a lil bee 🐝 @ alilbee @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

I'm not sure that I agree. While I would support something like outlawing billionaires or at the very least, a tax bracket that claws back significant chunks of what they are draining from society, there are vast nuances to these issues beyond "the billionaires want it that way." When you say "everything from ... can all be rendered down", I think it's pretty important to recognize how much detail and nuance is lost in that rendering down.

Billionaires and the accumulation of wealth are just stand ins for the accumulation of power in a capitalistic society. When power is removed, it creates a vacuum. Who fills it? In the ideal, I know most of us would say "the people" but this is an insanely complex balancing beam to maintain without some group of assholes finding a new, non-capital way to extract and centralize that power.

None of this is to say that eliminating the notion of a billionaire is a bad idea. I'm with you all that the very idea of a billionaire is heinous and impossible without vast exploitation. I just do not think that issue being solved would be even close to some panacea for all of the world's problems. There would just be twists in the existing problems and fun new ones.

Define "BLM", "protests", and "success" because any combination of different variables produces a different result. Additionally, even then, there is a lot of nuance to being successful when it comes to political movements.

The protests undoubtedly brought more attention to policing and racial issues in general. They obviously didn't solve either problem. Some states passed progressive policing laws, some regressed out of spite or in reacting to the other states.

Then you also have the category of "well, it might have made an impact on this but we'll never know". For instance, does Biden win in 2020 without the Black Lives Matter protests? No idea, and nobody truly does or even can. That would be an enormous impact on many things, some of which may not even have been goals of the protests.

Well, we should be careful with that extreme also. It neglects the role that context and environment plays in our lives. It rejects the notion that societal problems have impacts on adverse behavior because it can sweep it all under the rug in the name of "personal responsibility". Again, there is no easy answer. Humanity will wrestle with this question until its dying days because it is entirely subjective. Assuming you are not actually religious, there is no objective St. Peter to tell them they're wrong. They just die and it's up to those who remain to define the ethics of what they did and left.

Here's the thing though, you're never going to get an objective measure of morality or ethics. Some will think the context you shared absolve him, either fully or in part. Hurt people hurt people, and all that. Some will say it doesn't matter, culpability lies with the individual regardless of context. Oftentimes, people even have contradictory views on this issue when applied to different people.

You're probably gonna get a lot of shit here for suggesting Pence isn't responsible for his actions defending a theocratic state, but I get what you're angling at. I don't agree, but it's valid, as long as you extend that same philosophy to others. Is the serial killer not responsible because he has a mental illness or a poor upbringing? Is Trump not responsible just because his dad was a piece of shit? Is a member of a gang responsible for a drive by shooting when he had no other opportunities to escape his situation? Is a member of Hamas responsible for their actions even when growing up in an apartheid state? To what degree are all of those examples responsible for using or not using the full breadth of their abilities to not let those circumstances make you perpetuate harm? Up to your personal worldview and ethics. It's a complex question with no easy answer, but there will be huge chunks of people who insist that the simplest answer on either extreme is true and that should be avoided imo.

Just block him? I'm not a big fan of reading a medical issue blog either, so I just blocked him and everything is fine. No offense intended to Mr Squid either, medical issues are just stressful to read about all the time.

Or, maybe it was never quite so bad as we all believed? There is no doubt that the internet and social media impacted all of our lives and routines drastically, but I think some of the impacts of social media are exaggerated by layfolk just reacting to how they feel about it. There are tons of great studies showing its impact to the mental state of children and we have to work on that, but I don't think it has entirely uprooted the childhood experience. Just my two cents.

Oh, so we're even bringing back the full cringe, fedora variant of atheism from early reddit? Cool.

I have even more personal reasons than most to hate Christianity, but this is so reductive of Christianity, black people, and the reasons why people seek out religion.

Sure, but it is almost an inevitable result of FPTP, the makeup of the Senate, etc, and not just because people don't want to deliberate. The two parties are living in completely different realities at this point and that does not set a stage for deliberation. I don't have an answer for you, and I'm not sure that anyone in America truly does right now. There is no simple answer, that is certain. We should all be very suspect of anyone who tries to sell us one.

I'm with you, it's very demoralizing. Let's not forget, there are a ton of useful things going on behind the scenes. Democrats are blocking harmful legislation where they can and you really can't overstate the importance of campaigning in an election year. We don't have the power to introduce or pass legislation, but that does not mean important things not happening. Defense is still essential, even if you don't get a bunch of shiny new things to show for it.

Honestly, it kinda makes my eyes roll too. I would never argue this stuff is effective. It's just not diverting any resources or attention away from anything important.

I disagree entirely with your middle paragraph. They cannot "bring anything to the table". That's the entire point of what I said. The minority members cannot just bring things up for vote like that. Consider the turmoil that would cause when conservatives are in the minority. Like it or no, there is not a single productive thing Democratic House members can do but posture, block, and campaign right now. It's the way our government is constructed and a natural side effect of bipartisanship dying when the conservatives decided to go fully insane.

Hey, everyone on this thread saying "do something useful". The democrats are currently the house minority. The Republicans will torpedo anything useful they propose, and have already signaled that they will do so. The dems are blocking what they can when it is proposed. This is performative, yes. That's exactly what a minority party does outside of responding to what the majority party dictates, which dems are also doing. Johnson and conservative committees decide on what is brought to the floor, so no amount of hard work magically makes good legislation happen.

While I absolutely think the latter exists, I just cannot justify assuming that every dumb opinion I see from someone I am on the same "side" with is some evil spy. Any movement with that sort of view will eat itself alive in no time. Starting to see traitors in your midst is falling into their trap just as much as the conservative who thinks that's what leftist thought is defined by.

Lol I guess it wouldn't bother me much. I'm a SocDem, which makes me fail the purity tests pretty quickly. I just want a movement with a leftist heart and a pragmatic head, so we can actually win rights instead of performing while the Titanic sinks.

Why is it that everytime someone on the left does something stupid online, it's automatically propaganda? Why can't it just be the case that there are a lot of politically and generally uneducated people that are part of the movement, which is consistent with every populist movement for all time? This has to be reckoned with and mitigated if the left ever wants to actually hold power and do something with it.

Recreational weed and abortion being on the ballot is a massive opportunity. I'm still not sure that it's truly in play, but this is about as good a chance as Dems will get for any positions or issues in that state.

I do understand your point, but I have to give the same response as what I've given those who complain about the acronym being too long or changing too frequently: there's no executive council in charge of the queer community. George Takei and Ellen aren't meeting every week to add another letter and holiday. These things just happen, for better or worse.

Just disband Hamas

Anyone who has this thought needs to take some responsibility and realize they have no business having any "ideas" about what should happen with Israel and Palestine. It's the "let's replace all the school fountains with mountain dew dispensers" of adult politics. I'm genuinely baffled that someone could say that with a straight face.

No, it doesn't. They did not ease the sanctions. They clarified what sanctions were already in place. I'm with you, stricter sanctions are needed here, but they did not remove any restrictions because that restriction was not truly in place before.

It's really disheartening to see the same uninformed, cynical outrage culture come over from the games communities on Reddit, especially when I know Lemmy is full of tech-y people who know the realities of these things.

I am not saying this because I agree with it, but because I know this is the argument the court would make, and I ask that anyone who replies keeps that in mind. The argument would be that skydiving is not a belief or standing of a recognized religion. Thus, abortion violates freedom of religion under the first amendment, but skydiving does not.

Now, that's all stupid because a doctor should have to set aside certain rights, including the ability to discriminate in any way against providing medical care as per their oath, to take the job. There are a variety of other arguments against the stance, but skydiving is not on the same level as abortion when it comes to religious rights. Maybe a Muslim doctor refusing to treat a patient suffering from gastrointestinal distress from eating pork?