• misk@sopuli.xyz
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    2 days ago

    I am a cynical idealist so I don’t think there’s a way that doesn’t involve some sort of a compromise with people who think it should be different. Politics is not a way to determine who’s right or the most ethical but the means of working stuff out among groups with different interests. Maybe we can coalesce on something nice later on but for now we know that people can’t be forced into things they don’t want to be forced into. For now and probably forever we also need to coexist and that requires a common trading framework.

    • Lime Buzz (fae/she)@beehaw.org
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      2 days ago

      Ah, well we are working from different base assumptions then. I’m not cynical, I’m an optimist but yes still an idealist.

      I don’t really get your point about politics as politics is everything so yes, it is a way to determine who’s right or the most ethical as well as many other things, I think you might be referring to only electoral politics, otherwise I’m not sure how you could be seeing politics as a way to not determine that.

      I disagree, people are forced into things they do not want to do all the time.

      Maybe, but it could be a lot fairer than it currently is, my hope is one day it won’t be necessary though or at least not to the same degree that it is now.

      • misk@sopuli.xyz
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        2 days ago

        I don’t really get your point about politics as politics is everything so yes, it is a way to determine who’s right or the most ethical as well as many other things, I think you might be referring to only electoral politics, otherwise I’m not sure how you could be seeing politics as a way to not determine that.

        I disagree, people are forced into things they do not want to do all the time.

        There is nothing in a liberal democracy that prevents people from voting in their own self interest and that’s how it is in general as a consequence of combining liberal democracies with selfish ideologies like neoliberalism. Given this reality we can’t use politics to enforce ethics because people will vote you out and a politician should be accountable to his voters, otherwise they start to vote for whackos like Trump out of spite which makes things even worse. That’s just the rule of the game unless you’re for some kind of progressive autocracy or worse.

        This probably sounds like I think we should dump women and LGBT folk under the bus but I truly believe that if we improved livelihood for people they wouldn’t need to look for people they can abuse to feel better about their own situation. Left should be emancipating groups of people to give them the power for self determination so that they can organise against the oppression. Given systemic constraints left can’t fight this fight for them.

        Importantly, left should never abandon wins they scored for women but things like abortion became like a political Afghanistan (unwinnable fight that burns resources but there’s one more analogy later on). In my country left „fights” (very feebly) for this right despite women not being for it. More young women vote for the far right than any left wing party. Why make them happy by force? It’s not what they want and moralising left detracts from real goal of emancipating new groups and allowing them self-determination.

        People who know me long would chuckle seeing me write this but this is a result of wasting too much time with nothing to show for it. And I think there are people who agitate conflict across this line because they know it won’t achieve anything. They also know that keeping this conflict going makes their wealth safe.

        I know this is incredibly depressing way to think about things. I understand now that we tried to go to the finish line via shortcuts and we left people behind. Took me years of trying different things, mostly failing, refusing to listen to some people who always turned out to be right while I hated them for it. I feel like I had to try everything else before coming to those conclusions but realistically we’re out of options.

        Maybe, but it could be a lot fairer than it currently is, my hope is one day it won’t be necessary though or at least not to the same degree that it is now.

        I don’t get attached to details on the account of ADHD-like condition but also a track record of details not mattering over long spans of time. Our plans and expectations turn out to be silly all the time.