this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
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Hmmm. One side denies that my cousin should be allowed to exist in their body. How much should credence should I lend to that opinion. One side says that my gay friends aren't allowed to get married. One side says that the women in my family should accept rape as a "gift from god". One side says that my neighbors belong in a tent in Cuba. One side says that vaccines cause autism/inject nanobots into your bloodstream/sterilize your testicles/poison your blood.
No thanks. We're in this mess because we keep pandering to the left side of the intelligence bell curve. We should tell these people that they are stupid and bigoted. Their caveman brains quite literally can't comprehend the basic human decency and logic that refutes their ideas about society.
You're so damn steeped in this that you aren't seeing that this isn't talking about "THE SIDES!"
This is talking about you failing to court people in the center who weren't ON a side, and causing them to go Republican.
Swing voters determine elections. But when you keep calling them Nazis, and *-phobes, and claim they are the cause of everyone's problems -- THEY are GOING to vote for the party NOT calling them those things!
You can't interact with the people who haven't decided which way to vote and go "If you don't vote for me you're a fascist piece of shit, now vote for me". That doesn't work.
Do you see how your first paragraph:
…followed immediately by your second paragraph:
…might not be super convincing?
I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything except for to stop getting off topic. And to not call everyone Nazis just because they didn't suck your dick, take the abuse, and ask for more after.
I am not talking about actual Nazis. There are plenty of those fucks in the areas I live in already. I'm talking about this black and white thinking that if someone thinks ...I dunno - something innocuous like "Spending 200k on an Anthony Fauci Museum probably isn't warranted"; and you blast off and immediately start lobbing accusations that they're secretly a Trump supporter.
OK so in case my message wasn’t clear, it was that it doesn’t make much sense to criticize how people make everything about sides, then immediately follow that with “now let me tell you why YOUR side is to blame.”
It can lead people reading to think that you are either a conservative who doesn’t want to admit it, or are a so-called “enlightened centrist.”
But honestly, it sounds like this is about your personal experiences with assholes online. And obviously yes, people should not make assumptions about your opinions and definitely not be assholes about it.
One thing to note though, is that people who are very active in political discussions may have heard certain arguments many times before. They may already consider them debunked or they may know of some bad faith origins in the argument. This does NOT excuse their behavior, but it might you help make sense of why people jump down your throat on certain issues. (Which again they should not do)
Edit to add: The underlying problem here IMO is the artificial “bundling” of ideas you get with a two-party system. It’s why I’ve always refused to register for a political party.
They have to pick a side, so you court the center, by showing them that the SIDES aren't event close to the same. Most most of the people here have no life savings, no hope for retirement, shit jobs that don't pay living expenses... You know what the Republican messaging was this election? Hatians are going to eat your pets, trans people are going to assault your daughter in the bathroom, and FEMA is going to take your house. Meanwhile Dems were pitching home buying assistance, expanding healthcare, and fortifying human rights.
Turns out, we needed to call out the lying theiving bigots for being lying theiving bigots, otherwise the dumber half of the population is willing to vote for them. Full stop. End of story.