They lose elections because people are too stupid…

That’s the whole problem. Democrats see the very understandable cynicism many people have around their vote actually mattering in our current political reality, and they conclude it’s because they’re stupid or misinformed.

The trans people asking you to not materially support someone who is harming us at scale are not your mom telling you you’re not allowed to play your video games, dude. You’re perfectly allowed to be an asshole

Per the literal first sentence of the Wikipedia page that appears as the first result when you search “liberalism”, liberalism is based on several different pillars, only one or maybe two of which could arguably be reduced down to “what if the king shouldn’t be in charge?”. The only way it would make sense to describe liberalism as just “the right to self-determination” is if the only thing you have to compare it against is like, feudalism or fascism.

It’s way more complex than that, and I say that as someone who hates tankies but also hates liberalism.

It could also be them making fun of you for having a goofy and ignorant worldview, in which case constantly swarming the comments with r/atheism style pseudo-intellectual groupthink is… a choice

Y’all really can’t help yourselves but to come into every anti-tankie post in the fediverse to call the OP stupid, huh?

Ah, we’re on to Chapter 2 of the playbook. “Tell me where you think I’m wrong so I can regurgitate Daddy Marx gospel about why it’s actually the undeniable truth.”

In case you’re actually engaging in good faith, you (MLs, collectively) do this thing where because you see everything through the scientific lens of historical materialism, you can’t really acknowledge or refute differing philosophical interpretations of historical facts beyond dismissing them as bourgeoisie propaganda. Which like, you’re right a lot of the time! Particularly when it comes to western thought and mainstream interpretations of history. But then you have situations like this, where two sociopathic world powers are fighting each other via competing interpretations of history that both just serve to keep the respective ruling people in power. And it’s like you can’t let go of the idea that the power that most represents capitalism has to be the single villain in a good vs. evil fight in every conflict it gets into. So you state facts about the west’s villainy, which are true, but then you get angry when someone questions what the U.S. being a villain has to do with the villainy of the other party–do things like imply they’re stupid or didn’t read what you said, when really they just have a more nuanced understanding of the world than you do.

Behold the tankie, who uses their big ol’ unpropagandized brain to cartwheel through a series of sociopolitical facts that sound like they’re relevant to the conversation but that if you think through for more than a few seconds, you realize are not actually saying anything