Joshe

@zazen You're far more knowledgeable on politics than I am, but the way I see it is we don't have to be super politically-knowledgeable to understand the dynamic at its root and we don't need sophisticated theories, but I'm open to being wrong. In essence, entity A and entity B must live together in the same shared reality. If one of the entities wants to implement ideas that are actually detrimental to the survival of both entities, and the entity with the bad ideas is incapable of seeing it, even in the face of evidence and reason, that is the real problem. The right consistently has worse ideas and motives, and it's not even close. The right is usually highly unreasonable in what they want. Many of them want you to carry your rape baby to term because some debunked religious belief. They want to ignore climate change because everything is in God's hands. Most of them are all for a strong man to force their way of life onto everyone else. These are much bigger problems than some left idealism. These absurd positions seem to mostly be born of truth-rejection, ignorance, and propaganda, moreso than a response to the left.

It’s the gravity of centrism. It seems that in every “centrist” take, the left is the actual root cause. Very interesting. The real problem of humanity is the problem of cowardice. These “centrists” are a pretty strange phenomenon if you think about it. There’s this different flavor of willful ignorance, defiance/iconoclasm, and stubbornness. It’s like it is the same cowardice of the right but they’re using a completely different strategy to deal with it.

Yes, absolutely disgusting. No one man should be able to run around and act like this. Doing it in one county is bad enough, but now he’s gonna go throughout the world trying to turn everyone to his way…. That’s insane. I mean, if he was spreading peace and helping people grow, I’d be all for it, but he’s spreading anger, fear, hate, grievance, and victim mentality. Worst part is he’s using unconscious humans as pawns.

You misunderstand the elements actually pushing people to the right. There are some legit problems with immigration. There’s nothing wrong with talking about those problems and seeking solutions. These problems could be dealt with in a way that is not violent, bigoted, and racist. So ask yourself, how come the problems aren’t being dealt with in that way? You’re conveniently ignoring two key aspects of the reality. 1: human nature and it’s susceptibility to propaganda and influence. 2: Trump, Musk, and their ilk have learned they can acquire enormous power by sowing division, and so they are actively stoking the flames of the culture wars for their own benefit. You have to include these two facets of reality in your overall estimation. It’s not as simple as “good, decent people are just responding naturally to a threat”. In this case, hateful sentiment has been nurtured for several years and effectively disseminated via influencers and propaganda. If you remove these aspects, the reality would be totally different.

Yeah, good point.

Charlie Kirk would force Christianity onto every man, woman, and child in this nation if given the chance. He would make freedom of religion a thing of the past. He would make anything LGBTQ illegal and would dole out harsh punishment for any offenders. He wasn’t just a guy with strong beliefs - he was on a mission to spread and even force his beliefs onto as many humans as possible, and he was working at the highest levels of government and influence to make these things and more an actual reality. Mainstream media would have you believe he was this nice, well-behaved, respectable, well-meaning young man who was just enjoying his life and having good faith conversations with people, hoping to change their minds to his way of thinking, but this is far from the reality. You have to either lack knowledge of the reality or be unconscious as hell to admire such an asshole.

I think these "passive enablers" are the ones who actually widen the Overton window the most.

Well said. Also, it's not a very accessible term. If you want to tell someone "hey, that's fascist", the vast majority of people won't have a clue wtf you're even talking about, and explaining it to them makes you look unhinged and out of touch with normal people. Probably best to just say "they're doing X".

Jesus. A top Fox host said the fix for homelessness is “involuntary lethal injection” - “just kill ’em.” The thing to understand is this isn't just one man's opinion - it's rhetoric that a good slice of the right would like, or at least can get on board with. The left calls shit like this out for what it is all the time and when things get heated, idiots pop up talking about "both sides should tone it down.". I'm all for de-escalation when things get heated, but you don't meet "kill them" halfway.

Exactly. Resisting truth out of fear.

It's not intellect they lack, but courage. Most of them are more than cognitively capable, but reflection is very risky for them, so they tend to avoid it. This is why I say cowardice is at the core. They reject things like evolution, not because they're dumb, but because they're afraid to part with their religion and other self-deceptions.

"prominent", as in key, influential and powerful figures who can actually affect change and move hundreds of thousands or millions of people. Some nutty professors are not prominent. If you were to collect the top 50 influencers and top 50 politicians for each side and analyze their messaging honestly, you would see a huge difference in terms of divisive and ideologically antagonistic rhetoric, and it wouldn't even be close. You can't take people who have very little power and are not even known by 10,000 people and compare them to the right-wing figures we're speaking of.

This should hopefully clear it up for anyone uncertain: https://x.com/Cobratate/status/1966495134029083065

And it's very common on the right:

It's possible to call out pathology in others and not use it to boost oneself. I don't think I'm better than anyone - I don't think in those terms, but certain things are healthier than others.

True. Cowardice and is at their core, which is often masked with false, arrogant certainty.

You're talking out of your ass. Mirror effect. Shapiro: "We do know this kid was of the left, we do know that". Maher: "We don't know what he is. How are you so sure he's of the left? You're sure he's not a groyper?" Shapiro: "I'm not sure he's not that". There's no distortion of reality on my part. This dude might be of the left, but we don't know that yet. To claim you do know, which is what Ben did, is the distortion.

Again, I don't care what you call it. We're dealing with a serious threat to democracy. People use the word "fascist" to label that threat, but you can use whatever word you want. Trump is selling Trump 2028 merch on his website and has mentioned running in 2028 several times. He tried to coup the US in 2020. He's gutted the government and replaced everyone with loyalists. I'd say this is cause for concern. If you think Trump doesn't want to remain in power forever, just like a fascist dictator would, you're blind. Use whatever word you want, but just make sure you acknowledge the reality.

Nice to see Shapiro's rhetoric that the killer was of the left get shut down. First he says we're sure the killer was of the left, then is forced to say he's not sure. Such a fucking hack.

All I can say is that you should try to penetrate through to the truth of the dangers the left is in a tizzy about and see that they're not only legitimate concerns, but very serious concerns. You believe the threats aren't real, but they are. I don't care what word you choose to use to call it what it is, so long as you see the reality. The word itself doesn't matter. We don't even need a precise word that describes it best, so long as we see the actual reality - you can use whatever word you want. The people calling the right "fascist", mostly see the reality for what it is, even if their wording is imprecise. There's a lot of truth to what they see.

He's not trying to figure out who could be next. He's trying to understand the political landscape by asking, is there even a left equivalent to Kirk. And he's right, there is not. Just like there's no left equivalent to Trump, Carlson, Musk, Bannon, and dozens more. This is actually very important to understand.

This is a very good, reasonable question. The answer to such a question would aid in a better understanding of the political landscape. Try answering it for yourself.

Everything he said is reasonable. His entire post is open minded and reasonably inquisitive. There's nothing wrong with it at all. Can you point out a single error or falsehood?

WTF? He has a good point.