Hardkill

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Posts posted by Hardkill

  1. Posted

    45 minutes ago, Emerald said:

    Yes to the abolition of slavery AFTER the Civil War... and yes to the New Deal... as these were honored by the presidents in power as the moderate 'normal' position to hold. And time normalized them even more.

    The American Revolution was a different story though, as it was a group of radicals that eventually gained enough support from a critical mass of people who were fed up with taxation without representation. 

    And that was achieved through force and radicals winning out in battle against the moderate establishment... and not democratically through being accepted as the moderate position by those in the center. 

    The moderates of the time were loyal to the British crown. Most people in the Southern colonies during that time were British loyalists. 

    Moderates always preserve the powers that be. And moderates of that era wanted to stay under the rule of the king.

    But after the American Revolution, American independence became normalized and moderate. And now, it would be considered very extreme to want America to be back under British rule.

    But it wasn't moderate to be pro-American independence when the American Revolution was going on.

    Makes sense.

    Actually, I thought that some majority of Americans during the American Revolution were either for Independence from the British empire or were undecided/indifferent to the issue. 
     

    Also, I thought that a majority of all of Americans wanted slavery to end towards the end of the Civil War.

  2. Posted

    9 minutes ago, Emerald said:

    No one radical will ever be in power, except if that power is taken through top-down authoritarian force.

    That will never change. It will always be the case that moderates and centrists will be in power in a democracy. Radicals do not get elected.

    And if a person gets elected, they are not radical in the eyes of society.

    But what is radical and what is moderate are purely socially constructed and plastic... and public opinion can shift quickly.

    So, Nazism was moderate in Nazi Germany. 

    Likewise, that which we now consider progressive can also be considered moderate in a future era.

    The most important thing is to insist that kindness is normal and moderate... and that cruelty is radical and extreme.

    People struggle with that though... even though it's very simple to insist on. People over-complicate things in a way that normalizes needless suffering and hatred... and treats basic human decency and common sense as radical and extreme.

    So, America breaking from the British Empire became moderate during the American Revolution, the abolition of slavery and grants some basic rights to blacks became moderate during and after the Civil War, and the New Deal agenda became moderate during the Great Depression.

  3. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    1 hour ago, Emerald said:

    Manchin identifies himself as a centrist because people are uninformed and will assume him to actually be in the center in terms of his political opinions relative to the general populace.

    But he's really a center right corporatist who is nowhere near the center of public opinion. He's a Centrist based in the center position of establishment politics.

    But he's a different bird than what I'm talking about. Joe Manchin has actual viewpoints of his own, at least.

    Centrists are usually people who believe that it's always wise to take the dead-center position on every issue... as they see the center as the most moderate and sensible position by default.

    So, if one side is pro-slavery and one side is anti-slavery and those are both normalized positions within the Overton Window, someone who identifies strongly with Centrism would be pro-slavery with better conditions for slaves.

    Or in Nazi Germany, the Centrist might be someone who might advocate for work camps rather than death camps.

    Centrism in the way that most self-described Centrists think about it is that the dead-center is always the most wise position. And it's a way to phone in one's political opinions by defaulting the more normalized opinions in society... even if the most normalized options cause a lot of harm.

    So, if it's normalized and taken-for-granted in the society to see dogs as vermin and murder them and the fringe position is not to murder dogs.... then Centrists will be pro-dog-murder and will see anti-dog-murderers as crazy radicals that want to save the vermin.

    Being a Centrist is to lack a perspective of one's own.

    Yeah, I get what you’re saying and that’s what Leo said a while back. 
     

    Though no great leader or president in US history was ever truly a hard left-winger. Not even Washington, Lincoln, or FDR. Even though they were historic forward looking figures they were all relatively moderate for their time.

    Do you think that’s because those leaders governed during times when certain crises and/or certain mass movements were able to push progressive revolutionary ideas move into the center of political spectrum?

  4. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    1 hour ago, Daniel Balan said:

    @Hardkill Also what drives me crazy in politics is demagoguery and populism. Populism is in my eyes the most dangerous and deadly political position one can have. The worst being economic populism. Economic populism is what drives the deficit spending though the roof. 

    Economic populism is what ruins a nation and puts in grave danger two or three generations that will now carry the burden of gigantic public debts. 

    Economy should be treated with extreme caution and pragmatism. Being overly liberal with how you spend money from the public budget might cause the whole economy to collapse like how it happened in Greece more than a decade ago.

    Economy is the single political aspect of a country that shouldn't have a political color. Economy shouldn't be treated as progressive or libera or conservative, economy should be treated with extreme pragmatism and caution.

     

    Yeah, anything taken too far won’t work. Far left economics such as true authoritarian Socialism/Communism like in Cuba, in the old days of the Soviet Union, or during Mao’s regime in China does more way harm than good.
     

    Also, we can also pay for higher spending programs for the everyday people by taxing more of the rich and big corporations, especially during economic boom periods. 
     

    Btw, conservatives and Republicans since the late 1900s, starting with Reagan have really been the ones who have worsened the deficit and debt much more so than moderates, liberals, and Democrats have. The GOP and the Right have ballooned the deficit and debt for decades with their insane major tax cuts, the recessions they’ve caused, and the crazy amount of money they’ve spent on wars.

  5. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    57 minutes ago, Daniel Balan said:

    @Hardkill I wasn't refering to the democratic party specifically! I don't even know much about American politics, I am talking in general, with my focus generally on European politics. And all the unrest in Europe today is because of the damage done by unchecked migration and overly liberal policies from the Merkel era. 

    Also allow me to counter your narative when you say that the progressives are the ones that push for a return to the roots of the new deal era... Actually in my eyes, the centrist moderates are the ones that push for a return to the new deal paradigm. The centrist moderates like Gavin Newsom. 

    Do you know how progressive and economically populist FDR was?

    Yeah, he ran as more of a moderate when he ran and won the presidency for first time in 1932. However, he was arguably the most economically progressive and the most economically populist US president of all time! It saved our economy from the worst economic crisis ever in American history! Thanks to his entire New Deal philosophy we’ve never had another economic Depression for almost a century and our country has greatly benefitted from all kinds of social safety nets and protections for 90+% of Americans in this country.

    His fifth cousin, TR, who was president in the 1900s decade, was extremely progressive and economically populist. His Square Deal agenda saved our country from the horrific abuses and extreme economic inequality of the late 1800s Gilded age. His policies didn’t go nearly as far as FDR did. However, when he was still alive he was for so many more progressive and economic populist ideas that he wasn’t able to get done but were eventually enacted in later years during the presidencies of Taft, Wilson, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, combined presidencies of JFK and LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden.

    New Deal Democratic presidents including FDR, Truman, JFK, and LBJ were always more to the left economically than moderates like Clinton, Obama, and Newsom.

    Biden was a center-left Democratic president that was more to the left economically than Obama, who was more to left economically than Clinton was. Biden really turned out to be a New Deal 2.0 Democrat.

    Newsom has yet to prove that he can be as economically populist or as progressive as Biden was.

  6. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    1 hour ago, Daniel Balan said:

    Centrists are by far the most developed political group. 

    I'm a liberal leaning centrist and I can't phantom how backward the nationalist/right wingers are and how dangerous and downright out of their minds the leftists are. 

    The right is ignorant, selfish and corrupt for holding on for dear life to defend the status quo. However, the left is extremely dangerous! The idealism of the left, their childish understanding of politics is what leads to fascists taking power. The left is so out of touch with what the masses need, that they are dangerous. The reason I'm not further left than centre is because of how much dangerous idealism is. Idealism and pie-in-the-sky politics is what destroys democracies. 

    Leftists have a grave misunderstanding of how selfish and corrupt the average humans are! Humans are much, much less developed that the leftists might want to acknowledge! If the citizenry would be 60% at stage green, I'd be a leftist myself, but reality shows that people would rather vote a stage red authoritarian than a woman. A reality check for leftists is to realise that they are an insignificant minority that only servers as fuel for the ones that want to dismantle democracies. I have so much criticism for the left because I have high standards for them. i don't expect the right to be less backward than they are but I do expect from the left some maturity because the left is pushing for the betterment of society. But their idealism spectacularly backfires in their face because society is functioning in very barbaric ways that cannot be changed unless the development levels of the masses goes at least to Green. 

    Also the left is proposing some very bad and downright stupid policies such as: unchecked immigration, extreme climate change policies that leave many workers unemployed, excessive lgbtq and trans propaganda, race hiring quotas, gender hiring quotas, excessive and demonic bureaucracy and regulation, a movement that promotes extreme secularism, high AF taxes etc. 

    This backfires spectacularly because most of mankind cannot comprehend such policies. Their level of development is too low to even acknowledge that same sex marriage should exist. 

    On a personal level I abhor religion with all my being, I have no problem with immigrants as long as they are not violent, I have no problem with gays, I love fair and necessary bureaucracy, I love healthy regulations, I do support moderate taxation etc. 

    The thing with the leftists is that they are well ahead of the current times. Their policies will work in 200 years, but right now leftist policies can't work because of how backward the citizenry is.

    You know that virtually every progressive politician out there doesn’t support any "downright stupid policies" such as the ones you're talking about. I used to believe that when I first heard about progressivism and Bernie Sanders. 

    However, the vast majority of the left, especially today, is for bringing back the Democratic party fully to it's New Deal roots.

    Even Cenk, whom I can't really stand anymore, had just said this today on his X account:

    "Brother, you're years behind. The far left attacks me more than anyone else these days. I'm in the economically populist wing of the left. The establishment left is ruled by the donor class and the far left is too obsessed with culture wars (and so is the far right)."

  8. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    Because it must lead to corruption.

    To place anything in your mind above God is corruption.

    You still haven't understood that. You still think this is some mind of debate about personal choices and opinions. No. This is ontological. Your opinions, your care for your family is irrelevant. If you put your family first you are immediately corrupt, regardless of what happens.

    Everyone who places family as their #1 value is corrupt! Get that.

    Yeah, but I feel like placing truth above everything else is a luxury that most people can't afford to do because of what it takes to survive and thrive.

  9. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    I think it's really because Elon doesn't like how much more support the more progressive and more fair economic policies have been getting in every developed country around the world.

    That's why he turned against the Democratic party as soon he realized how much more economically left-wing it has gotten since around the mid to late 2010s coupled with his insane addiction to gaining more and more wealth, which keeps getting worse and worse.

    He probably also is deep down a racist to some extent like many well-known white Christian-born South Africans have been.

  10. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    These are all really good responses.

    @Kid A Yeah, it's messed up in a way.

    @psychedelaholic @Bjorn K Holmstrom @Basman So, it depends on what kind of centrism we're talking about. If it's just splitting both of the issues down the middle for the sake of centrism without any advanced reasoning for it, then that centrism is less evolved than healthy liberalism/progressivism/left-wing ideology. However, if it is integrative centrism involving highly sophisticated, nuanced thinking that's liberal-leaning, but in a more clear-headed and more intelligent manner involves moderate views and conservative views at times for the bigger picture of achieving effective long-term progress in a society.

    @Emerald What about centrist politicians like Manchin who aren't politically disengaged, but are trying to seem like "the adults in the room" by being in the middle?

  11. Posted

    It’s clear to me why liberals are generally more evolved than conservatives in Spiral Dynamics terms, since liberal values (pluralism, inclusion, reform, openness) usually sit later in the developmental sequence than conservative values (tradition, order, hierarchy, status-quo maintenance).

    Liberalism → “modern” (novelty, reform, inclusion, experimentation, expanding rights).

    Conservatism → “traditional” (continuity, order, inheritance, restraint, preserving norms).

    But here’s my question: Where do centrists/moderates fit in?

    On the one hand, centrism can look like a low-stage compromise—splitting the difference for safety, avoiding conflict, or defending the status quo without deeper principles (Blue/Orange shadow).

    On the other hand, integrative centrism could be seen as later-stage Yellow—not just “meeting in the middle,” but actually synthesizing liberal ends (rights, inclusion, reforms) with conservative means (stability, institutions, feedback loops, guardrails).

    So which is it?

    Are centrists more evolved than liberals because they can integrate multiple perspectives?

    Or are liberals still more evolved, since historically most major expansions of rights and progress came from liberal/left coalitions?

    Does it depend less on ideology and more on how people think (systems, trade-offs, humility, shadow awareness, implementation craft)?

    Curious to hear perspectives from those who’ve studied Spiral Dynamics more deeply. Is the “higher consciousness move” to lean progressive, to lean centrist, or to transcend both?

  12. Posted

    I agree that offline, average women date average men, and that apps skew attention. The “top 20%” thing mostly describes app attention, not offline selection. Two truths can coexist:

    Boosting your own package (health, style, social skills, purpose) helps a ton—do it for you.

    In recurring, talk-friendly scenes with warm intros, assortative matching and mere exposure kick in, and most guys do fine without being “top 10%.”

  16. Posted

    16 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    It adds up.

    Charlie has said so many racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and regressive things, with such aggressive ignorance and arrogance, that out of tens of millions of viewers, one of them is bound to have a mental illness and hold a grudge.

    What most normies do not understand is that if you have 1+ million YouTube subcribers and you speak on controversial topics, you are guaranteed to get death threats. We all get them. It's only a matter of time until one of them is acted upon. The more hateful things one says, the bigger the odds become. Every hateful or bigoted statement pissed off one extra psycho person who might decide to act out.

    Also, Charlie was directly involved in getting Trump elected. He wasn't just a pundit, he was the chief MAGA vote recruiter. His entire agenda is putting MAGA in power. Of course some unhinged viewer will want revenge for that.

    It may take just about 100K YouTube subcribers for talking about controversial topics from either the Left or the Right to get death threats and all other kinds of harassment.

    Around the time Allan and Sam Lichtman got about 100K YouTube subcribers and he predicted that Harris would win the 2024 election, Allan said at the time that he and his family were threatened in many ways by a lot of crazy right-wingers out there.

  20. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    Holy moly!

    Finally some law and order.

    If only we had that in American politics.

    That's how to preserve democracy. No slaps on the wrist for coups and insurrections.

    You know, our country should be absolutely embarrassed that a developing nation like Brazil was able to hold a fascist accountable, but America, which is still a developed nation and has had the longest-running democracy in the history of the world, can't hold a fascist accountable.

  21. Posted

    I've been contemplating on the notion that “women only want the top 20%” meme and I now find that to be really misleading. It seems to mostly describe app dynamics (photo-first, inbox floods, safety filters, status amplification). Offline, in socially dense contexts (recurring mixed-gender scenes, warm introductions, real third places), the old forces still run the show: taste diversity, multi-factor attraction, repetition, vouching, assortative matching, and satisficing.

    That’s why, historically, most men (not 100%) ended up with partners by mid-life. Also, paying for sex is a minority behavior, and even among men who’ve ever paid, most of their encounters are still unpaid.

    For premodern settings, “most men had sex by mid-life”—typically ~90%+ in many regions—while ever partnered ranged roughly ~80–95% depending on marriage system (lowest where late marriage or polygyny left more men single).

    For modern settings, like in the past, most men have had sex by mid-life (often ~90–97%), and most will have ever partnered—but the age it happens and the share who never marry vary more now by region and economy than ever before.

    Two things seem true and in tension:

    1. App markets look extremely top-heavy; lots of men feel invisible.
    2. Historically and across many countries, most men eventually have sex and many partner by mid-life (even average/below-average guys).

    How do you reconcile these? My current hypothesis: the 20% vibe is mostly platform structure (photo sorting, message overload, safety screening), while offline contexts (warm intros, repeated contact, assortative matching) broaden who gets chosen. If you disagree, what data (not anecdotes) best shows the 20% dynamic holds offline?

  23. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    Just practically, Charlie would have done 40 years of new propaganda had he lived. So it is a setback for the right. It will not be so easy for them to replace him. He was a huge leader on their side and he played a big role in winning elections for MAGA. He swung elections.

    But even so killing him was wrong. We can't kill people just for having ideology we disagree with.

     

    If that holds true, then that could be a silver lining for our society.

     

    12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    I think this is quite different. Trump was shot at but lived. So it wasn't a big deal.

    I've already seen frightening levels of radicalization and demonization of the left and Dems as evil for causing this.

    What's also crazy about this is that no known Democrat or Leftist out there had ever suggested to anyone to go out there and assault any right-winger let alone kill any of them. If anything, every actor out there aligned with the Democrats and progressives has also made it clear that violence of any kind is never the solution to any problem and that it instead plays right into the hands of conservatives, Trump, and MAGA. 

    Even today, every Democrat and Leftist out there has already made all kinds of public statements vehemently condemning the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

    So, wtf are Democrats and the left-wing supposed to do?

  24. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

    It's a huge deal. He was a major political actor. This goes way beyond just some dude getting killed. The implications are deeply ideological and national.

    I already see right-wingers going full patriot lunatic mode.

    This murder is horrific and dangerous. The great risk now is a policy overreaction—using tragedy as pretext for excessive sweeping crackdowns. The right will rally; fundraising and “law-and-order” proposals will surge. Of course, shock events are often leveraged to expand surveillance/policing beyond the narrow threat. Social media can harden identities, spread misinformation, and reward maximalist narratives.

    But “fascism spiral” isn’t inevitable. U.S. history shows even the worst assassinations didn’t collapse our system. Multiple assassinations of towering figures (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, RFK Sr.) produced turmoil and policy shifts, not regime collapse. The modal outcome has been institutional continuity with some ratcheting—serious, but short of an authoritarian break.

    Federalism, courts, divided media ecosystems, civil society, and elections create friction against rapid, durable autocratization. Attempts at overreach face litigation, street-level pushback, and electoral penalties.

    Such broad collective blame tends to alienate moderates and institutional conservatives, who become pivotal in blocking maximalist responses. Post-shock politics often re-centers once facts and prosecutions clarify responsibility.

    We should do two things at once: (1) condemn the killing and harden security narrowly around real threats, and (2) reject collective blame and resist broad limits on speech/protest. Courts, federalism, elections, and civil society make durable autocracy hard here—if leaders and citizens insist on due process, proportionality, and facts over outrage.

    Targeted hardening (event security, threat interdiction) can proceed within rule-of-law constraints, obviating the “we must curtail liberties” narrative.

    The more we generalize and catastrophize, the more we hand authoritarians their justification.

    Nevertheless, I think that this political violence that we will experience in the coming years could very well parallel that of what occurred during the late 1800s, 1910s–20s, or 1960s–early ’70s. Perhaps not even as bad as either of those periods.

  25. Posted

    29 minutes ago, Lyubov said:

    Dude, you give them and inche and they run ten miles with this. Every opposition to the Dems is already screaming at the top of their lungs they are gay brown communists overtaking this Christian nations. They’ve been saying it since Obama. Not a single innocent bystander will be affected by the messaging form this. They’ve already been told every lie under the sun by right wing fascists since 2009. 

    That’s very true. 
     

    It’s not fair or right.

    If it wasn’t for the dominance of the growing right-wing media and alternative, most of the mainstream media not fighting back right wing extremism, and the growing division in our country then the left and the Democrats wouldn’t keep losing the messaging war.