this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2026
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Well your argument sounds like ones I’ve heard 1000x over defending elected officials like AOC whenever they do something like vote to fund Israel’s iron dome or forcibly stop a railway strike. The problem is, trading favors and votes is the kind of game that only works when you have a network of wealthy benefactors. If you think that these types of compromises are necessary, it likely means that you have some degree of blind faith in the American political system.
I am not rejecting my rare-as-fuck, popular pro-social candidate who actually works towards better outcomes over isolated actions that I don't fully agree with, we have to get out of this black-and-white mentality or we will never have someone "good enough" and that's what I am rejecting, this fucking binary attitude that both the right and left have embraced with all their heart, what's most infuriating is this attitude is artificially implanted and people like you think having a 2-dimensional perspective of politics is equivalent to having "principles."
This isn't "principles" it's performative.
You’re arguing against a caricature of the left wing critiques levied at politicians like AOC or Mamdani. You’re ignoring how those actions, which are frankly not isolated, are indicative of a very different perspective and theory of change than many on the left have. Pretending that any other theory of change is actually just black and white moralism is an incredibly bad faith way to argue. Honestly, it’s just a ridiculous perspective to have when you would be hard pressed to find similar critiques levied at electeds like say Rashida Talib.
Sure, because the critiques I see leveled at good, progressive politicians ARE in fact caricatures of actual political criticism, they're often narrow-minded and out-of-touch with the moral complexity of actual political work.
My problem isn't with the impotent criticism itself, it's the millions of people who browse lemmy and twitter and reddit and other online spaces where deeply online, impressional young self-described leftists hang out and get all their values from the majority, and if they see an attack on a leftist or progressive leader that seems effectual and aligned with progressive values, they will latch on immediately and not change their mind, because people just work that way.
I don't care what your actual criticisms are, I just want people to be aware that not all criticism is going to be good faith, and not all criticism is going to be smart. The left gets caught up in groupthink as easily as the right but hate to admit it. We're all just people, but the left is particularly good at shooting themselves in the dick because they want their representative to be perfect.