PhilipTheBucket

I would rather have a large number of well-armed pissed off men with military training still in a hierarchy which I semi-control who all just got raises and credible assurances that the dictator will actually be looking after them from now on (which the US government tends not to do for them in any respect, historically). I feel like then any of them that have little questions about their new orders will face at least some level of headwinds from their colleagues.

I get that it's frustrating if your military keeps talking back to you about "illegal orders" or "but I don't want to shoot protestors" or "you deported my auntie and her US-born kids" but that problem doesn't really get easier if you start a fight with them. They're accustomed to fighting, they understand it, they'll be fine.

I feel like logically most dictators should at least understand about loyalty and how people operate (maybe better than the big bureaucratic systems they're trying to overthrow). I don't really know if that is a pattern, but I definitely do know that the most maniacal of them tend not to, which makes them extra-notable in the history books but also limits their shelf life.

It is, for some reason, classic rookie mistake #1 in the aspiring dictator's playbook. It makes perfect sense. After all, it's crucial that all the troops be loyal to me, so just get rid of any of them that I don't like. Problem solved! The rest of them won't care, and they just evaporate when we fire them, right?

I am not permitted by the community rules to respond to most of this.

All I will really say is this: I obviously know what I believe politically and why. This whole question "Is Philip a liberal to you or not?" hinges on how you define a liberal, so like I say I am asking you define the label by asking that. I am obviously not asking you to answer questions about my own politics for me. If you're not sure about any element of my politics that you would need to know in order to answer, you are free to ask, but I think I've taken quite a bit of time to try to break it down for you.

You are the one introducing the Schrodinger element into it, and that was actually precisely the point that I was making by asking you to be specific. I actually think it's pretty interesting that when talking with me, we were mostly going back and forth about facts even if I disagree with a lot of what you said (and you were sort of sensibly sticking with that you genuinely didn't know if I am a liberal), but once you're speaking to the echo chamber again you immediately revert to just backhandedly accusing me of being a "liberal" using it as a label meaning "enemy of the clique," more or less. This intense discussion about whether or not you deem it appropriate to fix the label to me (presumably with the idea that it would be horribly damaging and you're assuming I want to avoid it) is what I was talking about, too. It is how enemy labels like "communist" and "counterrevolutionary" have functioned in the past, and I don't think you are realizing exactly how you're using it when you do.

You're also misrepresenting tons of stuff that I believe or have said. I won't list the other examples even though there are a bunch and I spent (for whatever reason) a ton of time digging up old comments of mine to illustrate that you were wrong. Most are debatable in some way or another. All I will say is that it's instantly objectively verifiable that I never repeatedly claimed I wasn't a liberal, and now you said I did. You are lying so that you will get approval from your echo chamber. I have no doubt that it will work, probably you and the echo chamber will see it as a win and feel happy about the interaction. Like I said at the very beginning to other people, I would really highly recommend that you take time and reflect on why that is and what function that part of it is serving. In the meantime all the best and take care.

I absolutely have not been insisting that I'm not a liberal. You are fantasizing statements by me that I never said again. When did I say that I was not a liberal? This is probably the closest thing I said:

Okay, so you think I’m probably a liberal. Noted. ... you’re using this label in a very particular way. So I can’t even really say anything about the application of the label being right or not. By some definitions, I am. By some definitions, I’m not. My argument is that the application of the label by a big contingent on Lemmy doesn’t even really have any factual definition, it’s more just a trigger word with a pretty fluid definition which changes around as needed to attack enemies or accuse them of things. Your reaction to me saying most Democrats in government are center-right conservatives for example is super telling to me, where if we were talking about some other topic I feel like it’s likely that you would instantly agree with that.

I just noticed also that a big chunk of my whole discussion with you is violating rule 7. I think it is a pretty stupid practice to mandate that only one side of certain ideological arguments is permitted ("It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." -TJ), but sure, rule 7 I guess. I'll probably make some response in some other community at some point down the road, if you want to continue this whole sprawling debate in a different location; I feel like there is maybe some useful common ground to be had.

That’s great - good job. Like I said before, I have no interest in going through your history to examine your bonafides.

But I’ll gladly admit that your history doesn’t seem as bad as some others here, and that does provide some comfort.

Well, that's a super condescending way to phrase "Hey, you're right, all those things I was insisting to you over and over again were what you believed, they seem not to be accurate, and I apologize for having to go over and over it and not really acknowledging that I was wrong about it until you provided extensive evidence which I eventually accepted after rejecting the first few iterations of." I wasn't providing "bonafides," I was just repeatedly trying to illustrate how you were wrong in what you were repeatedly telling me about myself and my motivations. If you didn't use this strawman to represent anyone who doesn't agree with you as believing all these stupid and evil things, I wouldn't have had to do that, but you do and so here we are.

Don't get me wrong, I do appreciate that you got there in the end. In the future though I would really recommend against using your preconception of what "some others here" believe and applying it to random people you're talking to. I can pretty much guarantee you that those "others" also do not believe that genocide is basically okay as long as it's being done by Democrats. You and the people you talk to on Lemmy just all agreed with each other to each other that they do. And when you talk outside that bubble, the people outside it just don't have the patience to yell at you repeatedly and demonstrate it at enough length what they actually support and believe that you finally have to halfway backhandedly accept it.

But what I hear in this is, ‘i cater my contributions to this conversation in such a way to encourage people to vote democrat in a conversation about their complicity in genocide’

I take it back lol, you're still doing it. You did halfway get there but only halfway.

I'm telling the truth here about what I believe and what I do, and why. If I thought something else, I would do something else (instead of catering my conversation a different way). I'm being straight with people about what I believe, and why it leads to voting and looking at the world the way I do. Of course I might be right or wrong, but that's why I'm saying something when I say it, almost all the time.

Now if it was this scenario where the DNC could hear me here saying that I was planning to vote for them anyway to keep Trump out of power, that would bother me a lot, because that actually would produce this impact you're talking about which could increase the genocide in the world. That would be fucking horrifying. That would probably make me not be straight about what I believe where they could hear me (or, even better, look for an organized coalition of people to be a part of so that I could threaten them with withheld votes in a way that they would interpret and understand as pressure to be better on Palestine.) That's part of the reason I contacted my congresspeople about funding for Israel and have gone to Palestine protests -- to effectively communicate, with whatever little limited voice I have, what it is that I and a lot of other people are horrified by about it. A big part of my horror at refusing to vote for Democrats "because of Gaza" is that I think the Democratic campaign machine is far too incompetent to accurately figure out that signal, and move to the left as a result. I think they're at least as likely to move to the right to try to fix the "losing elections" problem. Fixing that sounds great, but I'm disgusted in general with this big Lemmy contingent who seem to be a lot more vocal about not voting than they are about any other strategy for fixing US support for genocide. That's a shit strategy, straight up.

you who read something into this meme to be personally aggrieved by

I wasn't aggrieved by it, I just thought it contained a logical fallacy that was worth calling out. Talking with you has abundantly demonstrated that yes, there are people here (one at least) who are suffering from that logical fallacy.

The point of protesting is to bring the issue out in the open in order to shift public opinion - that’s what actually pressures a politician to the negotiation table.

Yes, which is why I'm in favor of that. IDK, I feel like you sort of halfway absorbed and halfway failed to absorb what I was telling you about my own viewpoint on protest and effective advocacy for change, and you're still kind of stuck in this strawman model of "the enemy" who doesn't believe in protest and so you have to lecture me, or doesn't believe in criticizing Democrats and so you have to lecture me.

Honestly, like I say, a lot of people will not have this kind of patience to try to talk with you until you're able to grasp this stuff. You'll just yell at them that they're okay with genocide and being aware that they absolutely are not, they'll decide you are off your rocker and not want to interact with you. That may be your goal, you may be happier just in the echo-chamber where everyone agrees what monsters all these genocide happy "liberals" are and unable to ever really have a political conversation with anyone outside that realm, in which case mission accomplished I guess.

https://lemmy.world/search?q=biden&type=Comments&listingType=All&creatorId=9155326&page=1&sort=Old

By all means, protest against her Gaza policy, give her and any other politicians a hard time. Do whatever. God knows the Palestinians need it.

Putting pressure on her to break away from the DNC, Biden, every Republican, and everyone else in Washington that’s in love with the idea of killing Palestinians sounds like a good idea.

As a way to attempt to get Biden to understand the crushing urgency of stopping a second holocaust which is happening on earth during his time to be able to stop it, while the whole time he’s sending weapons to enable it to continue, by connecting it to his actual reelection which he cares about more than lives of people in Gaza for some fucked up reason, I thought it was pretty good. He made some “efforts” at a cease fire and I’m sure he is furious that Netanyahu is doing what he’s doing, but at the same time, he hasn’t stopped it yet, and so anything that might get him to wake up and also not for nothing send a strong message to Harris can only be a good thing, I think.

All from before the election. Usually it's connected to some kind of "and Trump is still worse" reminder, but your whole picture that I was "turning a blind eye" is simply because you're confused within this whole mental model where I am a liberal, and you're convinced that you already know what all liberals did and you don't need to learn anything about specifically what I did and said.

Actually, all of my actual engagement with people in congress on the issue was from before the election, too, because I thought there was a nonzero (even if infinitesimal) chance that it might do something. Everything has to start somewhere.

Edit: Actually, this whole thing is worth reading: https://lemmy.world/post/21463451 I posted an interview with the uncommitted co-founder, before the election, and then the top comment was someone saying "uncommitted" did more harm than good, and I somewhat disagreed with him saying I supported their right to do it. That was the context for some of the protest-supportive comments I posted above.

Like I say, I do understand why you have this view of what I believe and are repeatedly doubling down on it so, so hard in the face of me telling you different. The reason I am taking some decent amount of time to talk with you about it is because I think it is worthwhile to help you break out of this type of thinking.

it’s true that liberalism was originally conceived as a way of limiting revolutionary democracy from devolving into radical populist movements

Liberalism, when it was originally conceived, was the radical populist movement. There was no alternative to limit.

As the source you sent me pointed out, the definition has changed over time, and since then more radical alternative has emerged, which "liberalism" often opposes. That's what MLK was saying. But at the time liberalism emerged, there was aristocracy or nothing. Like I said, it seems like your whole concept of it is as a limiting factor on progressive movements (which is certainly an element in the modern day), but that's not the whole of liberalism and those progressive movements didn't even exist in the beginning form of it. Liberalism was the progressive movement.

It meant that even the American flavor of liberalism - which sought to regulate capital through democratic reform - could only conceive of that question through the lens of individual liberty, and still had no way of establishing a limit to the accumulation of individual power other than by the question: ‘could this amount of power be used to threaten the liberty of individuals?’. This meant that capital could freely accumulate without regulation, so long as it never abused that power to the detriment of individual liberty.

Which is never.

Biden isn’t a liberal because he supports worker unions - what makes him a liberal is they way in which he weighs his positions against how it does or does not threaten broader systems of individual liberty. The way he handled the rail strike in 2022 is actually a pretty good example of this - he ended up blocking that strike (and in the process undermining the long-term collective bargaining power of the rail unions), because allowing it to go through threatened the stability of the capitalist economy.

All makes perfect sense, and I actually agree with you completely on this whole part. My point was that you didn't say liberals oppose strikes once they grow to the point that they threaten even a pretty trivial amount of harm to the overall economy but support them otherwise. You said liberals oppose strikes. I think that second thing is completely wrong, and I was demonstrating it by bringing up a person who I would call a liberal (Biden) and his support for strikes as a way of making economic progress for working people.

This is what I was saying about your definition of "liberal" being shifty in a way where it can change to support whatever you're trying to argue at any given time. I can still be a liberal, even though I support pretty much all strikes including the rail strike. Why? Because I'm saying stuff you don't like, and you need to call me a liberal as a way of attacking me. Biden can be a liberal and support 95% of strikes that happened under his watch, because he needs to be a liberal because he's the enemy too. But also, liberals need to oppose strike actions, because you need to be able to criticize some particular "liberal" person by saying they would rather resolve conflicts with the working class within the political system instead of outside it, and so they oppose strikes. See? Shifty.

You’re taking issue with people involved with the uncommitted movement engendering a sense of apathy, since their protest of the democratic party necessarily involved persistently pointing out how complicit they actually were

That is precisely the opposite of what I am doing. I feel like you're so thoroughly confused by your type of label-driven thinking that I can literally show you examples of me supporting the uncommitted movement, and then you proceed to explain to me why I take issue with the uncommitted movement.

Try just reading the examples again, I think. You're expecting to see criticism so hard that you're interpreting approval for as criticism against.

I can only comment on what I hear from you, and I hadn’t even tried to assign you that label until you repeatedly asked me to.

Well, you're defending a meme which talks about "liberals." My whole point is that the category you're using is poorly defined in a particular insidious way. I think that there's a community on Lemmy which thinks that Lemmy is full of "liberals," accuses other people on Lemmy of being "liberals," and accuses them of believing certain awful things because they are "liberals." I'm trying to bring specifics to the definitions you're using, because I think they will fall apart when they need to be made concrete in reference to certain particular people, as with the strike example above.

Put another way: I am not asking you a question about myself. I am asking you a question about your definitions, using various specific referents (myself, congressional Democrats, Bernie Sanders, Biden, users on Lemmy who are accused of being liberals). You keep talking in the abstract about "liberals" and explaining how this whole thing operates. And sure, I get what you're saying. What I am saying is how some of your definitions fall apart or become contradictory once you have to apply them to specific people yes or no, and then defend the application of the label to those specific people. Which is why I think it's a bad idea to use "liberal" as a key part of your argumentative style. I get why it's attractive, because you can make compelling arguments with it and lots of people on Lemmy will agree with you, but the whole reason why it works so well for that is because the definition is shifty in a way which makes it divorced from you actually having to prove your case. And, you can try to claim things which are wildly divorced from reality by using it, which to me is a bad thing.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, this is exactly what I was talking about. "I want to influence voters" -> "You're a liberal" -> "You don't meaningfully oppose genocide, and I know that because that's liberals"

Logical fallacy speedrun IOW

My working definition of liberal is this one

Is it?

Liberalism has a close but sometimes uneasy relationship with democracy. At the center of democratic doctrine is the belief that governments derive their authority from popular election; liberalism, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with the scope of governmental activity. Liberals often have been wary of democracy, then, because of fears that it might generate a tyranny by the majority. One might briskly say, therefore, that democracy looks after majorities and liberalism after unpopular minorities.

To achieve what they took to be a more just distribution of wealth and income, liberals relied on two major strategies. First, they promoted the organization of workers into trade unions in order to improve their power to bargain with employers.

Like other political doctrines, liberalism is highly sensitive to time and circumstance. Each country’s liberalism is different, and it changes in each generation. ... In each case, however, the liberals’ inspiration was the same: a hostility to concentrations of power that threaten the freedom of individuals and prevent them from realizing their full potential, along with a willingness to reexamine and reform social institutions in the light of new needs.

It sounds like your entire conception of what "liberal" doesn't have much at all to do with this article you sent me, and is kind of centered around this one thing:

This willingness is tempered by an aversion to sudden, cataclysmic change, which is what sets off the liberal from the radical.

... and then some predictions about how it will function to enable collapse into fascism. More or less, the MLK definition of "liberal." Makes sense to me. I can kind of see the narrative you're constructing about how liberalism functions, and we could talk about that whole thing if you want. I don't think that is the academic definition of liberalism though. Basically, it sounds like you're defining liberalism as "allegiance to the government and rejection of methods of change outside of the formal government structure," and kind of nothing else beyond that. IDK, maybe I'm wrong in that, tell me. If that's your definition, then I am not one.

In addition:

“I agree we should have safer working conditions, but acting against the company risks me losing my job so I can’t support a strike”.

By this definition Biden is not a liberal, since he supported basically every strike aside from the rail strike that took place under his term. His labor secretary providing additional weight behind union actions was one of the big enablers of forward progress for the working class under his tenure.

I'd actually go further than this, into things like this and supporting the rail strike also even if it fucks up the economy, but if simply supporting strike actions makes you not a liberal, then I think a whole lot of people on Lemmy are exempted from criticism by this meme because they definitely are not liberals.

“I agree that democrats are fascist collaborators, but acting against them risks letting the fascist take the place of the fascist collaborator, so I can’t support protesting them right now”.

I mean that's a very specific example lol. But sure.

I clarified what I think about this with some things here and here for example:

Where, something like the “uncommitted” movement is at least organized in a fashion where it seems like it could produce an improvement, by putting pressure on the Democrats, so that sounds fine. Just not voting for Democrats and hoping they’ll figure it out and move to the left seems pretty much guaranteed to give us something along the lines of the catastrophe that happened. Which is why I am opposed to it.

“Uncommitted” movement? Fine. Let’s put pressure on the Democrats to be better, in a way that’s organized and has some passable chance of saving some lives. Great stuff.

(I also at some point posted some articles I think about specific strategies to make effective protest against the Democrats that would actually make them change their policies, in addition to the obvious example of "uncommitted.")

This is why I dislike having the conversation in terms of "liberal." It's going to mean that I'm going to have to spend an entire week clarifying what I believe and what I support, because you have such a strong narrative in your head that "PhilipTheBucket is a liberal -> PhilipTheBucket opposes protest movements if they might hurt Democrats' chances -> because that's how liberals are and he's a liberal and I know that." Even if I somehow managed to convince you of what I actually believe, you just perceive it as me trying to make this argument that I'm "not a liberal" or something. You'll be deeply suspicious of it, because the bit is already flipped. You have this whole thing so firmly embedded in your worldview that you will tell me I'm lying if I try to tell just what I believe. I mean, it doesn't help matters that I think something that's kind of adjacent to that ("if Trump comes to power then things will be much worse, so it's worth trying to keep him out of power"), but it's not really rocket science to be able to distinguish between those two sort-of-similar sounding things.

Of course, if your whole point is just to trash me for being "a bad liberal," then it suddenly does become really difficult to distinguish between them, and you can constantly keep swearing that I said the first one.

There were several struggle sessions about specific users, complaining that ‘all they do is post about Gaza’

Which users?

I do not think posting on Lemmy influences Democratic politicians. I do think it influences voters

Whoomp, there it is.

Which part of this were you disagreeing with?

Or do you think me saying these two true things is a gotcha about something else? Tell me.

In your opinion, are liberal democrats fascist collaborators? I’m guessing that the question probably makes you feel a little uneasy. but that’s just a guess.

I don't think most US Democratic politicians are liberals. They're clearly center-right conservatives. I would definitely describe most US Democrats in congress as fascist collaborators, yes. But then the people on Lemmy who generally get accused of being "liberals," I don't think are fascist collaborators. Would you disagree with any of that?

This is part of the problem with reasoning by labels. You get into extended wrangling about which labels apply to which people or not, or how to define the labels, or other things that aren't really connected to the reality of the situation. And also you can make weird little indirect constructions ("I know you're a liberal because you believe X" -> "Therefore I know you believe Y, because I know you're a liberal") that can further distort the reality.

I don't see how you could disagree with anything out of the first paragraph there, referencing directly the reality, although you're welcome to if you want to. But then by introducing the label of "liberal" to the equation you can say something that to you probably sounds pretty sensible which is wildly at odds with it. Right? Or you don't see it that way?

Am I a liberal?

Sure seems like the shoe fits, but if you want to make a case for yourself i’m happy to discuss it.

Okay, so you think I'm probably a liberal. Noted.

I have no idea how to "make a case" about it, since you're using this label in a very particular way. So I can't even really say anything about the application of the label being right or not. By some definitions, I am. By some definitions, I'm not. My argument is that the application of the label by a big contingent on Lemmy doesn't even really have any factual definition, it's more just a trigger word with a pretty fluid definition which changes around as needed to attack enemies or accuse them of things. Your reaction to me saying most Democrats in government are center-right conservatives for example is super telling to me, where if we were talking about some other topic I feel like it's likely that you would instantly agree with that.

I’d also point out that despite repeatedly agreeing that democrats are contributing to Israel’s genocide,

You can claim to care about genocide and also deny that democrats are defending and collaborating with the fascists committing it.

Well, that sure makes sense.

Am I a liberal?