#fauxgressivism

[cardassiangoodreads]

This is apparently a hotter take than I thought but: hating on lawyers as a profession, calling them inherently dishonest etc. is politically reactionary. It discourages defendants from seeking legal counsel, puts forth the idea that it’s inherently suspicious to insist on seeing a lawyer before you answer police questioning (your constitutional right!) etc. which ultimately just benefits the state in making it easier for them to convict you. This is one of those things that “progressives” who were raised conservative often don’t realize is one of the parts of their parents’ worldview they should question more, but they should. Not only are lawyers not The Problem with “our system,” but having someone who is educated in the law whose job is to represent your interests in court — getting one regardless of your ability to pay, even! — is in fact one of the best parts of it.

[squirrelstone]

There is no third track! There is no third track, you can’t build one in time, and even if you did, people would magically be tied to that one too, or worse they’d stand on the track of their own volition and say “well this track was made for me so I’m gonna use it how I want” like y’all seem to be determined to do right now! That’s the fucking point! There’s never a perfect decision, there’s never a perfect candidate, and choosing to bitch about your options without picking one has the same impact as picking nothing! The trolley is not stopping!

[cardassiangoodreads]

There is no “anti imperialist” case for defunding USAID if you actually understand imperialism, which is what is primarily at fault for the dire poverty and lack of health infrastructure in many former colonies around the world. USAID and similar programs (in the U.S. and other imperial powers) are essentially a form of reparations.*

I am guessing some of this is rooted in reasonable critiques of like, other kinds of Western charity "voluntourism" that sweep in and help people for a few weeks or months and then leave nothing behind to keep those programs going. But that stuff is fundamentally different from what USAID and similar government aid programs do, much of which involves not just handing out vaccines and medicine but also building lasting health infrastructure in those countries. The fact that organizations like Partners in Health that are specifically devoted to building things like medical schools, state-of-the-art hospitals, and other institutions devoted to ensuring poorer countries will one day no longer require foreign aid, are strong supporters of those countries giving that aid now and opponents of the DOGE cuts, should prove that to you.

Also, how is it not "imposing your Western values" on another country if you say "you may want vaccines, but we're not going to give it to you because it looks bad and imperialist for us to do that? because it flatters my belief that America is evil?" How is that not rooted in a worldview that sees poor and sick people in other countries as not fellow human beings who want to live, but as political symbols? How is the mentality behind that not the very essence of imperialist ideology?

*update for the reading comprehension lacking: obviously I don’t mean this literally in the sense of being the reason why groups like USAID exist — of course it originated as a form of soft power, designed to improve the US’s standing abroad. But the effect of these programs as they are practiced in 2025 is reparative, for all the reasons previously stated. There’s nothing so far in the notes that disputes this (the one that seems to is contradicted by their own sources, lol, which reveal the info they’re conveniently leaving out to further their particular narrative) and plenty from people actually involved with aid that backs it up — because there just isn’t any coherent anti imperialism that is okay with millions of people in imperialized countries dying of preventable diseases. You don’t actually care about them if you think they are that disposable. No amount of buzzwords can bring them back.

[cardassiangoodreads]

Honestly, the history of the Republican Party since at least the Tea Party era proves the lie to leftists who say stuff like "well if we don't withhold our vote, the Democratic Party will never move left!" In fact, Republicans have shown that it is specifically voting for their candidates faithfully in every election that allows a "radical" faction within a party to have leverage. That you can do that and also criticize candidates for not conforming to your views enough - but you only get leverage to do that by voting for the party regardless, but utilizing primaries, the media and other tactics to try to make your voice heard as much as you can within that party. I know this doesn't make "logical" sense on first blush, and isn't how other forms of political pressure (like boycotts) work, but history has proven that that is how you get leverage within a political party in the United States. And the left has done the right thing on this a lot! But when we don't get our full wishlist (or even when we do, but checked-out people online lie about it - see the myth in the 2024 election that the Dems "weren't doing anything/were the same as Republicans" on trans rights, and then after the results where Dems lost big, a few of them wrongly concluded that they should back off on trans rights!) we pull away and that sends the message that we can't be relied upon. Republicans, though, know how to play the long game and that even if they don't have their preferred person this election cycle, faithfully turning out and then reminding those politicians that they did later will, little by little, over time, result in more of their preferred candidates. This is the story of how the far-right took over the Republican Party - and the left could learn from it, if we wanted to. (Well, I want to, a lot of us want to, but we are too often drowned-out by the ideological-purity, no-knowledge-of-history-from-before-a-couple-years-ago, would-rather-critique-power-than-have-power ignoramus segment of it.)

[cardassiangoodreads]

I do get that this particular election was decided more by people actually voting for the motherfucker and not so much staying home or especially voting third party, but I do think that it's important on this specific website, where a lot of people get a lot of clout for telling members of vulnerable minorities that there's no point in them voting or that no one of any party cares about them, that we constantly shame people and make them feel bad for that. That we make no quarter for them. That we make as much of this website as unfriendly to them as possible. They're only going to learn and change their ways if we utilize social shaming, since the only reason they hold these views is they were told it was "cool." These are shallow people who are motivated entirely by social vibes and what the popular kids on this website think of them, and they should feel bad about that, about having the moral compass of a 13-year-old at ages that are far past that for most of them, but we can also weaponize that against them until they grow the fuck up. Because the ideology they spread has a body count - obviously in terms of, for instance, the hundreds of thousands of lives lost to the demise of USAID, but also often one including the specific people they push these ideas on on here.

[cardassiangoodreads]

Seeing discourse about this again (not necessarily on Tumblr which I've been less active on lately, around the Internet, but there are a few people on here who bring this up every once in a while) so just a reminder: "the candidate should fit the district" goes both ways. I see a lot of people who use this to mean "the Democrat who runs for an R+2 district probably shouldn't be a hardline progressive" and sure, but then those same people throw fits when a deep-blue urban district in New York or Boston or Austin or Portland elects a self-described socialist who has a history of criticizing Netanyahu or supporting defunding police departments and it's like... y'all, this is also a district electing someone who represents what they stand for. I get that some specific people on here who pretend to be pragmatic but at this point are just genuine centrists in terms of their own politics don't want to hear this, but progressives also deserve to have representatives who represent us. And people who are on the left are allowed to be frustrated with centrists who keep voting differently than they would vote on issues they care about, and an overly moderate candidate can be demotivating for a progressive electorate. It's fine for those voters to say "nah, let's pick someone who actually fits what we want in a representative." That's what voting is supposed to do!

Anyway, if you want to take issue with overly-extreme candidates representing parts of the country that are much swingier, the issue there is on the Republican side. There are lots of hardened MAGAts in R+singledigit suburban districts that could easily flip this year with some nudging. There's the Texas Senate race. Idk I think the idea of Ken Paxton and Ted Cruz being the two Senators for a state full of minorities, progressives and liberals of all shapes, and immigrants should be the thing that's engaging and enraging you far more than Brooklyn socialists electing other Brooklyn socialists.

[cardassiangoodreads]

I do think there's a thing we need to address about how often Trump voters / conservatives are treated as something out in the "real world" that people are avoiding, and liberals / leftists are framed as Overly Online. It's a thing a lot of people further somewhat unconsciously in a lot of left-wing political Internet spaces.

First off, this could not be less true right now. The current right wing quite literally got this way by being way too online! Even putting aside the infinite discussions about how Gamergate and 4chan created the modern alt-right. JD Vance and Elon Musk are way more out of touch with how niche their opinions actually are than your average campus activist. I mean, there literally are more people in the U.S. who agree with campus protesters about Gaza, massive numbers more, than agree with many of the things that Vance and Musk believe. And those guys are unaware of how weird they are because they spend all their time in Internet echo chambers, in Musk's case one he literally built to be that. The average Tumblr user is far more likely to be exposed regularly to political views they strongly disagree with than these people are when they log on. Second, I've talked about how political opinions are not evenly spread around the country. It is not that the U.S. is 50/50 liberals/conservatives everywhere you go. A lot of Democratic voters are concentrated in places full of other Democrats. If I did want to seek out Trump supporters to talk to, I am significantly more likely to find them online than I am by leaving my house in Baltimore. Third, and perhaps most concerning - I can't be the only one who sees echoes of "right-wing America is the Real America and the liberal areas are full of elites who are out of touch!" in this rhetoric, right? Again, I don't think people are (always) doing it intentionally, especially on Tumblr. It's an example of how deeply right-wing political narratives have seeded into people's brains that this comes up so much on left-leaning corners of the Internet.

But we must, must strenuously reject rhetoric suggesting that conservatism is more authentic, salt-of-the-earth than either liberalism or leftism. Starting with that it's deeply racist, for reasons I hope I don't have to explain. Second, because it's just not true. Third, it distracts from how left-wing policies help everyone, and conservatives can only maintain their power by lying through a massive propaganda network of TV and Internet.

[cardassiangoodreads]

"I think you just want Democrats to agree with you on abortion because of your emotional investment" I think that poll after poll and election result after election result in fact make it clear that the people who want to capitulate are the ones being "irrational" and "emotional" about this, because if you just go based on the raw data of how voters (including in red states!!! if not especially in red states!) have voiced their opinion on abortion since the fall of Roe, it's clear that the Democratic Party position is much much more popular. It was stupid enough in 2005 to think that "Democrat but anti-choice" was some magic formula to win red states, but it's downright delusional to think that in 2025. Quite literally, all of the data is against you! Saying that Democrats should not capitulate on abortion, possibly their most popular position right now with the American public, is in fact the cold hard logical position. It would be like - what's a sports metaphor that makes sense for the cis men being dismissive on this? If your team's strength is the quarterback and you resolutely, repeatedly refused to play him and instead put in a weaker QB because you just wanted the first guy to suck, I guess? But do you actually think it's a winning strategy not to use your best player? And so it follows: How are Democrats supposed to do better in places where they are unpopular without the issue that is the most popular there???

Like the sexism of "you girls are just being emotional about this" aside, it's just so stupid and shows how much people are so wedded to these reductive frameworks they got when they were first learning about politics years ago. There is literally no logical reason to say "where Democrats need to capitulate is abortion" except emotional investment in wanting that to be true. All of the logic, reason, data suggests the opposite!