OneMeaningManyNames

He/Him, Anarchist/Communist Front End Developer, originally from BC, currently in coastal Albania. Perpetually looking out for my next exchange community empowerment project across the globe.

  • 19 Posts
  • 129 Comments
Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2024

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  • Of his own personal experiences Ionesco wrote:

    University professors, students, intellectuals were turning Nazi, becoming Iron Guards, one after the other. At the beginning, certainly they were not Nazis. About fifteen of us would get together to talk and to try to find arguments opposing theirs. It was not easy…. From time to time, one of our friends said: “I don’t agree with them, to be sure, but on certain points, nevertheless, I must admit, for example, the Jews …,” etc. And this was a symptom. Three weeks later, this person would become a Nazi. He was caught in the mechanism, he accepted everything, he became a rhinoceros. Towards the end, only three or four of us were still resisting.

    Replace Jews with trans and you have a discussion we only have too often with fellow “leftists”.



  • Oh, I got one of my own: The notion that Linux is for enthusiasts that spend most of the time tweaking their computer, and therefore Linux can’t be used by an end user who just want to get things done.

    Close to this is the classic adage: “Linux is only free if you don’t value your time” which is an extension that assumes that extensive tweaking is necessary to get to work, not an option available to the power user.

    (But they still complain when Microsoft fucks over their workflow on every update. It is a double standard because Microsoft is “a brand”, so yes, I will say it is a Linux-specific bias.)





  • I adore that your sources were: Yourself

    It is a whole thread, not just my analysis. I also put thought into it, so I won’t recite every point I carefully phrase there to a rando centrist, so live with it.

    a comic strip and a paraphrasing of a (solid) late night comedian

    Directly responding to your very argument though, are you going to engage with these responses or what?

    I did watch Stewart’s take

    Stewart took on an Alabama MAGA moron legislator on trans youth heatlhcare bans. We are probably not talking about the same segment. The part you are talking about is probably the one I am criticizing in the thread you refused to read because it was written by me, so why should we bother with your tired argument? This borders on sea-lioning since a couple iterations ago, and I think if this is the case it is actionable.

    Which is as dumb as people on the Right saying that “trump said he respects and loves women so I don’t get how the libs think he’s anti woman.”

    But you talked about pitching to the progressive base, not the opposite side. MAGA fanatics are cult-minded morons that dismiss everything that diverts from their narrative. There is no comparison to centrist and center-left democrats base, who operate under totally different rules than a fucking Nazi cult.

    Your example about the Ad is addressed to a cult.

    You said:

    no way to rebut it without alienating our progressive wing, so we just take the L on this

    Just searching around Lemmy you can find fine rebuttals to this bullshit. You make it sound like it is unthinkable to rebut these hateful tropes. This is more or less what Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro tout: That their common sense is unrebuttable. It is not.

    to ZERO pushback from Harris

    She could have rebutted, and take them on. Same goes for Rachel Levin. They chickened out of it. Furthermore, the mainstream progressive media not only omitted to address misconceptions and dangerous cliches, but they chimed in with thinly veiled TERFism, and this is because the interests behind the Democrats are in part transphobic as well.

    This also responds to these words of yours:

    To say that trans issues weren’t a thing this election because your side didn’t talk about then is absurd.

    I keep saying they abstained from matching the excessive anti-trans propaganda. What is your point?

    I said that Oliver and Stewart, the Scientific American, the APA, and several other bodies have addressed trans issues to the progressive base, and no-one in the left thought they were unpalatable until now. The progressive media would have protected against this, that is more than a decade in the happening, but they did not.

    Given that it’s an issue that some 70% of America disagrees with us on

    Shit man, this is such a complex study that I can easily point out that 60% of Democrats think that trans representation has not even gone far enough.

    Above all, I don’t think that trans issues are edgy and unpopular at all. Until a couple years ago it was a strictly medical thing, with a very niche activism surrounding it, mostly on legal representation and medical gatekeeping issues.

    It was the fascists who spent millions to demagogue on that point for many years, and I think people should be educated on trans issues as they should a decade ago.

    At this point people who take anti-trans propaganda seriously are lost causes to me, and this includes people who fall for an ad like the one you posted. There is no point to cater to them from a pro-trans perspective, it is like trying to appeal to a 1936 German crowd applauding Hitler about the human rights of Jews at this point.

    The view you defend here is essentially a compromise to concurrent Nazi discourse, which as I said is unacceptable, and I don’t care about Democrats ratings. I rather see that the extreme left everywhere dials up the pro-trans issues and organize defense and survival programs.

    such an easy bone to throw moderates with almost no real world costs (apologies to the handful of high level trans athletes

    Again I have cited arguments against the supposedly self-evident low hanging fruit you evangelize here.

    I think that I have responded to all your concerns here or elsewhere in my Lemmy posts and comments, and I won’t respond further. You probably come from a naive self-designated center-left perspective, but the discourse of this post borders too closely to sealioning and concern trolling, that I will not waste more of my time on.



  • I don’t actually believe there’s a way for the Left to pitch trans issues

    Then fuck the Left, I guess?

    doesn’t alienate our progressive base

    Then fuck “our” “progressive” base?

    If the “Left” had spent a fraction of the resources to match the vile torrent of anti-trans propaganda, the situation would be different, with regard to both of your points about pitching trans issues to the progressive base.

    Like, John Oliver and Jon Stewart showed exactly how a mainstream progressive media can combat anti-trans demagoguery by Republicans, not to mention Scientific American, the American Psychological Association, and other bodies. You probably weren’t listening because if you don’t think this is a way to “pitch” then you might have been listening to other sources that make the matter unpalatable, like “biological males in female sports” and what have you.

    So I take it as a given that you were listening to the wrong sources about it, and you are at least partially anti-trans yourself. On the other hand, you might not be listening to all the analyses after the fact that point to other issues as to why Democrats lost the election. See for example this thread, this comic strip, and this thread also.

    In a nutshell, Harris did already try to appeal to the transphobes and she failed. So this should be end of discussion. I am not discussing compromise of the human rights of any group in order to appease to either moderate or extreme bigots.


  • I already said no. We have a totally different mind model here. You think that there is a static majority with crystalized opinions, a conservative inertia that we have to adapt to. I believe that the revolutionary powers compete with fascist propaganda to win over the majority, who is bound to different material interests.

    When this deceptively mild approach of appeasing the majority used, it legitimizes that the fascists are somehow in the right to a degree.

    That is what I cannot stand about centrists. I am an anarchist, there is no middle ground between me and, well, a number of things that are utterly unacceptable. There is no middle ground to nazism, and corporatism, for example. By upholding these standards, I am dragging society towards absolute equality.

    With your appeasement approach, you legitimize fascists, which is called the ratchet effect. Without revolutionary powers dragging people leftwards, centrist appeasement pushes the mainstream rightward.

    Having said that, the proposed example is completely out of historical context, and is wrong on so many levels. I can’t go into all the details right now, but the very idea of “throwing homosexuals in the mix” is preposterous given the historical context.

    Let me direct you to the fact that the British Empire paid reparations to slave owners, but even to this day if you try to mention Reparations to the Caribbean and African nations you will be met with vile harassment from hordes of nazi trolls. So I cannot educate you in Marxist political economy right now, but you comparing abolitionism to gay rights is comparing apples and oranges, and the equivalence is unwarranted.

    Only under the concurrent prism of anti-wokeism these are deemed comparable, from the viewpoint of being “not cisgender heteronormative germanic/anglo/saxon Christian male”. So you would not be bringing this even remotely up if you were not ever so slightly affected by anti-woke propaganda yourself.


  • this keeps playing out across the world

    Sorry, I won’t cater to the anti-woke majority. They are shaped by decades of well-funded fascist propaganda and complicit media and social media outlets.

    This is how “woke” was even introduced in our vocabulary in the first place.

    These efforts were never matched in breadth and throughput by those on the anti-anti-woke side. Saying that Democrats should cater more to the anti-woke lynching mob does not cut it. It is the quintessence of the ratchet effect. It only leads to greater success rate of said propaganda efforts.

    So to translate your argument, the fascist propaganda apparatus indeed has shaped an anti-woke majority, but leftists should not yield to them under no conditions: it will only normalize bigotry. Plus they already did lower the tones on trans issues. It did not win them the elections. Biden did take on the bigots with pro-trans policies and he had won, on the other hand.

    So what leg does your argument even stand on except sharing some of the bigotry? We should push the narrative more and more towards equality, not conceding that absolute equality is utopian. The more you annoy the bigots the better.

    The Democrats never addressed the propaganda apparatus that brought us to this. And now we should focus more on organizing rather than retrospectively catering to transphobes and racists to win elections. That is why I think your argument is despicable and comes from a position of privilege. If it was your rights/survival on the line and not someone else’s you wouldn’t be suggesting political trade-offs.

    Right enough, you are doing this right now: Because your life is at threat now, you say “shiiit we should have sacrificed the trans pawn to win the political chess after all”. Guess what, this is the dog-eat-dog mentality that fascism instills in people, having its way already.

    The answer is solidarity and organizing, not trade-offs.



  • Your argument was essentially: I don’t care if people read my sexting, I still have nothing to hide. By analogy, if you wouldn’t care being watched in the toilet, that would be your own funeral, but the rest of us might still want our walls and full height doors.

    Plus, bad encryption can bring you to the position of being compromised and exploited. You are just not the target of anyone, but there are people who are targeted. A Saudi female journalist was attacked on the basis of sex photos for example.

    This should show that the “I don’t have nothing to hide” position is a concession to “I am not a concern for any oppressor or hate group across the globe”. If you are proud of this corollary or not is up to who you are/want to be. But you put those people in danger by your utter indifference for other people’s struggles. So, yes, in one word selfish, no personal offense intended.


  • Wow, this should be downvoted more.

    conceded on say trans issues or whatever

    What if we conceded on your rights or whatever?

    Plus the idea that trans rights lost Democrats the election is ridiculous. There were zero trans speakers in the DNC, and Harris did cater to transphobes by saying she will go with state laws.

    So the question remains, who else are you willing to throw under the bus because you think that their rights are too edgy?

    Go-slowism leads to do-nothingism - Malcolm X

    Utilitarian is not what you think it is. Your comment just shows a complete lack of empathy for people living in the same social space as you.

    I think people who think that the rights of any group’s rights is “too much” to appease and appeal to a society of oppressors are complicit to the oppression.


  • perfect be the enemy of good

    Even worse, deciding that perfect is the enemy of good on behalf of another person.

    Given the person has no access to “the perfect”, this is basically exclusion on ableist grounds.

    Adding an option to a game

    (or an alternative modality like audio description)

    Mona Lisa is not a good example here because it is a single work. Games are mass-producible. If you steal Mona Lisa no-one can experience any more. If you add a story mode to the game, nothing at all is reduced from other modes of the game.

    Additionally, if you consider strictly simulation games, their difficulty is just a configuration of different amounts and pacing of things happening in the game. There is no foundation on which number configurations are more correct than others.

    By extension, all games simulate a real or imaginary world, and these numbers’ configuration are in the control of the designer. Again, no one of the possible worlds is inherently more privileged than others.