(http://i848.photobucket.com/albums/ab46/Altyvision/487747_443618355668710_1710823571_n.jpg)
Let us, for a brief moment, consider the above picture. Let's also immediately ignore the lack of funnay, the gross over simplification of complex issues, and the epically broad brush strokes used on this tired and worn canvas.
There's something about that pic that just gets right in my brain and won't shake loose. After some consideration, it's this:
These issues, these issues that are oh so fucking critical to the self-proclaimed conservative (nevermind the inherent fallacy of a "conservative" indirectly advocating for laws that liberally apply legal measures that directly effect the right of an individual's body), these issues are motherfucking philosophies. Modern conservative ideology, all that shit that makes talk radio the success it is, and makes pics like this humorous to warped and molded neural pathways of slacktivist conservatives everywhere, places such a heavy focus on the IDEA of how we should run things. They are all concepts, floating around in space.
Flag burning BAD.
Abortions BAD.
Illegal aliens BAD. (Nevermind that outsourcing causes much more substantial harm to our economy)
It's all so much mental masturbation, and THEY get oh so butthurt about it.
Two things get ME all butthurt about this.
1. The problem with liberals, the thing that makes them such a pain in the ass to deal with, is that they are so god damned ineffective. They're wishful thinkers who can't organize to save their own god damned lives and create change for the better. They're like the Newagers of politics. Absurd, not actually effective, often spineless.
And that's still an over generalization. There are plenty of liberals who are effective in what they do. It's just by and large..
2. The thing that really makes my asshole itch: PEOPLE ARE GETTING RAPED. RIGHT NOW. Male, female, children. Oh yeah, children, ALREADY BORN CHILDREN, are starving to death, being beaten to death, and much, much worse. That shit is happening IN AMERICA, RIGHT NOW. In other countries children are made to murder other people. Elsewhere, the debate about what is and is not a life isn't so much an issue as women's genitals being mutilated. Women having no choice about who they have sex with and no access to the things that will prevent them from getting HIV. Children are blown up in their sleep to give you some disgusting false sense of security.
And you're worried about flag burning?
Fuck you. In the ass. Forever.
OR KILL ME.
fuck yea!
I love you Alty!
Yo, dude can I use some of this?
Sure, have at.
Sweet, thanks man
The main issue I have found about progressive movements and effectiveness is fracturing. You got the LGBTQ peeps, the feminists, the anti-racism, the class struggle movement, the anti capitalists and despite the fact that they all intersect and want essentially the same things, on a base level, and even within these movements there are many different ideologies that we are too busy arguing amongst ourselves to unite and face our opponents down. I listened to a podcast today about violence against women in activist groups, and the fact that it seems to get covered over or victim blaming occurs.
The spectrum ranges from those wanting to change the system from within, to those who want to affect change via revolution or armed struggle.
The issue with trying to change the system from within, is that the system changes you. The problem with violent struggle is that once those participating in this for a long time find that their struggle and it's methods change, you've been associating with violence and criminal elements so long that you cannot go back to being something other than a person who uses violence and illegality, such as ex IRA operatives that now deal in drugs. Of course there are always notable exceptions to this, but affecting change without a consensus is fucking hard work.
It's a catch 22 situation, and I'm not really sure that without making links to all the different groups fighting for something less shitty than the setup the world has now we can do anything.
Comservatives do present more of a united front. Part of their character is to conform and follow. This gives them cohesion. Most conservatives seem to agree with whatever the top conservatives are saying at any given time. Their minds dont change until theirs do. Not that liberals dont suffer from that too but dissent and disagreement as part of the liberal character prevent this from happening to everyone on that side. And perhaps thats why they think were all socialists. They think were cohesive too.
Yes. Absolutely.
This splintering is what makes me so upset with liberals. Especially queer liberals. (I don't want to talk about conservative queers now or ever). It makes me so mad when I see drag queens engaging in destructive social patterns that feed into horrible female stereotypes. I worked with one recently. A number of times a tranny would come in the store and he would invariably say:
"That's a dude," all secret like, like I didn't know.
After about three times I said, "That's like really an issue for you, you really give a damn about men dressing up like ladies, don't you? That's, you know, kinda odd, what with your saturday night's and all..."
"If you can't pull it off you shouldn't do it at all." he said.
Whereupon I immediately lost all respect for this person and took every single word out of his mouth as the sheer idiocy that it was.
RAGE.
WHY? I just don't get it. We're fighting the EXACT same fight. And you're arguing for, the ever nebulous, THEM.
:cramstipated:
You may have to put it in their language.
"The library is closed, honey. No T, no shade. Everybody say love!"
Quote from: Pixie on July 02, 2012, 05:18:21 PM
The main issue I have found about progressive movements and effectiveness is fracturing. You got the LGBTQ peeps, the feminists, the anti-racism, the class struggle movement, the anti capitalists and despite the fact that they all intersect and want essentially the same things, on a base level, and even within these movements there are many different ideologies that we are too busy arguing amongst ourselves to unite and face our opponents down. I listened to a podcast today about violence against women in activist groups, and the fact that it seems to get covered over or victim blaming occurs.
The spectrum ranges from those wanting to change the system from within, to those who want to affect change via revolution or armed struggle.
The issue with trying to change the system from within, is that the system changes you. The problem with violent struggle is that once those participating in this for a long time find that their struggle and it's methods change, you've been associating with violence and criminal elements so long that you cannot go back to being something other than a person who uses violence and illegality, such as ex IRA operatives that now deal in drugs. Of course there are always notable exceptions to this, but affecting change without a consensus is fucking hard work.
It's a catch 22 situation, and I'm not really sure that without making links to all the different groups fighting for something less shitty than the setup the world has now we can do anything.
But they're not fighting The Man™, they're largely fighting
each other.
That's precisely it. Conservatives are fighting against the people who are fighting for. The people fighting for are fighting for so many different things that efforts are spread thin. It's easy to fight the people who are fighting for, it becomes a TRE where the rhetoric easily writes itself.
Conservatives only need a fast-food quality delivery vehicle while Liberals are steeped in more of a "fine-dining" approach.
But the other structural problem progressive causes have is that there are so many causes to have to address, but there is no central locus of thought prioritizing or strategizing what to tackle first, and thus again, efforts spread thin.
The deck will always be stacked against progressiveism. Liberals could make it a little more equal by doing a better job of organizing and prioritizing.
Quote from: The Bad Reverend What's-His-Name! on July 02, 2012, 05:44:20 PM
That's precisely it. Conservatives are fighting against the people who are fighting for. The people fighting for are fighting for so many different things that efforts are spread thin. It's easy to fight the people who are fighting for, it becomes a TRE where the rhetoric easily writes itself.
Conservatives only need a fast-food quality delivery vehicle while Liberals are steeped in more of a "fine-dining" approach.
But the other structural problem progressive causes have is that there are so many causes to have to address, but there is no central locus of thought prioritizing or strategizing what to tackle first, and thus again, efforts spread thin.
The deck will always be stacked against progressiveism. Liberals could make it a little more equal by doing a better job of organizing and prioritizing.
Liberals need to stop the fucking hand-wringing and the Ain't-It-Awfuls and kick a motherfucker in the junk. There is no moral high ground in being someone's fucking DOOR MAT.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on July 02, 2012, 05:36:51 PM
But they're not fighting The Man™, they're largely fighting each other.
Precisely. They get so blinkered by their One True Cause-ism that anyone who dares perform an act of moral triage which does not accept the overwhelming importance of the One True Cause gets mobbed.
As always, the true enemy is anyone who thinks they've won the Belief Lottery. In this regard, religious extremists are rarely much different from a humanities grad making up posters and organising flashmobs on his iPad.
Quote from: Cain on July 02, 2012, 05:50:22 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on July 02, 2012, 05:36:51 PM
But they're not fighting The Man™, they're largely fighting each other.
Precisely. They get so blinkered by their One True Cause-ism that anyone who dares perform an act of moral triage which does not accept the overwhelming importance of the One True Cause gets mobbed.
As always, the true enemy is anyone who thinks they've won the Belief Lottery. In this regard, religious extremists are rarely much different from a humanities grad making up posters and organising flashmobs on his iPad.
Yep. Any glance at a "demonstration" against any particular Awful Thing will have signs for every subgroup, pimping out their particular cause at the expense of the message being conveyed by the demonstration.
This is one of three reasons why protests don't fucking work anymore.
Quote from: Cain on July 02, 2012, 05:50:22 PM
As always, the true enemy is anyone who thinks they've won the Belief Lottery.
I'm really loving this quote right now.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on July 02, 2012, 05:36:51 PM
Quote from: Pixie on July 02, 2012, 05:18:21 PM
The main issue I have found about progressive movements and effectiveness is fracturing. You got the LGBTQ peeps, the feminists, the anti-racism, the class struggle movement, the anti capitalists and despite the fact that they all intersect and want essentially the same things, on a base level, and even within these movements there are many different ideologies that we are too busy arguing amongst ourselves to unite and face our opponents down. I listened to a podcast today about violence against women in activist groups, and the fact that it seems to get covered over or victim blaming occurs.
The spectrum ranges from those wanting to change the system from within, to those who want to affect change via revolution or armed struggle.
The issue with trying to change the system from within, is that the system changes you. The problem with violent struggle is that once those participating in this for a long time find that their struggle and it's methods change, you've been associating with violence and criminal elements so long that you cannot go back to being something other than a person who uses violence and illegality, such as ex IRA operatives that now deal in drugs. Of course there are always notable exceptions to this, but affecting change without a consensus is fucking hard work.
It's a catch 22 situation, and I'm not really sure that without making links to all the different groups fighting for something less shitty than the setup the world has now we can do anything.
But they're not fighting The Man™, they're largely fighting each other.
Yes, this IS the big fucking problem. Which is why I think we have moved ever so slightly to the right since the early 80's especially in the US and the UK.
Even socialists in this country have fractured. We have the Labour Party, the Socialist Worker's Party, the Respect Party, and the UNISON Party, who used to be tied to the Labour Party, but they sold workers rights down the river when Tony Blair got elected. I was a Labour supporter in my teens, but I felt sold out by the whole New Labour rhetoric. I'm not sure how socialist the Green Party is, but they only have one MP so it's hardly even relevant, despite being the party of choice for my vote if I can do it without getting a Tory MP.
Me personally, I'm anti-racist, feminist,, pro-LGBTQ, for disability rights and want to live in a country where if you have a run of shitty luck, I won't have to starve, deal drugs or heaven fucking forbid, sell sex (I'd rather starve than hook.) When I get sick, I want some treatment. When I try to look for work, I don't want to have to LIE and say I've been off with depression rather than voices in mah head crazy because one is more socially acceptable or less stigmatised. But all these interest groups are fractured, I've had to pick my battles, so I'm involved with some feminist groups, am about to start volunteering at a youth group for seriously economically disadvantaged teens and also am the secretary for a community group that tries to promote a healthier lifestyle, both physically and mentally for the same geographical area, the state-housing estate hell hole that I grew up on.
Hell the only reason I'm involved with 2 local feminist groups is that some of the Radical Feminists are being assholes to the Trans and Genderqueer members on a point of fucking ideology. The Trans-Excluding RadFems (TERF'S) completely reject the gender binary, but they seem to have forgotten that we live in a society that actually, right here, right fucking now enforces a gender binary. So the trans and GQ friendly people have split off and formed a new group, but the original group does a lot of activism, and the splinter group has only just formed.
The community group has only just set up it's office, is having trouble with gaining and keeping volunteers, but has been set up almost a year and has no phone or internet access in the office!
Quote from: Pixie on July 02, 2012, 06:20:51 PM
Yes, this IS the big fucking problem. Which is why I think we have moved ever so slightly to the right since the early 80's especially in the US and the UK.
No, that's the reason nobody's trying to STOP the slide.
The real reason everything is going right wingnut everywhere is this: The world gets more and more complex every day. This is frightening to people. When people are frightened, they turn to The Tribe. The tribal structure is by definition conservative...So it isn't a function of intelligence, it's a function of the ratio of neophiles to neophobes, and you can't really alter that ratio.
It's funny, I actually got into a conversation about this very same poster this week. Y'all summed it up nicely but I was working on a shoop of TWO of these: This one and one by the left, making rash generalizations about the right. I was going to place them side-by-side and watch the fight.
I ran out of give a shit.