I want to draw attention to the elephant in the room.
Leading up to the election, and perhaps even more prominently now, we’ve been seeing droves of people on the internet displaying a series of traits in common.
- Claiming to be leftists
- Dedicating most of their posting to dismantling any power possessed by the left
- Encouraging leftists not to vote or to vote for third party candidates
- Highlighting issues with the Democratic party as being disqualifying while ignoring the objectively worse positions held by the Republican party
- Attacking anyone who promotes defending leftist political power by claiming they are centrists and that the attacker is “to the left of them”
- Using US foreign policy as a moral cudgel to disempower any attempt at legitimate engagement with the US political system
- Seemingly doing nothing to actually mount resistance against authoritarianism
When you look at an aerial view of these behaviors in conjunction with one another, what they’re accomplishing is pretty plain to see, in my opinion. It’s a way of utilizing the moral scrupulousness of the left to cut our teeth out politically. We get so caught up in giving these arguments the benefit of the doubt and of making sure people who claim to be leftists have a platform that we’re missing ideological parasites in our midst.
This is not a good-faith discourse. This is not friendly disagreement. This is, largely, not even internal disagreement. It is infiltration, and it’s extremely effective.
Before attacking this argument as lacking proof, just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn’t take advantage of it?
By refusing to ever question those who do nothing with their time in our spaces but try to drive a wedge between us, to take away our power and make us feel helpless and hopeless, we’re giving them exactly that vector. I am telling you, they are using it.
We need to stop letting them. We need to see it for what it is, get the word out, and remember, as the political left, how to use the tools that we have to change society. It starts with us between one another. It starts with what we do in the spaces that we inhabit. They know this, and it’s why they’re targeting us here.
Stop being an easy target. Stop feeding the cuckoo.
I said:
And you think it is “loose language” and you kept accusing me of things like “Insisting that ‘it should have been enough that she wasn’t trump’ while also insisting that the base doesn’t have legitimate concerns that depressed their motivation.” Yes. That is precisely the kind of behavior I was calling out in my message. You have that part correct, you are in that bucket.
I agree with one part of what you said (that the Democrats are mostly shitty), but disagree with another part (that 100% of the “blame” attaches to them because they are shitty, and there is no other factor at all above 0% in the previous election that influenced the election, and in particular I have some specific things that I think influenced the election). I have no idea why you are so persistent in sending messages while also being so persistent about not understanding that. I tried, man, I really did. Do you want a diagram? I can send a diagram maybe and go back to each of my previous messages and show with color-coding how the different elements of the argument line up within certain messages and how it works to say “A and not B” and how that’s allowed, to send that to someone who thinks “A and B.” Should I do that?
I wasn’t sure if that was what you were saying, I wanted to allow you the option to clarify, but every time you did you just made it less-clear what you were saying.
I said:
You responded with:
and then you said:
I said:
I can go down the whole conversation if you want, but pretty much every comment has some degree of intentional(?) obfuscation. Edit: just so we’re clear, that first quote from me is in my very-first comment. That was basically my entire point, but you kept pointing to other things I was using to support that argument and saying ‘yea, i agree’ but never addressing the thing I was trying to communicate
This is the loose language i’m talking about. Yes, you kept saying “i agree” to a vague sentiment within my comment, and then you’d turn around and disagree with the main thing. I don’t even really know if you’re doing this on purpose, but when I see you in another conversation that people keep having this kind of exchange with you I have to assume that this is why.
I’m sorry if this truly is unintentional, because this must be incredibly frustrating, but this is why I think you keep running into this. To those who don’t know what your intention actually is, it feels a hell of a lot like gaslighting. Just state the thing you’re disagreeing with explicitly, don’t bury it behind a whole bunch of statements of agreement.
I don’t insist this. I don’t think this is what happened, although I do think that effect was one very small piece.
This is, again, you telling me what I believe (indirectly through the mechanism of “what liberals believe”), instead of listening to me when I tell you what I believe.
I’m actually pretty sure that somewhere in the history, I specifically addressed the two root causes of the Democrats losing, at least twice, of which one of those main root causes was:
This part, I agree with. Two things can be true.
It boggles my mind that you’re apparently having so much difficulty with this concept. It is not either-or, such that me saying that propaganda and misinformation factored into the election means I am denying that the Democrats laid the groundwork by more or less abandoning the American people for decades. I agree with one part of your view, but not the other part.
I literally cannot believe that I am explaining this so many times, just literally the exact same concept over and over again, and you’re not grasping it.
Let me pause there. Has what I said so far make sense? Just removing everything else from the equation. Can you understand the thing I’m saying right now, and do you believe me when I say that this is what I believe? Does this message here, taken in isolation without reference to an expansive network of how you misinterpreted some past statements or anything like that, make sense so far?
I feel like this may be why you’re having so much trouble with this: You are interpreting everything just through the lens of whether or not it agrees with you, what you think the main point is, and so on. Forget your point of view. Go back and read my message, try to absorb what it is that I am saying starting from a blank slate. See if you can answer this:
I think that, if you wanted to boil it down to main root causes, there are two causes for the Democrats losing because people didn’t vote for them. One was ____ and the other was _____.
Not what you think the singular root cause is, and whether or not I’ve got it right and am focusing on the right things if we assume your answer is the objective truth against which mine is being measured. See if you can answer that question in terms of what I on my side believe the two main root causes to be.
Lmao. K fine, i’ll play this game:
Here’s my take:
I have repeatedly, ad nauseum stated my disagreement. You do not agree with me, and that’s fine. I don’t think there’s any world, in the absence of propaganda, that democrats could have overcome the broad, nationwide discontent being caused by the failure of democracy without acknowledging that discontent. That’s always been my whole point. That was the whole reason I responded to you to begin with. I don’t care if you agree that there is some attribution to that specific problem, I’m attributing the their entire loss to it, full stop. That’s why i was screaming why it’s such a huge problem. It isn’t because of propaganda or the dems being in need of reform, it’s because there’s a growing faction of people that think the choices on offer do meet even the threshold of consideration.
Do not tell me again that you agree with me, even in-part. I wouldn’t believe you at this point even if you did.
I feel like you have grasped the nature of my argument, and parts of yours that I do and do not agree with. We got there, I guess.
You seem very hung up on whether to call me agreeing with you in part, and not with another part, as full disagreement or full agreement, and you seem to have very confused for quite a while now that I am not falling in either of those categories. You’ve arrived at “full disagreement” now, as if daring me to challenge you on it. I am fine with that definition if you want to call it that.
In the future I would recommend that you pursue this course immediately instead of after a day of yelling: Objectively summarizing the point of view of the person you’re talking with, and comparing it to your own and seeing where they differ and why, instead of just spending the whole time yelling your own side and then telling the other person what it is that “liberals” believe and getting confused. It will be outside your comfort zone but it is communication. I would actually recommend that you go forward from that point of comparison, and into analyzing the differences and reasons for their differing point of view and considering it even though (by definition) you will think it is wrong, and critiquing your own points of view based on the differences and the reasons for them and any counterarguments they may make. You will find your internet interactions more productive, I think.
In any case have a good one, I’m glad we got there in the end.
If i spent a single character trying to “summarize your perspective” unsolicited you’d accuse me of misrepresenting you.
I told you straight up what I disagreed with, and you ignored it or didnt understand it. I could not have been clearer if i tried. Next time I’ll just assume you’re doing it it bad faith and call it a day.
Here’s a template you can use:
“It sounds like you’re saying (argument). Do I have that right?”
Pretty hard to characterize that in bad faith. Establishing a shared mental model is pretty essential. It also puts you in a position where it will be extremely hard for your brain to trick you into thinking that the other person said “yes” when they said “no” or vice versa, whereas misunderstanding what someone is saying is surprisingly easy to do, even when you’re not giving mental weight to “what liberals believe” in your model, or anything else that explicitly discounts the need to read or understand anything that’s being written to you.
You can also try this template:
“It might seem like i’m lecturing you because I don’t think you’re grasping what I’m saying.”
“sticking your fingers in your ears”
“paternalistic bullshit.”
That’s always super helpful and productive, you could try that too.
Lmao each of those were after you had completely missed my point, that had not changed and which you had not acknowledged. You will not find a simgle moment in your responses where you correctly understood what I was saying.
Respectfully, fuck off with your patronization
I know! I was super unreasonable. I was required to agree with you completely, and everything different than your point was a weird distraction. It’s horrible. You’re right to call it out and get all upset.