Ignoring the overall implications of this, as a Veteran I never liked images like this. The idea we fight for your right.
Back when I was in, we all had the “are we the baddies” feeling in the back of our heads. Like why the fuck am I in Iraq? What did Iraq ever do to us? I was there during Inherent Resolve, so really most of us felt we were the bad guys.
We said your country had WMD, they didn’t, and now we’re here to solve the problems we created by killing Saddam Hussein. What does any of this have to do with defending your freedoms? To my fellow Americans, did you misplace your freedom in Iraq? What about Afghanistan? Is it in Syria or Kuwait?
There’s no atheists in the foxholes, but most of us would joke about how we can’t make it into heaven. We’d joke about, “REMEMBER WHAT YOU’RE FIGHTING FOR! MASSIVE OIL CONGLOMORATES AND LOCKHEED MARTIN! IF YOU SURVIVE, MAYBE YOU CAN WORK FOR THEM!”
Like we know we are the bad guys! We joined for college and now have to fight for imperialism to earn the right to just not go into debt if you’re lucky enough to get out with all your physical and mental faculties working.
I just want you to think of me as a guy who took a shitty, sketchy job because I was desperate when I was 18 and my recruiter fucking lied to me.
I eat ass.
You ever notice how, if you’re on the right, there’s only one name for you, you’re “Conservative / Republican / Right-wing” used interchangeably and that’s all there is to it.
But, if you’re on the left, there are countless factions and sub-factions you can belong to. You can be liberal, leftist, anarchist, progressive, then all the little subsets of each.
I guess the good thing about lacking nuance is it’s a lot easier to forge solidarity.
I mean yeah, it makes perfect sense. Broadly speaking, the core difference between the right and the left is that the right supports rigid vertical hierarchies and the left supports distributed democratic decision making. It’s the difference between “toe the line” and “speak your mind”.
It’s way easier to forge solidarity when your entire ideology is based on conforming. That’s also why the right tends to be so much more politically successful; they’ll organize behind a cause before the left can even decide how they’re going to choose a cause to organize behind, and even then it’s like herding cats.
Liberals kill leftists. Leftist don’t fight for liberals.
This is MIC propaganda copted by someone who doesn’t understand.
Since the title asks for thoughts, here’s one: That’s some needlessly divisive, black and white thinking bullshit which actively makes the world a worse place to be living in
Plus it has simply no basis in reality.
Yes I’m sure it was liberals fighting the US military on blair mountain to give you the right to earn a wage in actual currency.
I think you got this from r/im14andthisisdeep
Big “I’m vegan” energy
Ha, I just worked hard writing two paragraphs, butI think you kind of nailed it here.
I love Lemmy because I can never predict what the prevailing sentiment in the comment section will be lol. One thread over there’ll be a brigade of .ml users decreeing Piker as the savior and affirming this meme 100%.
Where the electorate is at dictates everything.
If you can’t persuade the electorate to move, then you must reach them where they’re at.
And if they’re conservative, then you have to slice off enough conservatism to get their vote but still be a liter version of the worse alternative.
The leftists (the most effective ones being SocDems and DemSocs) tend to be the persuaders, possibly helping to move the Overton Window left; the center-right liberals tend to be the compromise when persuasion check fails — an uphill battle these days given the megaphones of billions of dollars of misinformation from foreign and domestic sources.
Noticed this on reddit oh so many years ago. The first couple of posts drive the discussion. I even fucked around experimenting with that. If I got the first word in, that predicted the path of opinion. It’s truly scary how easily we’re manipulated.
I make a lot of contrary comments. Not to be disagreeable just because, and not to cause problems, I just say what I mean regardless of prevailing opinions. It’s bizarre to make the same exact statement in two threads and get excoriated on one and lauded on the other.
Oh for sure. And in these days of sophisticated bot-farms and keyword-triggered brigades, it’s made all the more volatile.
I have no idea what this means
Americans always use common political terms very incorrectly. Left isn’t actually left and “liberal” is just a slur used by everyone over the political spectrum. Would have to guess.
For the rest of the world, the image makes nonsense though.
Neoliberalism
The Liberals in Australia are the right wing party. Hope this helps ☺️
Sure, I guess. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Well-being for everyone, so that we don’t have to fucking worry eventually?
Many idealists enjoy the passive role of being a noble martyr(less work), but leftists make plenty of terrible decisions, not the least being spending so much time and effort trying to prove they’re differenti from people with the exact same ideology and principles as themselves.
Liberals and leftists both make memes, and the meme makers are useless people.
Liberals and leftists both go to protests, call up their senators, and enact change in their communities, and the action-takers are useful people.
I find that these terms have become useless. Anytime you have to start a debate by defining which definitions you want to use, it probably means it’s time to move on.
lol
lmfao even
Realistically probably the other way around in America no matter how much leftists might might shitpost online. Liberal idealism is what keeps conservatives from keeping McCarthyism going 24/7/365.
And leftists pay them back by being the ones actually keeping unions and grassroots organizing alive.
Since classicly left/right (“poor vs wealthy”) and liberal/illiberal (“personal freedom vs external control”) are separate political axes my thoughts are “made by an angry person without much underpinning analysis”.
thank you for your wisdom based on a lot of “underpinning analysis” 😂
Not so simple, no
