Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 448: North Carolina Blues

(+) Yeah! (+)

SirChris posted...

I speak about elected officials. I know most every day Republicans don't care about those issues. In fact many don't like them but you know inflation

Elected officials go where the smokescreen is helped best. It is not a red or blue issue blue is just pretending to be on your side.

Lopen posted...

Elected officials go where the smokescreen is helped best. It is not a red or blue issue blue is just pretending to be on your side.

Nah. When it comes to 'do we want trans people to exist and be safe' blue is way more on my side than red

We don't live in a simple world. Not all politics can be viewed on one axis. Republicans play to their hateful base. Abortion rights and lgbtq+ rights are founded in racist rhetoric from the 70s. No one cared until everyone realized you couldn't openly hate blacks anymore lol

When it comes to class interest I agree with you 90% but again democrats have almost a monopoly on people who genuinely are on my side even if they are a disgustingly small minority.

GranzonEx posted...

Early 00s still had the whole 9/11 being an inside job conspiracy going. I remember X Files and 24 going strong and those had a ton of don't trust the government messaging going on.

As someone who likes 24 (but will probably never re-watch it again because it's too much a product of its time), any anti-government narratives are very pointed at a select few omega-level traitors but the government as a whole is right at least within context. S7 kinda pushes back on that but not really.

I guess S1 was a lot more jaded with certain backstories, I'll give it that.

SirChris posted...

When it comes to class interest I agree with you 90% but again democrats have almost a monopoly on people who genuinely are on my side even if they are a disgustingly small minority.

I guess to me if it's a disgustingly small minority spending a huge majority of discourse shitting on Republicans feels like it does more harm than good since you're likely screwed if the Dems win anyway.

Lopen posted...

I think you'd find most Republicans honestly don't care one way or the other and would vote for a Republican candidate that was pro human rights.

Which I realize not caring one way or the other isn't ideal but it doesn't make them an active enemy combatant. The Republican politicians are putting that forward as a smokescreen more than the base is.

But that smokescreen is made of a gas designed to ruin the lives of certain groups of people. So the smokescreen itself is still a big problem even if they are just doing it as a distraction from the things they actually care about.

https://x.com/jeremysmiles/status/1867309132778209436

Lopen posted...

I guess to me if it's a disgustingly small minority spending a huge majority of discourse shitting on Republicans feels like it does more harm than good since you're likely screwed if the Dems win anyway.

Tbf I don't see them doing that. Bernie and aoc both ripped the party to shreds lol

I don't mind if people here want to vent. We're not strategists. I talk with Republicans all the time and can have empathy for many of them. The system has failed them and many of them are genuinely just trying to survive and don't know where to turn. Some terrible people too but it's about half I would say

Over the weekend I was having a debate with one of my IRL best friends who went from Bernie to Trump. He used to be extremely socially left, and has started tilting right.

Anyway, legitimately half the shit he brought up for me to address was straight-up wrong or fake, and when Id link him to definitive proof he was like Wow, ok, I dont know where it came from.

The tl;dr version is that Republicans radicalized working class morons and were able to do it on the backs of Dems are the elites, and both parties are using it to launder ideas like trans people should be discarded for being politically inconvenient to help the working class.

I dont know where Im going with this, other than fuck this shit hole country.

I guess what I'm saying is while you're not wrong if you want actual change the way is not to villify the smoke machine.

"Hey that smoke machine is fucked up but who put it there let's break them" is more likely to actually push us towards change than trying to break the smoke machine especially now that we're seeing evidence that the blue guys have their grubby paws on it too

https://voca.ro/1iBhhh4phbWB

I didn't feel like typing have a vocaroo whenever you want an audiobook

kevwaffles posted...

https://x.com/jeremysmiles/status/1867309132778209436

To be fair, being immediately replaced when you die is one of the biggest working class things there is!

Lopen, I don't think you're giving this group nearly enough credit when it comes to being critical of the Dems. We're clearly not huge fans of them here.

Dark_Young_Link posted...

To be fair, being immediately replaced when you die is one of the biggest working class things there is!

No, it's more just universal throughout society

paperwarior posted...

Lopen, I don't think you're giving this group nearly enough credit when it comes to being critical of the Dems. We're clearly not huge fans of them here.

Ok to be fair to Lopen, RECENTLY, sure, but for the past year I've been sounding the alarm on the Dems sucking ass and was quite literally told to stop, lol.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Ok to be fair to Lopen, RECENTLY, sure, but for the past year I've been sounding the alarm on the Dems sucking ass and was quite literally told to stop, lol.

I maintain that it was not because anyone actually disagreed with you.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Ok to be fair to Lopen, RECENTLY, sure, but for the past year I've been sounding the alarm on the Dems sucking ass and was quite literally told to stop, lol.

Not because everyone likes Dems, because nobody wanted negative talk to cause someone to get talked out of voting for them over Republicans.

Go back to before the primaries and you would see plenty of criticism of Dems. It was just during the campaign that people were against it.

Lopen posted...

Side note it's funny that I was dressing this as the elite vs the peasantry before the election and was called a conspiracy theorist and now you all are coming around.

moat n bailey or whatever

But I do agree people here tunnel vision on the small stuff way too much. So domestically focused.

AriaOfBolo posted...

I love to comply in advance
https://bsky.app/profile/erininthemorning.com/post/3ld3balizbc27

Like this. The NDAA is insanely terrible every year, for much worse than trans rights. Like yeah trans rights are human rights but also human rights are human rights. As if the previous NDAAs were cool cuz they didn't hurt trans specifically. If you only care about trans issues you're not doing intersectionality correctly.

In other country's class warfare news:

Argentina finally does not have a deficit in their budget anymore and has said they're going to be at the forefront of nuclear energy, with multiple reactors to be planned for.

foolm0r0n posted...

Like this. The NDAA is insanely terrible every year, for much worse than trans rights. Like yeah trans rights are human rights but also human rights are human rights. As if the previous NDAAs were cool cuz they didn't hurt trans specifically. If you only care about trans issues you're not doing intersectionality correctly.

I think it is more like 'this is terrible but also I am being hunted for who I am and my supposed allies don't care

Hard to care about the big picture when you're being preyed upon.

Expecting actively oppressed minorities to discuss broad topics is kind of a sick joke tbh.

I am willing to bet aria doesn't like the ndaa in general given every left leaning person thinks our military budget is insane

SirChris posted...

Expecting actively oppressed minorities to discuss broad topics is kind of a sick joke tbh.

Why? They're people too. What a condescending idea lol

This is so close to the best possible outcome, that he really was just a lying charlatan like his first term. And that he won't use his power to try to do the impossible and do a ton of damage in the process.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-walks-back-prices-down_n_675af8f3e4b04606476ba6cd

foolm0r0n posted...

Why? They're people too. What a condescending idea lol

Lmao.

saying people focus on "small stuff" too much then pointing at trans people bringing attention to policies targeting our lives is abjectly stunning

IShall_Run_Amok posted...

I got some news for you, about what city Gotham is based on.

oh yeah, on this one i totally know.
but now we're starting to resemble Gotham instead of the other way around so it feels very fitting

foolm0r0n posted...

Like yeah trans rights are human rights but also human rights are human rights.

If you're thinking about it like this you've somewhat missed the point of the "trans rights are human rights" slogan, which is that it isn't a separate category from human rights like you've implied here.

But yeah I mean the US is broadly a disaster for human rights. The problem is curtailing human rights in some way is insanely popular. Basically everyone wants to do that in some form. Not sure how you make significant progress there in a broad sense, whereas there are specific and obvious pathways to small wins.

All lives matter!

:B

I mean you've kinda effectively illustrated why focusing so hard on trans rights stuff and more specifically being condescening towards people who aren't single issue in that regard doesn't win people over to your platform. People care about their bubble in general. It has nothing to do with inherent bigotry or anything as much as not being able to give bandwidth to something that to them is a first world problem because it doesn't directly affect them. So much is attributed to hate when it's actually apathy. Much like Aria can't be bothered to care about other issues when something is directly destroying her quality of living, the same is true of other people with different issues.

And when you villify people for that it just makes them dig their feet in harder.

Its not my job as a trans person to make you feel good about your apathy.

Lopen posted...

I mean you've kinda effectively illustrated why focusing so hard on trans rights stuff and more specifically being condescening towards people who aren't single issue in that regard doesn't win people over to your platform.

Doing exactly this won tons of people over to the Republicans' platform this election cycle, actually.

But that's hatred so it's obviously not held to the same standards.

While the issue of trans rights might not affect me personally, I find empathy by looking at what rights I enjoy that weren't always available in the past and picture them being taken away. It shouldn't be hard to find common ground with others, which I feel is what the saying "trans rights are human rights" means for me.

I mean I have close friends this affects so I care.

But I also have the luxury of caring because I'm not affected by any single issue enough that it consumes my voting. Which is what a lot of you don't get. Empathy is a luxury for many. The irony is that by instantly assuming people who are affected so hard by other issues that they're automatically unempathic bigots kinda shows you're not really as empathic as you think, you're just using that as a way to preach.

People who were idiots and voted Trump on economy/inflation are probably by and large extremely poor and yeah I don't judge them because they can't be bleeding hearts (I judge them for not doing research and thinking Trump winning would be good for that)

Everyone should treat trans rights as something that affects them personally because anyone can be a trans person

I say the same thing about gay rights all the time and I feel like people don't get it. We are not separate

Lopen posted...

I mean I have close friends this affects so I care.

But I also have the luxury of caring because I'm not affected by any single issue enough that it consumes my voting. Which is what a lot of you don't get. Empathy is a luxury for many. The irony is that by instantly assuming people who are affected so hard by other issues that they're automatically unempathic bigots kinda shows you're not really as empathic as you think, you're just using that as a way to preach.

People who were idiots and voted Trump on economy/inflation are probably by and large extremely poor and yeah I don't judge them because they can't be bleeding hearts (I judge them for not doing research and thinking Trump winning would be good for that)

Genuinely, I would have a lot less issue with people voting republican if, for instance, Generic Republican said "We're going to build the wall, arrest trans people, and lower inflation!" and their base said back "We don't give a shit about the first two! Focus on inflation only!" That sounds pretty excusable to me! It's not ideal but you know, maybe we can work with it!

The key here is there isn't that reponse. By and large the response is "yessss, fuck [slur]s!" So it's not apathy, it's not that empathy is a luxury they can't afford, and it's not that people care about their bubble. It's that many, many people actively DO care and consistently choose to prioritize hurting others as the issues they care the most about. You see this with tons of issues -- there are lots of anti-abortion men, anti-trans cis people, anti-immigrant citizens (frequently in places like fucking Ohio that aren't even near the border they're complaining about), etc. Empathy is a luxury but so is hatred, and these people choose to pay for the latter instead of the former over and over and over again.

Paratroopa1 posted...

Everyone should treat trans rights as something that affects them personally because anyone can be a trans person

I say the same thing about gay rights all the time and I feel like people don't get it. We are not separate

That, and also almost any anti-trans policy or law can and will affect cis people too.

Paratroopa1 posted...

Everyone should treat trans rights as something that affects them personally because anyone can be a trans person

I say the same thing about gay rights all the time and I feel like people don't get it. We are not separate

You're not wrong.

Kenri posted...

By and large the response is "yessss, fuck [slur]s!"

I don't think that's accurate

There isn't a passionate backlash against the bad stuff which would be nice but I think you're basing this idea off of videos of crazy people that go to Trump rallies rather than you know, normal people.

PerfectChaosZ posted...

Its not my job as a trans person to make you feel good about your apathy.

I will say, yes it is.

We can argue that it shouldn't be. I wouldn't even argue because it shouldn't be. But throughout history it has been shown that if you can't build up allies then you are going to have a tough time.

It is unfair and cruel, but if you don't think it is your job then you aren't living in reality. It is 1000% your job to advocate for yourself, if you want anything to change for the better. This applies to anyone facing systemic injustice. It's your job because it's your life on the line. Unfair? Absolutely. But nothing about history tells me I am wrong.

You are, of course, free to bitch about it here as we all do about the things we go through.

Also I believe we are often fooled into thinking that people are more hateful on average than they are. Lopen is correct that most just don't give a shit. It says something interesting that Biden could barely talk, Harris had barely any time to run a campaign because reasons, and the entire world was pushing hard against those in power and the dems actually did remarkably well compared to almost everyone else in power. There is some pushback against these issues, I have seen multiple polls that state that the trans issue really wasnt a winner for republicans like we think it was. It just didn't hurt enough when so many things were against dems.

I have had this discussion privately a lot with close friends about 'it isn't my job to to do this or do that.' If you're waiting for the ignorant to educate themselves you will be waiting a very, very long time. I would never claim that there aren't a lot of vile, hateful people in this country. Obviously this is inherently true. But it's not the people who switch party votes every time it seems like. It's not the people who didn't vote. These aren't zealots, they are just disaffected for the most part. We can shit talk hardcore republicans all day - as well as their leaders - I am very much here for it. However, if we want to have a meaningful discussion it can't start and end with 'well everyone hates me who voted this way'

This is just my view though, ultimately these issues only matter to me because I believe in human rights and it hurts to see them taken away from others cruelly. It's not my life, directly, on the line. Not this time anyway. They find more creative ways to kill me, like the healthcare system broadly. If I make it to 50 I'll be impressed with my will to live tbh.

At any rate I am not meaning to lecture or anything, the hardships that many in the trans community face in 2024 are horrific and beyond the pale. I just, despite knowing that, want to find a path forward even when there seems like there isn't one because accepting there isn't one feels horrific.

I can just as easily shut the fuck up and just provide empathy, but I am in a lot of queer spaces as well as very working class spaces and often I see both sides of these issues play out and do what I can to massage the apathy out of people.

Kenri posted...

If you're thinking about it like this you've somewhat missed the point of the "trans rights are human rights" slogan, which is that it isn't a separate category from human rights like you've implied here.

No, Chris and others are saying it's a separate category with higher value than basic human rights. I'm saying it's not a separate category, and it is equal to human rights as a whole, which is what "trans rights is human rights" means.

NDAA is simply not a trans specific issue, period. It attacks humanity as a whole very directly. There's no need to invoke "trans rights is human rights" at all. If that bsky poster only cares about it now because of trans issues then that sucks extremely hard. (To be clear, I wasn't talking about Aria there, just the way the bsky poster phrased it)

And this discussion makes it clear just how little liberals care about the NDAA. Something we've known for 20 years. Carry on...

SirChris posted...

But throughout history it has been shown that if you can't build up allies then you are going to have a tough time.

PerfectChaosZ posted...

Its not my job as a trans person to make you feel good about your apathy.

I feel like we have a disconnect here

but like half the topic I can't see these days so I'm probably missing context

The thing about apathy is... sometimes it's more dangerous than hate.

Yes people have their own personal battles, and yes people will prioritize certain issues over others. Some out of necessity, some out of pettiness. But I don't blame trans people for being less than delicate when their issue is "getting to exist".

The people who want trans people to not exist hate them. Absolutely so.

The people who are apathetic towards them are the ones that will scratch their heads 30 years later going "Wait, what happened to those folks again?" Assuming, of course, they aren't too busy being persecuted for being next on the list.

I prefer the hate, personally speaking. At least you know where people who hate you for existing stand. The apathetic will watch you die without blinking an eye, because we do not learn until it is too late.

Also, follow up to my reply to Paratroopa about how anyone can be LGBT+. There's a reason why I'm not open about my aroace identity irl. Fear of not being believed and/or accepted. I don't want to share it not even with the people who I'm 100% sure will be open-minded because they might out me to the wrong person without knowing it.

Foolmo you mix up the interests of a person with me believing they are completely separate.

I dont know how to make you think its important to care about other people. When people say both parties are the same and its like okay well in that case if both parties will screw us the same way this one says they will make it impossible for trans people to exist and this other one barely mentions us at all for good or ill so maybe vote for the later and people respond hmm tough choice then Im baffled and dont know where the national conversation can go from there. I stopped trying to convince folks to form a pro trans opinion and opt for a just be neutral to us at least stance and dont empower the elites that advocate for our annihilation. But apparently thats still coming on a bit too strong and a drain on the democrats who, again, are operating from a neutral position where they barely mention trans people despite what MAGA claims.

People will always be self interested when they themselves are suffering. Our system is designed to keep a majority of Americans underpaid, undereduacated, and sick.

We have to help dismantle those systems not appeal with our own self interest no matter how righteous it is.

If people wonder how Republicans are able to get away with more than Democrats, heres some food for thought:

-First, might not be any surprise that Democrats are held to a higher standard WHEN THEYRE IN OFFICE.

-Second, conservatism is just a much easier ideology to understand than either liberalism or progressivism.

-Third, as far as I can tell Harris campaigned almost entirely on Trumps previous actions in office. Easy to say in hindsight, but that is NOT how to win an election!

-Harris got more than 48% of the vote right? Considering shes a nobody candidate put up at the virtual last minute thats kinda encouraging in its own way. Also as far as I can tell she did the best job narrowing the gap among white voters out of the last three Democratic candidates.

-When would you guys say US politics was more messed up between the late 19th century and now?

Apathy can be more dangerous than hate but it's also easier to cure than hate

But if your first reaction to the apathetic is to try to paint them as some terrible people (and that's by and large what's being done by many-- you can see a ton of it in this topic alone) then you're a lot more likely to "cure" it in an undesirable way.

Ultimately the solution is going to be to focus on the issues that affect more people and make a firm pro trans stance whenever it comes up and push the narrative that way whenever possible. That does mean yes you should vote Democrat because Chris is absolutely right that they're more likely to be this person than Republicans are, but I just think the "deplorables" rhetoric that's seeping into all the circles where this is a discussion point is really crushing any hope at change any time soon.

Am I the only one who finds Trumps bigotry to be the most mundanely bad thing about him?

I mean if I tell them a hundred times that the republicans want me dead and then over years they pass laws that make life difficult for me and people like me and then they lose power and life gets a little better and then republicans go well this time when I return to power I want trans people dead even harder and I say look you remember what they did last time please dont let it happen again and the same people reply meh and thats been like a ten to fifteen years span of time its hard not to get a little upset and vilify those people. Then they say my feelings are hurt I see why they want you dead! Like?