse for more people. You extrapolated that “unconditionally and indefinitely” from your own preconceptions. You do realize that that exactly is the problem we’re talking about right?
It’s not about whether you say the exact string of words “you’re acting in bad faith”, it’s the presupposition that the person you’re talking to doesn’t know the meaning of the words they’re using (or that your personal definition is fundamentally more valid), and the extrapolation of their own stated beliefs into the most uncharitable possible interpretation.
Oh, so you don’t believe in supporting the democratic party unconditionally? What would it take for you to not support them? Say, for example, they were actively arming a genocide, would that do it?
Or you don’t believe in supporting them indefinitely? How long then, should we continue supporting them unconditionally before we’re allowed to try something different? Let me guess, at some vague, indefinite point in the future when conditions have changed (not by anyone defecting from the democrats to build an alternative, ofc, but when somehow a powerful enough third party emerges despite nobody voting for it).
You can play coy all you want but my assumptions are entirely reasonable based on what you’ve said.
Except what liberals do is not only “extrapolate our stated beliefs into uncharitable interpretations” they completely reject that we hold our stated beliefs at all and assign us completely different beliefs based on whatever they make up. These things are very obviously and categorically different.
It was the lesser of evils. Not voting for them lets even more bad stuff happen.
Whether it’s right or wrong to support the democrats unconditionally and indefinitely is a seperate question from whether that’s the position being described (which it is).
Personally, I would argue that it’s an incredibly short-sighted, ineffective, and illogical tactic. It sacrifices every ounce of bargaining power before negotiations have even begun.
The “logic” of lesser-evilism is easily disproven. We are given $100 to split, I make an offer, you choose whether to accept or refuse, if you refuse, neither of us get anything. What value should you accept? According to lesser-evilism, you should accept even if I offer a $99-$1 split, because $1 is the lesser evil to $0. But if I know that you’ll accept $1, that’s all I’ll ever offer you. In reality, when this experiment has been tried in practice, most people reject offers below about $30, and few people do the $99-$1 split because they know it’ll get rejected. The “optimal” strategy of lesser-evilism only makes sense if the game is not repeated, otherwise, it makes much more sense to set an absolute minimum condition and reject any offers below that number.
The position that y’all argue for is accepting the $99-$1 split in a political context, of having no conditions, no negotiations, nothing. It’s absurd! If we can present a credible threat that a critical mass of voters won’t go along with a certain policy (like genocide), then the party will have no choice but to give it to us if it wants to remain relevant. And if it refuses anyway, then, conveniently, the same action let’s us build up a third party towards potentially replacing them with someone more cooperative.
Lesser-evilism is presented as if it were obviously correct and indisputable. In reality, it is a specific tactic and one that has proven itself completely ineffective, and also doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. It is a choice to subscribe to lesser-evilism, and at least in my view, the wrong choice.
If there was a party that didn’t want to arm that genocide poised to potentially get enough votes to win, I would vote for them. In reality, unfortunately there were only two parties poised to get enough votes to win, and both aimed to actively arm the same genocide. So, I voted for the one less likely to disappear critics of that genocide, or push to raze Gaza to put up a resort with their name on it. I wish that I had a better option, but we can only pay the hand we’re dealt, so I promoted lesser evil.
Right up until the exact moment there’s a better alternative with enough support to win. I thought I made that clear.
Again, this is exactly what people are talking about. You misinterpreted exactly one political stance and now you’ve justified your prejudices to yourself, and I can be tossed into the “lib” bin to be discarded.
The irony is palpable.
So you won’t put a single concrete condition on your support and you won’t give a time or plan of action that will ever lead to you not supporting them. “Until a third party (somehow) emerges as viable” you say while not giving them the support they would need to work towards that point and arguing against those who do. That is indefinite, unconditional support, objectively.
I see no reason to entertain your arbitrary distinction that if you had a magical genie at your disposal the things you would wish for would be different from the people you believe in supporting unconditionally and indefinitely. No more than I would entertain Richard Spencer’s arbitrary distinction about how he’s totally not a fascist.
At no point have I accused you of not believing the things you say. So no, there is no “irony.” You think that just because you want different things from liberals, it makes you different from them; I think that because you act exactly like a liberal in practice, that makes you a liberal. It’s a difference on how we define the term, whether it is based on ideas or on actions.