I've been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to "voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism" and "the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic" and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.
More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they're replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.
It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling -- in retrospect I'm pretty sure I could've built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that's what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) -- and the only reason I'm not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.
I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?
FR FR, to me the biggest part is how they can be anti-liberal and still act as though their arguments are in good faith.
The definition of Liberal is to advocate for human rights, equality, fairness, and justice with reform as a major vehicle to improve the lives of all.
But Tankies act like you're the bad guy for not wanting to disestablish NATO, bunch of CCP cucks the lot of them. I honestly believe that hexbear doesn't even really have very many real users, that it's just a coordinated effort to breed dissent and violence in the west to the benefit of China and their immediate allies.
Endlessly engaging and debating bad faith arguments is liberalism's greatest weakness. If you don't have the strength of conviction, you're forever going to negotiate away the foundation of your democracy.
Tip O'Neal negotiated with Reagan.
Ted Kennedy negotiated with the Bushes
Nancy Pelosi negotiated with Donald Trump
And now here we are, on the verge of another Jan 6th, debating whether we can even have another free and fair election again.
Tucker Carlson wants us to side with Russia in a war on China.
And the MSNBC response is "We should be at war with both of them!"
Insanity. But if you disagree, you're the tankie.
"Anyone who engages in good faith with an enemy is themselves an enemy" is where we're at now
But hey, give Liz Cheney and John Bolton another shot. Maybe this time it will be different.
Exhibit A, everybody