What's your "favorite" facepalm inducing take that libs regularly trot out?
What's your "favorite" facepalm inducing take that libs regularly trot out?
Mine is when a lib says that a socialist leader is filthy rich because le ebil dictator owns literally everything in the country.
Calling you a "single issue voter" when that issue is genocide.
Calling third party voters "single issue voters" when their main objection to third party voting is that they are extremely unlikely to win. "Likelihood to win" isn't an issue I care about but that seems to be the biggest issue to them. A singular issue, one might say.
Honestly that's just made me even more spiteful. Like, I don't think these crackers understand that thanks to the actions of the party they defend, and their own rabid frothing, I will never vote for another democrat again. These peckerwoods have done a bang-up job with tying the word "Democrat" to the word "Genocide" in my head.
You're being unrealistic. It's pragmatic to vote for genocide.
I think I honestly get more mad at liberals who admit it's a genocide but still vote Democrat anyways. The frothing conservatives and die-hard Zionists at least believe what they're doing is right. But the liberals and fake leftists who say "well genocide is bad, but you can't do anything to stop it. Trump will be worse!" Ignoring what little conscience they have left.
"The fact that you can criticize the government proves that we live in a democracy!" (especially funny when it happens on self-hosted fedi platforms deliberately operated in third-party jurisdictions due to censorship on Silicon Valley platforms).
I like pointing out that calling Mitch McConnell a turtle ten billion times hasn't removed him from power.
It's especially funny because they can turn around and make the "CIA excellence in journalism award" joke to refer to journalists said government killed, all without a trace of awareness
Reminds me of that joke where the CIA agent says to the KGB agent "Here in America we're free to criticize our leaders. I can call Ronald Reagan a bastard and face no state persecution." And the KGB agent says "In the USSR we can also call Ronald Reagan a bastard without state persecution."
It was worded a lot better when I saw it, but I forget the exact joke.
If it were a democracy wouldn't those criticisms be able to amount to more than nothing in terms of policy?
a socialist leader is filthy rich because le ebil dictator owns literally everything in the country.
I like to hit em with this graph when they try to suggest socialist governments are new boss same as the old boss.
Liberals will trot out decades old propaganda as gospel, not realizing that their unwavering, unshakeable belief in this dogma is precisely the reason why they are incapable of changing the system in which they live, and in which they, their friends and their families suffer.
They are fundamentally incapable of identifying the sources of their problems because of this. If you base your logical calculus on contradictory axioms, nothing will make sense as a result.
Anytime they bring up “culture” to explain why the global south struggles
Something something corruption and warlords
these people would 100% have said something racist if the conversation climate was different. using "culture" as a blanket term, and dividing the world into big cultural groups, is almost always a dogwhistle
Always press these people on what aspects of culture and within 3 replies you'll have them showing their entire ass.
It's worse with claims about how you can't trust anything out of China. What makes the Chinese less trustworthy? Tell me, honkey.
Opposing genocide is "privilege"
They hate to hear from militant trans poc who say "don't use us to justify your support of genocide!"
This one really puts me in a corner because I'm a highly paid cishet computer toucher cracker man who never suffered financial hardship or persecution, so I feel like I have no leg to stand on when a Black person or a Queer person or what have you tells me I'm a bigot for not supporting Kopmala.
so I feel like I have no leg to stand on when a Black person or a Queer person or what have you tells me I’m a bigot for not supporting Kopmala.
Ask them how it's possible to be bigoted against a slavemaster after everything we've seen cops do and believe in; then ask them why they're misleading for someone who's sent thousands of their brothers and sisters to carceral slavery.
My current favorite is their weird presidential calculus where anything you do other than voting for Kamala is a vote for Trump. In their math even 0 equals 1 because not voting is somehow also a vote for Trump
In their math even 0 equals 1 because not voting is somehow also a vote for Trump
It's because the average Amerikan still has plantation hand brainworms infesting them-- they have to be able to control your actions. As a result, everything but doing what they want is a loss-state for them; including not participating.
any rambling paranoia about russia tbh
its just stupid and im sick of it
There is a Russian propaganda in my closet
That openly-fascist people can be reasoned with to abandon fascism.
I feel like words are the only non-monetary thing that liberals truly value. They don't value action, they value discussion. And sure, in most situations, starting with diplomacy is the sane thing to do. But sometimes words aren't gonna work. Dealing with Hitler would have ended up with gunfire no matter the specifics. He wasn't gonna be talked out.
They don't seem to have any problem not using diplomacy with Russia though, even though the Russian government is now the exact kind of liberalism they were hoping to install in Russia.
It's almost like the hatred there is racially motivated, and not ideologically.
Power concedes nothing without a five-paragraph essay
The pen is mightier than the sword.
The liberal in my head gets very depressed when I'm trapped in a conversation where this is the case.
I’m a staunch pacifist and also 100% behind helping Ukraine.
Co-opting of pacifism is peak liberalism, it's such a blatant example of liberals trying to paint themselves as "peace-loving" while being imperialists and accepting none of the flak that actual pacifists receive, and even readily engaging in that flak. "Oh, but I only support defensive wars," motherfucker, it's called the "department of defense" because every fucking side in every fucking war post-Ghengis Khan always frames themselves as "defending." If you accept that you can still be a pacifist while saying war is acceptable if you believe it furthers the aim of peace, then you could be a full blown neocon and still call yourself a pacifist.
Actual pacifists may be cranks, but I have some respect for them for having actual principles that they will stand by even if it means incurring a personal cost. Liberals want to steal valor(?) for their own self-aggrandizement while believing in nothing and sacrificing nothing. And that's not even getting into, "I'm a pacifist, so I just got out of the situation and called the cops."
While we are at it you aren't a pacifist if you don't support police abolition. You aren't opposing violence if you are too cowardly to do it yourself but support the state doing it on your behalf.
Wow. That lib is an expert in cognitive dissonance.
But the business owner takes THE RISK. FUCKING WHAT RISK? The risk of having to liquidate your assets and have to work a normal job like your employees do for you? You don't get to take that kind of risk unless you already have a fuckload of money or enough that a bank thinks it can get a steady return on investment, no one is taking any risk here.
That is the risk. The risk for the worker is that we become homeless. The risk for the business owner is that they become a worker; their worst nightmare.
But the business owner takes THE RISK
I know, it's terrible, right? Shouldn't we strive for a society where individuals don't have to go through the stress of that kind of risk just to feed their families? Couldn't we socialize the risks as well as the benefits?
"Look, I'm as left as they come, but..." proceeds to deliver a take that Reagan would've thought was a little much
Cut them off and say they absolutely aren't.
it's especially funny because it happens a lot on sites w/ a public post history. like, i think
libs are largely why looking at someone's history was perceived as such a grave offense. like, you wouldn't know a leftist if there were a dozen squatting at your place, the only person you're deceiving is yourself 
"You're one of them gays aintcha? [insert resistance movement/socialist state/ect here] would kill you for that dontcha know?"
It feels like the people who say things like that are deeply queerphobic and they would be would be utterly delighted to see LGBT+ people dealt with of in such a way. I don't think they would bring it up otherwise.
“You’re one of them gays aintcha? [insert resistance movement/socialist state/ect here] would kill you for that dontcha know?”
"Settler-Amerikan crackers kill us for that way more often, next talking point?"
Mine is every variety (and there are many) of "you can't have (society improving somewhat) because that's not how things work, sweetie. This is the grown-ass adult world where (society improving somewhat) can't happen because (sophistry here)."
Where did the pics of those libs in the emoji come from? I've seen it used a lot but don't recognize the people in it.
No idea, but back where I came from, a lot of liberals looked just like that.
the guy on the left is lin manuel miranda and given the cringe he posts i imagine its taken straight from his twitter account, but idk who the other guy is
Obamas tan suit
Idk but recently my favorite is the person that is losing their shit about getting banned from c/games and for some reason tried to complain about Russia and the news mega in the same post.
WHY DOES EVERYONE CRITICIZE BIDEO BAME I COULD CARE LESS WHICH IS WHY I HAD A MELTDOWN ABOUT BIBEO BAME
Earlier today I showed my mom the Soviet animated short film Polygon. It is a stunning and dark anti-war film, and at the end of this film she said, "Someone should show this to Putin!" — and this bothered me a bit, though I didn't air my grievances out loud. There are certainly some implicit points I would agree with, that Putin is an untrustworthy bourgeois leader, that world leaders often wage wars without knowing their actual human cost, that objectively speaking Russia has invaded Ukraine; but I still felt like my mom's heart was coming from a place of really just buying into propaganda by the same Western capitalists who profiteer from making the war as long and destructive as possible, eager to further their interests in the region even if it leads to a nuclear third world war.
My mom's remark reminded me of when I was visiting relatives across the pond in occupied Anishinaabewaki a number of years ago, and one of the things we did for one of our get-together traditions was to talk about a goal we had for the next time we'd see each other. And I had said that I'd just started learning Russian, so I wanted to become proficient in that language by the next time we saw each other. And one of my relatives said something along the lines of, "Hopefully you can get to the bottom of who's meddling in our elections!" — and even being a radlib at the time I just thought that that was a really inappropriate thing to say to someone taking an interest in another language and another culture... Indeed, I recall the whole room being kind of awkwardly silent after that, so it seems the other libs were in agreement.
That relative who made the "election meddling" remark is of course still a settler who is reinforcing and benefiting from an illegal occupation of the country in which she resides, a country which isn't even given the dignity of dotted lines on a world map. And when she concerns herself so much with elections that are fundamentally illegitimate, I don't have much hope for her to suddenly "become based". My mother on the other hand, she grew up in that settler-colony but has now spent half her life outside of it, and she's been very supportive of me being a communist and she has accepted or unlearned many things about the world, and even said that she treats me as an authority on politics to some extent; however, there's still so many things that she hasn't unlearned — and given that we live in the imperial core, and given her own background, that she might never unlearn. And that disappoints me to think about, because I generally do have a lot of respect for her and wish her only the best.
...So yeah, I guess "dae ebil Putler" is going to be my "favorite" facepalm-inducing take that libs regularly trot out. Even left-wing groups in my country with large Marxist and/or anarchist factions will do this tailist bullshit about Ukraine, that leaves me wondering how much I have to actually put up with their nonsense to get anything done.
The "evil Putler" narrative, combined with Israel's insanely brazen behavior, has made me give up hope that Western society has any chance of improving.
I'm sorry, but if you can't draw the connection that the very same countries who demonstrably, enthusiastically support an ongoing genocide, and are actively spreading lies about it MIGHT NOT have told you the truth about the Ukraine war, then there simply is no hope for you.
Call me an optimist, but I do think that Europeans can and will be better — because before one can develop a thorough and principled opposition to imperialism, one will necessarily have a superficial and unprincipled opposition first, just from seeing things that don't make sense. Right now I think we are in that phase, increasingly, because the rhetoric about and widespread solidarity with Palestine that we see in the public today is unprecedented, right?
I think belief is also often a very social thing: though people often pride themselves on "being rational", in reality people often will not accept an idea until it reaches a certain threshold of popularity that "proves" it should be taken seriously, or otherwise people will not accept an idea unless it comes from someone specific that they see as trustworthy. So the more people with a low threshold are convinced, the easier it becomes to convince those with a medium threshold, then finally the high threshold — so like basically all things, a society's Overton window is like a chemical reaction, right? People buy bourgeois narratives because everyone around them does and says that bourgeois media is trustworthy, and bourgeois media itself says that it is trustworthy, and so this has become a self-reinforcing cycle that regulates which ideas are open to discussion. But ultimately it is inevitable and in Europe's interests that Europe will align itself with Russia rather than with the USA, and it is equally inevitable and in Europeans' interests to realize this; so the question is more when people in Europe will start to realize this rather than if — what will it take to break this self-reinforcing cycle, and will the satisfaction of "Told you so!" outweigh the frustration of "You only got that now?!"
Craig Murray has an essay where he apologizes for being wrong on Ukraine for just this reason.
The genocide in Gaza – or more precisely the major NATO powers’ active and practical support for the genocide in Gaza – has forced me to re-evaluate my views on Ukraine in a manner more sympathetic to the Russian narrative.
In particular, I was complacent in my dismissive attitude to the argument that the Western powers would back ethnic cleansing and massacre in the Donbass, by forces including some motivated by Nazi ideology. The same powers who are funding and arming Ukraine are funding and arming a genocide by racial supremacist Israeli forces in Gaza. It is beyond argument that my belief in some kind of inherent decency in the Western political Establishment was naive.
I apologise.
. . .
The suppression of the Russian language, of Russian Orthodox religion and of the main pro-Russian opposition political party in Ukraine are simple facts. These I have always acknowledged: until I saw the positive enthusiasm of leaders of the Western states for massacre in Gaza, I was not convinced they could not have been addressed by diplomacy and negotiation. I now have to reassess that view in the light of new information, and I now think Putin was justified in the invasion.
Is it available online? I googled "Polygon Soviet movie" and got a Red Scare propaganda film.
Bizarre that it didn't show up for you. I googled it and got the correct result right away.
Earlier today I showed my mom the Soviet animated short film Polygon. It is a stunning and dark anti-war film, and at the end of this film she said, "Someone should show this to Putin!"
lol, that film couldn't be more obviously aimed at the West, one of the main war profiteer vultures even says something like ”If we had something like this in our colonies, we could've kept them” IIRC.
(of course, a sufficiently brainwormed lib will say something like ”Ukraine used to be colonized by Russia”)
"I'm not against immigrants, I'm against ILLEGAL immigrants."
"Okay, I would make ALL IMMIGRATION LEGAL. No more illegal immigrants ever again. Problem solved, right?"
Backpedaling should be an Olympic sport.
Your answer made me think of this dweeb.
"the system just needs some better rules!"
Rules-reformism is the final stage of liberal cognitive dissonance to the horrors-of-the-empire bargaining stage in my experience.
They either recognize that these reforms are intentional structural impossibilities then logically actually move towards some form of anticapitalist thought or disengage entirely if they're privileged enough to shrug it off. I've struggled helping friends at this point make the final step. It's extremely difficult to achieve in the imperial core which can be incredibly disheartening.
Mine is a statement that takes many forms but usually boils down to the exact same mindset -- namely that the current "villain of the week" is always assumed to be the most primitive simpleton imaginable.
It's not even limited to leaders of foreign countries. Somehow, liberals are incapable of attributing any strategic ability to their enemies.
For example, they will see a corporation get into a legal fight, where it is quite clear that the corporation is morally in the wrong, and they will immediately claim the corporation is going to lose because of some supposed foolishness by the corporation.
If you ask them about their reasoning, it usually becomes clear that they are actually completely clueless about the topic. Confusing patent, copyright and trademark law is a classic in this area.
But they just can't imagine that these corporations, who regularly exploit the system to their advantage, and have highly paid teams of lawyers doing this for them, might know what they are doing, and might very well succeed.
Maybe it's because even the acknowledgement of this possibility is already interpreted as support for the villain. You can't claim that the Russians aren't losing, because if you do, you must obviously support Russia.
Liberals would rather delude themselves with boundless hubris than correctly assess the situation.
"It's complicated". But only on the things that clearly aren't.
I think mine is "socialism might work in theory but it's never worked in the real world." Like, motherfucker, tell me how infinite growth with limited resources is supposed to work in the real world. Because that's your fucking "theory". And regarding socialist theory, please enlighten me on what all you know about socialist theory, since you know it "only works in theory".
Theory.
THEORY.
GAHHHHHHH.
Most are terrified of their constituents. If there are mass protests and people pressuring constantly they will listen even if this vote was unconditional.
But this is why they work so hard to keep us just poor enough we can't afford to revolt but not so poor that we have nothing left to lose.
Like I said ineffective but not impossible.