Indoctrinated parents indoctrinate kids.
See also: religion.
I’m just perplexed how kids are still religious in 2024 with vast amount of free information out there. I thought this cult bullshit was about to end with my generation when we got free, unrestricted information exchange invented.
I guess you can’t fix irrationality with rationality huh
From my perspective its because people won’t change their beliefs unless they stop benefiting the believer. For people who live in a religious community, there church’s sunday social event is enjoyable, there friends are all religious, there denomination provides a entire moral framework and worldview they don’t even need to think about. Confirmation bias plays a major role in preventing alternate thought to block out other worldviews.
Only when someone does not gain much benefit from there religion or has a important part of there religion proven wrong, can they process alternative ideologies and either switch to a more useful denomination or stop believing entirely.
Yep I have a friend who joined a church after not going to one for years because of the social aspects of it. Lots of people their age to relate to.
We just need better secular groups to join with those benefits that aren’t tied to religion. It’s one of the reasons I’m always apprehensive about volunteering because I don’t want the connection to religion. I know it doesn’t matter my intent for those who benefit/what benefits from the volunteering, but it affects my long term commitment to the cause.
Its a shame as well because many of the old social places such as rotary club and the masonic lodges have died out, and the new “third places” are online and/or expensive to access (vrchat comes to mind). Its no wonder so many people use social media these days.
But being closer to more “true” metaphysics and rationality is benefiting, though I guess that’s probably not obviously apparent to everyone.
But being closer to more “true” metaphysics and rationality is benefiting,
What does this even mean. What are “true” metaphysics? Please tell me you’re not just going to spew pseudoscientific nonsense at me.
My man popped some DMT then hopped on Lemmy
The funny thing is that those words somehow have actual meaning. Metaphysics is the philosophy of existance. I believe the “true” metaphysics he refers to is the fact that it is unknowable if anything other then you exists, because there is no guarantee you are not a bozmian brain or living in a simulation along other things.
This ability combined with rationality can allow you to adapt to changes in your perception of reality, while other frameworks can’t (for example there are still people who don’t believe in evolution because there interpretation of god is dependent on god creating all species at the start)
I put it in quotes because truth in this context is likely not binary. Here, “true” as in something that can be researched and argumented for rather than something that requires pure faith.
Agreed, though for most believing in irrational things is “fine” (in that it doesn’t harm them) until someone shows up to take advantage of it (I’m guessing at least one person is using ai to make it look like they can perform holy miracles on Facebook).
But isn’t that harm them? maybe indirectly but restricting your world view will restrict your agency. i.e. people will take advantage of you.
Exactly, its fine until it isn’t. Unfortunately most people don’t seem to realize just because there beliefs work in the present doesn’t mean they will continue to be beneficial in the future (e.g. a christian being recruited to work for free at the pastors business because “it is gods will”)
A lot of them need to be actively exposed to other views and opinions to break free. So usually when they go to college.
but internet does all that too. Especially more immersive social media like Youtube or podcasts. I’m generally very optimistic but the progress of our information network as someone who lived through it turned out much weaker than we thought it’d be. Maybe that human exposure of college is much more powerful thant basically infinite knowledge at your fingertips.
That’s taking it too far, in my opinion. I realize it’s supremely unpopular to be a person of faith nowadays, especially online, but you can’t say that anyone with faith is stupid and it’s all bullshit as a blanket statement. You don’t know what happens after we die, and neither do I. I can’t prove that God definitely exists and I’ll probably never convince you of it, but by the same token, you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist.
Where we diverge is I think it’s okay that you believe that. And yes, of course you can point out the shitty people that use religion to persecute and restrict others’ rights, to punish, and worse. Many people do this, but they are still the vocal minority we hear about. And it’s not like there haven’t been terrible atheists/agnostics who have done awful things not motivated by religion…
Me, personally, I also won’t attend any church that tries to be political or tell its members how to vote. I am a Christian, but I try to model my religious activity on the Sikhs: quiet, respectful, loving outreach to improve the world. So I can acknowledge the problems, but no, I don’t think all religion is bad nor every person of faith stupid…
Edit: spelling
They didn’t say stupid, you did. They said irrational, which it is. You’re right no one can prove that there is no afterlife, but believing in something that there is no evidence for is the definition of irrational. That doesn’t mean I’m saying you’re stupid, I’m just saying that it’s irrational. No need to get offended, that’s just what words mean.
And remember that it’s not an insult. Even a lot of science depends on taking an irrational position to discover things. Doing irrational things in life can sometimes be way more rewarding than doing rational things.
Trying to explain to someone that their take is not evidence-based though… most jump to the conclusion that you’re saying they’re wrong.
It’s not the belief that makes you “stupid” is the irrationality of the whole package. If you’re looking for metaphysics answers - we got them. People tried to figure out this stuff since the beginning of time with rationality and logic and even experiments rather than blind faith to words they never even heard personally. That’s the difference.
I don’t discriminate against the religious but it’s really easy to argue that reglious approach is taking the easy approach to metaphysics and it’s something important to consider here.
Most people are not actually people, they are people-like imposter automatons and they are dumb as hell and can be manipulated like clay.
Inoculating believers against rational counter-arguments is a powerful tool. Do it right, and the vast amount of information at their fingertips might seem like the whole secular world is conspiring against them.
By bro still believes because they get you so early. I basically tell him he’s an idiot for being a christian, also fucking his kids up, but jesus says it’s cool. So that is how it happens.
My friend got sucked into it because of a girl. His parents weren’t religious. I don’t think he had gone to church more than twice in his life by high school, and he, just like the rest of us, trash talked our school’s requirements to have a ‘chapel’ hour once a week. He was as blasé as they come about religion, perhaps an agnostic in the christian hemisphere at best, but when he started dating a christian girl, he went to church with her, made friends with her friends at church, etc. Now 15 years later he’s indoctrinating his kids with her, and a deacon at his church. The power of social influence is enormous. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to break free, or even just consider information that is contradictory, if you have the combination of early influence and the later social influence from family, friends, and the wider social circle that is part and parcel of a church.
I’m a Zoomer, and one of my best friends is very religious precisely because of the internet. He reads the Bible online a lot, and is in a bunch of Christian Discord servers, and often reads up theology. To be fair, he is very progressive on pretty much all issues except birth control, he isn’t a blind authority-obeyer, and is totally fine with me being agnostic.
free
Uh…?
Religion is not always a cult. All religions are not like Christianity.
See Hinduism, Buddhism, confussionism
Religions are cults that have grown bigger than normal cult size. Just because a religion isn’t a Western religion, doesn’t mean it’s any better than a big cult
If I didn’t know about the Hindus and Muslims “beefing” (pun intended) in India, I’d be inclined to believe you.
Nah they’re still cults. People have this morphed view that religion is not a cult when it is by the very definition of it:
cult n: followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices
Not to say that cults can’t be net good in some form but once they grow past local community I think it’s just impossible to not lose the mission to bad actors.
I prefer this view. Limiting the definition of cults to “small” or “based around a person” is missing the point that all religions are self-preserving in-groups that offer “truths” that will limit your worldview by excluding others, and practices that differentiate followers behaviorally.
But also beliefs can be useful. For example, the idea of an afterlife or reincarnation can help reduce the fear of death. The belief of forgiveness for sins, can offer redemption. That random events have meaning. That we are not alone when we are alone. All cognitively useful and therapeutic.
Opposing beliefs can be held at the same time. I can know that probabilistically, or based on personal experience, or empirical evidence, that death is either an ending or an unknowable, and still choose to believe in reincarnation because it does give more meaning to my actions and reduce fear of death.
And cult practices are often as good for the individual as the beliefs. Having community and regular social interaction is critical to human health. Conducting rituals and ceremonies give structure, meaning and comfort to the parts of our days and lives. Praying and meditating. Charity and service and on and on. These are all useful, healthy to the individual and to society.
When we can learn to adopt these things without closing our minds to other worldviews and possibilities, without in-group fear and defensiveness, without superiority and proselytization we’ll be in a better world that’s still full of cults
I disagree that irrational beliefs can be net good. Belief in the afterlife isn’t the only way to make peace with death, but the normalization of magical thinking makes people easier to deceive and more likely to try alternative-solutions (as opposed to vaccination or chemotherapy).
I understand your point, but I think that magical and mythical thinking are fully part of how our minds evolved and still work, and if we fully develop our faculties of rationalization, almost everyone still thinks magically. Think about ideas like luck, or a fear of something improbable, or most of our expectations in life. Or why many masters of logic still believe in mythical beings and afterlives.
If you talk to someone from an animistic culture, they don’t need to question or have a structure of reasoning in place to explain why the waterfall has a spirit. It just does, it always has and it’s obvious. However, if a person who lives in a wealthy country today, had public education and believes that vaccines are dangerous. They will believe it rationally, not irrationally, and have a slew of rationalizations for the belief. These are two types of magical thinking, but the former has a magical worldview and the latter does not.
Rationality is weak against many types of thinking and motivation, and there are many more steps in the maturation of a mind. I do personally agree that a solid foundation in rational thinking should underlie whatever beliefs, morals, ethics, and insights a person adopts. But it is also highly likely that in my examples the former person is healthier and happier than the latter person, and both could be just as gullible.
Religion is always a cult. Those people are no less delusional than the chrstians.
Nah, religion is always a cult.
Imo cults have more to do with in-groups and out-groups and their relation in your mental space.
If your in-group is worth more to you than the total sum of all out-groups; you are in a cult.
Humanity is one race, subdividing it and labelling all the chunks is where we went wrong. The fact we have a word to describe this outcome shows we are pretty far down this tube.
If you’re reading this and think to yourself “surely this person is misled, they’re not a part of (insert religion) so wouldn’t know anything about what they say” congratulations, you’re right (and also in a cult).
Hinduism is the textbook definition of a cult. It’s just old AF, so we give it a pass.
How tho
It still pushes the “us vs them” mentality that any religion does, which in my opinion makes it no better than others. And truth be told, scripture and dogma has nothing to do with it either, it’s all just tribalism.
The Indian government under Modi pushes a nationalist Hindu agenda which encourages violence against religious minorities like Muslims and Sikhs. This causes religious extremism, directed towards establishing a national Hindu religion in India like you see with Islam and Judaism in the Middle East.
And before anyone says Buddhism is different (I was raised in a Buddhist household, to clarify), see Myanmar’s conflict with the Rohingya which is perpetuated by militant Buddhists. Sri Lanka has also long been dealing with similar acts of violence against the Tamil Hindus and Arab Muslims perpetuated by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority.
Any religion has the propensity to become “cult-like” based on social circumstances, and this is heightened all the more when nationalism is thrown into the mix.
I suggest you look up Kali for a start.
Kali Linux?
Linux is definitely a cult, and I am a proud cultist
The name of a single character from their religious stories tells me nothing about their behavior
She’s a god, represents time, change, power, creation, preservation, destruction…she’s a mother figure… You haven’t given me any useful information. Maybe give a link or something with information about her relevance to cult behavior?
Hmph. Maybe look up “Hinduism is a cult” and then scroll until you read a preview that fits my beliefs
Exactly. My nephews seem to complain about the shit their dad told them to vote for. It’s rather hilarious.
The fuck happened to the rebelliousness of youth?
Should kids be doing exactly not whatever their parents tell them to?
Kids these days… GET ON MY LAWN!!
They might think they’re rebelling against the normality of voting for basic human kindness and decency.
The fuck happened to the rebelliousness of youth?
Pure propaganda. Kids are more than happy to follow behind their older peers and always have been.
It’s “rebellion” if the kids literally anything at all. Speak up? Question anything? Show any kind of agency? Mimic what your elders are doing? You’re out of control.
Stupid comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages. 🤪
See also: reactionary movements.
I sometimes really want to show those reactionary gamers a trial version of the authoritarian society they stive for…
So send them a documentary on what happened in NAZI Germany.
But don’t be surprised when they tell you that’s exactly what they want because they’re white men and it puts them at the top of the heirarchy.
But their geeky stuff wouldn’t survive any of that…
They won’t understand that until they’re in the middle of it.
Yep. They were taught to hate people and that “Trumps” voting to improve things, or bring down costs…
The hate and negativity is such a big part of it. It’s kind of the foundation, really. It sounds simple, but it is the main thing I had to train out of my brain while figuring out wtf I want out of life and how to enjoy the journey.
If I’m hanging out with family still stuck in that mindset and discussing an acquaintance? You bet I’m going to hear what race they are (if not white, which is the default human in their minds), how big of a house they have, how much money they make, and of course how stupid they are. Nothing of substance.
All that negativity, paranoia, and anger makes it much easier to get the conservative base to not spend time thinking about the suffering of others, and instead think about how much stuff they’ve acquired and how the “other” people want to steal it.
It’s a strange position for me to be in, personally. I can see how somebody would stay immersed in that shitty mindset for life without exposure to the wider world, because I know the feeling of living in that mindset (let’s call it high school). However, I also have eyes and ears and access to the internet, and I think all available information should be considered even if reality has a liberal bias.
How do you indoctrinate the curiosity out of people? 😬
Well, if you question it, you are a bad person and going to hell. It’s not that God doesn’t love you, but you are forcing God to send you to hell because you are closing to question.
Choosy moms with free will choose jiff
Actually it’s pronounced jiff
Really? Have you not been paying attention?
Yes I’ve been paying attention, however it remains baffling to me as I see curiosity as essential as breathing or eating, so perhaps the question may be better asked as, how is inhibiting curiosity not recognized as a form of abuse?
Being born into a conservative household can be a hard hurdle to clear. I grew up with the unquestioning belief that the left was straight-up evil (shocker: that was projection) but then moved around a ton and worked alongside a huge diversity of people after highschool cuz I joined the military and didn’t have a choice: that exposure was a real shock, but since our brains don’t like being wrong, I resisted it for a good while before finally acknowledging that I was acting like a moron and started thinking more critically about politics and what political decisions meant for my community.
Not everyone gets that healthy slap-to-their-senses. Doesn’t excuse shit, but that’s the ‘why’.
It’d be interesting to see some actual political metrics on other service members. The military is always seen as being SOLID red, and while yes it does lean that way, the tiny bubble of the military that was my personal field of view seemed maybe a 60-40 split; and I personally went in red, and separated borderline radical blue. I know at least a handful of others who did the same… no idea if it’s always been that way, or if this is a developing trend. Or if I happened to be stationed in an uncharacteristically blue slice of military. /shrug.
This is my exact story to a “t”. I grew up in a heavily conservative household, joined the military as a conservative, and 15 years later I’m pretty fucking blue.
I think it’s a combination of a few things that does it to us more often than not:
1 - Exposure to people from all walks of life/escaping your “bubble” 2 - Access to tax payer funded social programs that the rest of America desperately fucking needs and going “Why can’t taxes do this for EVERYONE!?” 3 - If you’ve been deployed to certain sections of the world, you see first-hand what unfettered religious extremism can potentially do to a country.
I’m happy to say, that at least for the Air Force, I’ve run into far, far more Active Duty Dems/Libs than I have any Repubs. Now, when the retired veteran GS employees come in, it’s a completely different story. My whole circle save one is fairly left-leaning, and the one who isnt is…fucking weird/all over the place on his stances.
Every single person I know who has gotten out of the military has come out blue. With one (medically discharged) exception.
In my experience 20 years ago, it was mostly split between people who didn’t care or at least didn’t talk politics (the majority) and people who were very loud in thinking a Democrat would reduce the pay of enlisted service members.
what was the red/blue percent (in your opinion) if you only included officers and above?
No clue. I was enlisted - talking politics at all was taboo, but rules like that are only ever followed while in management’s field of view.
I’d assume officers behaved similarly - tending to keep certain topics locked up around enlisted, but talking more openly when it’s just them.
I’m sure conservatives would love this, but we should be using the military in this way as a de-radicalizing force. We should be leaning into it.
Well put.
I think a lot of your political beliefs start with your parents and people around you, but then are shaped by what happens to you. If you get hit with the hard reality of life in some way (debt, health, etc) it tends to push you to be more progressive/empathetic toward others because you see just how truly cold and cruel the bottom of our society gets treated. If you have coasted through life and have parents and friends supporting you financially and we’re lucky enough to get a good job and have relatively good health and such then you may not know the horrors of what can happen if you hit a few rough patches.
Similarly in military service, if you get injured and now have to go to the VA and fight to receive the most basic of medical care you were promised and denied it tends to push you left/progressive because you want things to be better. If you are still in the service or left it relatively undamaged then you could easily still see things from a conservative and right leaning perspective.
When you or people close to you get (denied medical care, denied housing, denied work, pushed into poverty and/or homelessness, used by the system and then discarded like trash) you tend to see things more progressive and want to provide some basic levels of support and humanity and empathy toward others as opposed to exploiting them for profit.
30% of your time being red. 30% of your time coming to your senses. 40% of your time trending towards borderline radical blue.
There is your 60/40 split.
Anecdotally, this was somewhat my experience as well, except my parents didn’t talk politics much and they certainly didn’t show the extreme hate towards the left that fox and rush have since incited. I went more from voting on surface level attributes (speaking ability, apparent warmth, etc) and social pressure, to actually [eventually] looking at policy. I was a registered independent when I joined, but I didn’t know enough about actual politics to understand the details of what I was voting for. I.e., I was going with the flow. It has the same effect at the ballot box though.
It’s embarrassing for everyone gen x and after. It’s especially disappointing to see in gen z
Could have ended the comment after 4 words.
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For men, a lot of it has to do with personal frustration and several “sources” or “influencers” pointing to communism, cultural marxism, feminism, etc, as the culprits of everything bad going on. Attacking a scapegoat you’ve been led to believe is “the reason” you can’t get a job or a girlfriend is easy and emotionally satisfying.
Thinking, rationalizing and realizing how and why shit’s fucked up, down, left and right doesn’t fill you with good vibes.
If you want an honest answer, it’s that young boys are feeling left behind, and in many ways they are right. This is a longer video (~30min) but it seems in line with much of what I’ve been seeing, that the boys are not alright.
Essentially, as any system begins to give equality to all, it will appear as a loss for those who used to solely benefit from it. That said this is still something to take seriously.
The gender gap is reversed in several areas: in education girls do better than boys. There are more women in university than men. Real wealth of women has been rising while in many demographics (especially poor young men of color) wealth has been decreasing. This is not a 0 sum game, so these are real concerns. 75% of suicides are men, and in their notes it is common to see words like “useless” “unwanted” and “worthless”. They feel that the world is leaving them behind.
This trend is not happening to those in the elite class- that is still very much male dominated, however for many poor men without college degrees, their lives are no longer looking like what they were raised to expect. That same demographic is who you are more likely to see at a trump rally.
This is fertile ground for people like Tucker Carlson and Andrew Tate to bring these young men into their world view that women are taking away their futures.
This is where I would say men who are in places of being role models (teachers, mentors, fathers, coaches, pastors, etc…) need to come in and show that there is a new reality for men and that it’s not only okay, it’s better. Being a stay at home dad can be freeing as you may be able to pursue other interests. Showing what leadership is is important, but also showing how to work as a team and under the leadership of a woman is important too and can be fulfilling.
I’m an educator, and one thing I think about is that I want to teach the girls that men are not to be feared, and to teach the boys not to be men to be afraid of. There is a better future ahead, but only if we take action and support the next generation of boys as well as girls. Without this support, we are handing a large portion of disaffected youth to a toxic mindset that will have horrible consequences.
Oddly enough, I could see one of these boys looking at this post and thinking “the left doesn’t care about me, so why would I care about them?”
cultural marxism
As someone who lost a friend to that rabbit hole, I really think we should put that far right conspiracy theory between quotation marks when named alongside things that actually exist. Communism and feminism are real (even if they are perceived as demonic by these people, they still at least exist). “Cultural marxism” doesn’t even have entity, it’s just bullshit entirely made up by the usual grifters
But you don’t need a scapegoat. The problem is literally the billionaires. You only need a scapegoat to justify white supremacist hierarchy building.
For me it has to do with having evaluated various political philosophies according to my personal experience and chosen the one that best matches what I think is right.
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Did… did you just copy their comment word for word and posted it as a reply‽
Why? (And now don’t anyone suggest a bot, because that’s stupid programming for a bot so unlikely, hopefully)
I mean, I’ve seen Reddit bots copy and paste comments from the same post as replies, so, assuming the bot has an equal chance to reply to every comment, I guess replying to the same comment wouldn’t be unheard of if there’s not enough replies.
I read their profile and… wow.
A lot of our current brand of conservatism appeals to people’s notion of unfairness. People taking things from them. They have been told over and over that liberals are lazy and want to take things from them.
Remember that these are young people who don’t have a lot of experiences in adult life, but have experienced basic, uncomplicated unfairness. Fighting against that simple, unnuanced unfairness appeals to them.
Conservatives tell you a whole list of people who are supposedly stealing from you to distract from the fact that they’re currently picking your pocket.
If your values can only be justified by shock news and lies then you’re going to want more of that type of news.
It’s tough being young. Jobs don’t pay what they used to. Rent costs too much. Even the food is a struggle.
You know who is the blame for this?
Brown people.
This message is brought to you by the conservative party of your country. They’re all the fucking same.
Indoctrination, propaganda, alt-right playbook recruitment through targeting the disaffected… these aren’t young people who’ve turned to conservatism, they’ve been actively targeted by right wing factions in order to bolster their position.
Edit: Oh, and also Reagan era neo-liberals are the fucking worst and when they shit on progressives and their ideas, they basically push away people who would otherwise be politically left leaning.
As progressive values become more mainstream being an edgy conservative becomes a form of counter culture.
This shows in those god awful conservative memes people make that say shit like “Im not like other girls, I dress modestly, dont drink or do drugs and the only man I get on my knees for is JEsus” type shit. or the male equivalent where they talk about how theyre the only real man left in a world where people drink soy lattes and dont beat their kids.
To be fair if you’re anything past Boomer, at this point you should be too embarrassed to vote for any GOP candidate. When the party decided to support Trump—a guy with proven sexual assault charges, pending fraud charges, pending classified document charges, a penchant for insurrection that he happily acknowledges, and more and more video surfacing of him unable to be coherent, hopefully most everyone with any connection to reality has realized it’s time to kick him and the GOP to the curb.
The Boomers should be mortified. Their parents were the one who sacrificed their young adulthood to eliminate the Nazis 80 years ago. They’re spitting on their parents’ graves by supporting Trump.
The problem is, boomers are the most selfish generation. The other name for their generation is the Me Generation, because after the war, after the depression, their parents had done all the hard work, been through all the hard times, and started to get money and financial security and so they gave their children everything they wanted creating the absolute selfishness we see today. They don’t care a lick about their parents sacrifices because they had everything they ever wanted and for them it’s all about “me, me , me!”
Then the Boomers tried to give that moniker to both Gen X, and The Millennials. I’m glad they have short attention spans.
You’re absolutely right on that one! Hadn’t thought of it from that perspective, but hell yes.
I dunno but for some reason they’re on this platform too (dunno why all things considered). Go ask them.
It’s either a belief things can only get worse or hate in their heart.
Like, if you get dunked on everywhere on the internet you go maybe take the hint your beliefs are generally frowned upon and may not be correct.
Orrr you could use that to strengthen your persecution complex and feed your conspiratorial thinking!
“Wow, they really are out to get me!”
Pretty sure this is a bubble view point, look at how many right wing populists are successful in the world right now. Conservatives are not a small group and I’m sure their views are considered good and normal in many spaces.
But it’s easy to say “it’s the corrupt society that is wrong” or that social media is full of bots or commies etc, it can serve to validate their views. Like the hero in a dystopian story, they are one of the few that see the truth.
It’s valid, what you said. But the internet can also be a huuuuge asshole. I’m not excusing the awfulness that is conservativism (fucking ew furiously washes hands) by any measure; self-reflection is a requirement of a sentient human and is absent in some animals. However, one does see how an opinion from an asshole so very vast might get discounted, folded-in with the cheese of selection bias, as it were.
Hexbear: “wait a second”
Biggest reason I see is religious indoctrination.
I can remember when being conservative meant you believed we had a calling to be stewards of creation
LOL good times
If they’re wealthy they usually vote Tory, that’s one reason for sure.
We’ll get the conservatives out of government soon, but I don’t think Labour are much better, just two sides of the same coin, unfortunately.
If you’re in the U.S or a lot of places, both sides of the government are conservative. There is literally no left option. Not sure what Labour is like in the UK.
The current leader has been whipping his MPs to vote with conservative policy and is generally in agreement with them. They’ve been some of the weakest opposition I’ve ever seen. The Scottish national party (SNP) has been the only genuine left wing party with any significant presence in Westminster. The Labour party leader recently threatened the speaker (who is labour but is supposed to be impartial) to stop a SNP debate day when they wanted to pass a recognition of genocide in Gaza.
They’re selling point is they are more competent and less cruel than the conservatives. The keep on dropping their more progressive policies. Recently they’ve dropped their reform of the house of lords, an unelected chamber that currently places religious leaders and Russians with KGB ties in unaccountable legislative roles for life.
Sounds like they’ve been bought then. Usually when a party starts throwing their weight around for morality policy (which shouldn’t be a thing in politics anyway) it means rich people are paying the bills.
Labour in Scotland kicked out their previous leader because the party donors didn’t like him. The farther of the current labour leader also donates significant amount of money to Labour, and basically bought his sons seat as an MSP in the first place.
That’s the thing with a republic - those who vote Democrat in NYC or LA have to compromise with those who vote Democrat in other places like Virginia and Oregon, for the type of median representation they get in federal government.
Democrats used to have the South they could count on, and eventually the nation got FDR for four consecutive terms and the New Deal.
Then the LBJ administration - from Texas, of all places - and Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, and Democrats lost that electoral advantage they had in the South.All the ingrained racist simpletons in society shifted towards the other side - "That republican fellow might screw me over, but at least he’s one of ours, a good patriotic christian (read: white) American that talks to me in MY (racist dog whistle) language!"
What so many people don’t seem to ever get is that permanent changes in Washington work through inertia and take voting in every election, because the safer any party can feel in office, the bolder they can afford to be in that slow-moving, change-resistant place.
Democrats did it before because they had the South they could rely on, including Texas. Now Democrats don’t have the South.
FDR was a fluke for the Democratic Party up until that point. That’s why his cousin ran on the Republican ticket in 1912.
But it still happened, and the opportunity for it to happen could only have been in the Democrat Party. Try and brush it off as much as you try, it’s still an undeniable event, fact and history, and proof that both parties are NOT the same.
By the same token of your argument, LBJ and Congress passing the Civil Rights Act was a fluke, because it only happened once? They knowingly sacrificed the entire electoral south for several generations and to this day, to do the right thing. “Yeah, but it doesn’t count.” Oh give me a break.
Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, there are shining examples of Democrats attempting to do the right thing in a complex and changing, overwhelming world, while with republicans at the same time it has been all about endless avarice and appetite, with the snarl of bigotry facing in all directions.
That wasn’t my point. My point is that the parties switched, or more accurately The Republicans went from being left of Democrats to the far right sometime between 1912 and 1945-1960
We’ll get the conservatives out of government soon
You’ll still be stuck with Keir “I agree with my friends across the aisle but wish they’d go further” Starmer. Labor was completely hollowed out after Corbyn. It’s just careerist flaks and corporate shills, with anyone who defies the leadership getting punted off the ticket.
Who could have guessed that if the party systematically annihilates anyone and anything who dislikes the status quo you’d be left with Tories with red paint.
Corbyn was the worst thing that could’ve happened to Labour. The man just did not understand the role of Party Leader and could not prioritise party or country over his own nostaligia-tinged ideological pet causes
Corbyn was the worst thing that could’ve happened to Labour.
Oh Jeremy Corbyn! Why did Labour Party membership soar after the 2015 general election?
Using both British Election Study and Party Members Project data, we explain the surge by focussing on the attitudinal, ideological and demographic characteristics of the members themselves. Findings suggest that, along with support for the leader and yearning for a new style of politics, feelings of relative deprivation played a significant part: many ‘left-behind’ voters (some well-educated, some less so) joined Labour for the first time when a candidate with a clearly radical profile appeared on the leadership ballot. Anti-capitalist and left-wing values mattered too, particularly for those former members who decided to return to the party.
This is a really big part of the problem, I think. Politicians on the “left” tend to be actually just more moderate right wingers, or unable to accomplish much of anything meaningful.
It’s much the same in Canada too, our Liberal party is supposed to be the mainstream “left” option but they’re just doing moderate right politics with pride flags.
Then there’s the NDP which actually has some leftist elements, and I’m grateful to have a meaningful 3rd party, but they’ve still never formed government at the federal level.
And we’ve ingested so much cold war propaganda that if you just say “socialist” people start getting freaked out.
Do not underestimate the power of algorithms. I feel like instagram or YouTube are constantly trying to pull me back into the far right rabbit hole.
Grifting is pretty profitable these days
