Do “woke leftists” even exist?

I would be the closest because I don't believe in some very basic paradigms the general average American believes.

How many Americans see the border as a "human exploitation" issue rather than a "border security" issue?

I want "big government" in the sense of strong enforcement mechanisms that prevent exploitation of labor while also providing the basic essential needs of people to allow themselves to actually improve themselves rather than just exist to pay bills.

I think the fear mongering of national debt is in bad faith and is no where close to what will end American hegemony. In fact, I believe that America for the past 40 years specifically since Reagan have practiced austerity politics while the vast majority of Americans believe the complete opposite even though I can show data like "percentage of workforce employed by the federal government" decreasing over time

So I guess me? I just think the average American has been brainwashed to a high degree and I blame increased cost of living requiring more time at work to pay basic necessities not allowing the average American time to understand the world around them. An overworked population is a uninformed population.

I also believe there doesn't exist a single woman on this planet who lost financial freedom because they lost a bag to a trans athlete beating them. That person does not exist and in fact it's the complete opposite in that there are woman who exist who became financially successful because a trans person competed against them which made them right wing media darlings and jump starting a right wing media grift.

 

I want a 100% transgender military.

 

How fabulous

 

Finally a reasonable request.

Imagine being captured by a 100% transgender military.

 

Imagine trying to plan for battle when you don’t even know what bathroom the enemy will use.

 

I bet you do not have the intellectual ability to engage in good faith the statements I made.


I think you have been so emotionally damaged from being harmed by your own cheerleading of ideological principles that in hindsight harmed your personal self interest, that you can't accept your own undoing and that is why you post the way you do. It's pure narcissism eating your own face.

 

Yes they do

 

I've only met but a handful of people who I imagine could fit the characterization that some people would portray this indescribable phenomenon upon.

I assume this just happens to be my circle, and that if perhaps I grew up in a different area with different friends, a different line of work, and different hobbies that I'd be exposed to more of 'them".

The left wing character of maga folk, on the other hand, are quite common within my life, although this is usually just one, smaller aspect of their being, it generally isn't nearly as serious, or evil/sinister of an aspect as people portray online.


That being said, I do occasionally see Ukraine or rainbow flags in people yards and on bumper stickers, and since this whole ideology is perpetually both undefinable and indescribable, perhaps there's tons of them?

And for a side tangent, as a lib, I find the Ukraine/rainbow flags and bumper stickers to be very off-putting, as I do for the BLM, blue life matters, Biden, Trump, Bernie, don't tread on me, you name it, signs and stickers. I generally think lesser of people who assume they are so important as to visually advertise their political thoughts or identity publicly to their neighbors or whoever has the pleasure coming across their car. What idiots.

 

They exist.

AOC and her caucus supposedly represented a new gen of young progressives but polling and our last exit polls indicated they more or less only represented a younger gen of college educated professional women. Oh noes...toxic masculinity is on the rise again! Shame on them for voting Trump! Shame on America!!

Turns out the oppressor/oppressed dynamic is regressive in the long run where the oppressed overreaches and leans toward becoming the oppressor when given the self serving opportunity. I find it amazing people still want big government through a unitary executive when we're currently living through a radical pendulum shift of mostly our decisions and doings. Oops.

The generational and racial political dynamic has shifted hard. If you don't know what I'm talking about, watch/listen to the David Shor interview I posted in the Democratic Party thread. There are articles from vox/nyt about it if you google.

It'll be talked about before midterms, but I find the lack of focused discussion now a failure by the media and left establishment to come up with a good rebuttal. It's a big fat admission as: More of the Same...Resist and Cooler Saner Minds Will Prevail.

This is where you get the crazy Woke Left messaging X and right wing media distorts. They take that rabid online group which has enough clout among the progressive caucus and present is as the message in the absence of a message. Some are ultra idealistic and appeal to a morally perfect solution despite there not being one in practical reality.

Creating bullshit new words that are less "emotionally distressing" like unhoused instead of homeless is tacit admission the left doesn't have the tools or capacity to tackle the issue and meet all the perfect checkboxes the leftist caucus demands. It's not only homelessness... decriminalization of petty crimes (hundreds of billions in smash and grab losses, but tens of millions in prison costs saved...more humane!) and drugs (Oregon cluster****), massive local deficits from poor planning, corporate capture in healthcare, financial and tech policies.

Absolute delusion and cynical calculation.

We deserve better as the problems are real and snowballing fast.

 

Wut.

The left cares more about rent pricing than anything else. You are a victim to right wing caricatures of the left ironically in the sense of falling for it.

Why does the term "toxic masculinity" offend you? Do you deny the existence of right wing pipelines in large ubiquitous mediums like video games where a 14 year old kid is walked through a rapid radicalization from enjoying video games content to watching Admin Ross and Andre Tate talk about how the Holocaust wasn't that bad?

The problem with rants like these are the vagueness of it means I can't really understand what exact issue you have with someone uttering the term "toxic masculinity". Like do you whole heartily disagree with the term existing or do you think "leftists" use it too much and if so what is the proper amount of usage or is this a "vibes" thing where you can't directly say it?

"The left" doesn't have the tools because it doesn't have the capital. You'd be surprised how much of the left has succumbed to nihilism due to understanding power dynamics and how leftist causes inherently push away capital interests and capital interests are what give motion to any movement outside of political violence.

Do people understand that modern politics there are only two motivating forces: the heavy hand of money and violence. Those are the only two forces they provide sincere change for the better or worse in our political system. Things like police reform have a heavy uphill battle because law enforcement is an institution backed by capital owners who have the ability to mobilize and spread messaging far more efficiently than leftists. The uphill battle of capital is why leftists don't have an ability to influence things outside some changing of vocabulary that you are offended by. Blame the heavy hand of money influence in our political system. Why would the influence of money allow any motion of leftist causes that diametrically opposed wealth accumulation trough capital ownership?


Ya man keep on b****ing about people using the term "unhoused". That's what's wrong with society today. We use the term "unhoused".

Naturally once these monied influenced overstep to a point where the average American has their entertainment and middle class lifestyle stripped from them, then you'll see violence. Violence and money. Those are the two motivating factors that provide motion in politics.

Get your priorities focusing straight dingus


Also I do find it funny that many mainstream Democrats politicians are seeing the feckless nature of establishment Democrat politics and are now begging AOC to primary Chuck Shumer.

I'm sorry @Invisible Fan but AOC seems to have some motion. You a Shumer head Invisible Fan? Because Shumer seems to be your ideal type of politician... Feckless.

Part of what things are snowballing fast is people like you and their bad faith critique of leftist politics. Its the centrist Democrats that paved the way for MAGA. Not believing in anything besides fundraising and satisfying corporate interests. Not weaponizing the anger average Americans feel when spread thin like the GOP when they scapgoate minorities but instead make landlords and capital owners scapegoats is what made them feckless and paved the way for the right wing media ecosystem telling Americans what the Democrats stand for. When you stand for nothing, your political enemies will tell the public what you stand for.

Caving to right wing framing the border as a security issue or labeling student activists as terrorist supporters is stuff that allows MAGA to step in. You don't think the Biden administration labeling student activists as terrorist supporters helped the Trump administration target these students due to making these people less sympathetic?

Democrat establishment wants to be Republican lite and it has failed them.

 

No they don’t

 

Are you trying to say that Clutchfans isn’t popular with younger educated women?

 

There are people of an older generation who are firmly situated on the "far left" and who are deeply critical of the way the younger-generation "left" tends to talk about social justice issues and tries to police how we discuss those issues.

For example: I'll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It! Heretical Thoughts on Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, and Academic Freedom: Norman Finkelstein: 9798986788425: Amazon.com: Books

In his new book, Finkelstein focuses his keen forensic eye on the canonical texts of identity politics. After methodically parsing them, Finkelstein concludes that they’re lacking in intellectual substance. Instead, the real purpose of identity politics is to derail a class-based movement bent on radical change.

In a long, scathing chapter, Finkelstein analyzes the cult surrounding Barack Obama, which he reveals as the ultimate product of identity politics. The first Black president rose to power by having, in Obama’s own cynical words, “pulled off a neat trick” by standing for nothing except his skin color. If “woke” liberals embraced him, it was because, beneath his hip veneer, Obama was a sure bet to prop up the corrupt status quo.

Along the way, Finkelstein recalls his own life in radical politics and his close encounters with cancel culture, which left him unemployed and unemployable. He situates his personal story within broader debates on academic freedom and poignantly concludes that, although occasionally bitter, he harbors no regrets about the choices he made.
​

Or, for a work that's a bit less polemical: Left Is Not Woke - Kindle edition by Neiman, Susan. Politics & Social Sciences Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

If you’re woke, you’re left. If you’re left, you’re woke. We blur the terms, assuming that if you’re one you must be the other. That, Susan Neiman argues, is a dangerous mistake.

The confusion arises because woke is fuelled by traditionally leftwing emotions: the wish to stand with the oppressed and marginalized, to address historic crimes. But those emotions are undermined by widespread philosophical assumptions with reactionary sources. As a result, wokeism conflicts with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. Without these ideas, the woke will continue to undermine their own goals and drift, inexorably and unintentionally, towards the right.

One of the world’s leading philosophical voices, Neiman calls with passion and power for the left to return to the ideals that built the best of the modern world.
​

 

There's like only 20 odd people posting in the D&D. Maybe not the best sample size.

Shor gives a lot of narrative pausing data. Kamala retained enough support among white boomer male voters if their wives were democrats. My bad for trashing all boomers... Traditionally a household would be solid red or blue, but there's an ongoing bifurcation of party affiliation by gender as the age group becomes younger and younger.

Separately from the Shore interview, some data suggests a reason for plummeting birthrates worldwide is from the internet where gender echo chambers can hyperfocus on their particular interests, values and political ideologies. I still think our rat-race culture with a split economy of haves-have nots are a bigger factor, but it makes sense people aren't making babies if the internet is creating dual realities among sexes where it becomes preferable to stay home than hang out.

Cons courting Rogan and Dana White reflects a deeper political shift than the Dems have caught onto or are actively addressing.

 

This seems like an absolutely wild take considering fertility rates have been dropping like a rock in western countries since the 60’s

 

I learned about it yesterday. It's newer data that hasnt filtered into public discourse due to prior assumptions.

 

It's what every propagandist in the history of propaganda has attempted. Go look at the awful charactures Nazis made of Jews - do you think anybody like THAT ever really existed - hook nosed monsters roaming the streets of Deutschland looking to corrupt pure Ayrian blood?

Its not brilliance by Fox. It's instead a function of the fractured media landscape which encourages people to lean into their own biases and self-censor any moderating or alternative views.

It is a function of the boutique media landscape we find ourself in but more importantly none of this could happen without the willing and active participation by "the victims".

It is an unfortunate reality that to some degree everybody chooses their "truth" based on what they WANT to be true, and we are in an era that helps people with that rather than helping to keep that impulse in check.

News as entertainment will always choose the most enterraining yarn and any really entertaining story will always have that man in black twirling his mustache - the more awful and grotesque, the better.

 

I’ll try to watch it later when I get a chance. Honestly I’d like to see a documentary on the historical trends of human fertility rates, not sure how accurate data there is for how far back but I’d like to learn more about it.

 

He has links. The first half goes into context of what we knew and assumed. I think his interest arose when declining birthrates became a global trend that didn't fit our modernistic assumptions. He doesn't discuss environmental trends (which is arguably as big a deal) but focuses more on the social and societal aspects of why less and less people aren't having babies at all.

Anyhow, it's great when people do their own research and share their thoughts here.