I'm confused, are we talking about the US or the CCP? I'm struggling to differentiate.

The problem seems to lie with basic assumptions about 'them', in both directions - they are too stupid and too obstinate to ever change, so there's no point in trying, no benefit to be gained in reaching out. This is thoroughly dangerous nonsense.

Bar a handful of crazies, people are smarter than they're generally given credit for, and can be persuaded and cajoled into playing a better part in the system. Failure to even attempt to do so is a recipe for disaster.

Boru

(January 23, 2021 at 1:33 am)Angrboda Wrote: The radical left is still trying to push its odious ideas on "us ordinary Americans."  

What radical left? The furthest left the US has is the mild social democracy of Bernie Sanders.

And worldwide the left wing has never been less radical. Bcause yoir personal overturn window has been pushed so far to the right, you cannot see how moderate (ie chasing the right) the modern left has become.

(January 23, 2021 at 5:36 am)Nomad Wrote:

(January 23, 2021 at 1:33 am)Angrboda Wrote: The radical left is still trying to push its odious ideas on "us ordinary Americans."  

What radical left? The furthest left the US has is the mild social democracy of Bernie Sanders.

And worldwide the left wing has never been less radical.  Bcause yoir personal overturn window has been pushed so far to the right, you cannot see how moderate (ie chasing the right) the modern left has become.

And your shit smells like roses...


Got it.....

(January 23, 2021 at 1:33 am)Angrboda Wrote: Those of us on the left are waking up to the fact that the crazy isn't going to just go away now that Trump is out of the White House. Qanon is still here, and as strong as ever. White Supremacists are basking in the warmth of a new sun, even in the absence of Trump.

The thing is that "they" want to present this situation as much more serious than it really is, it is in their interest for people to see them as a bigger threat than they are. They are mostly incompetent twits in not such big numbers.

Now, of course, it doesn't mean that there is no crisis.
Everyone has their ideas of what is "that psychological crisis" deep in the society that has brought/ elected Trump. To me, it seems that "that crisis" is the religious crisis. That Christians and other religious people are aware that their arguments for God do not stand in this new religious debate that has started at the end of the 20th century. They are scared shitless and their reaction is to cling to God no matter what the means are and going deeper into fundamentalism. So no wonder that they see Trump as some Christian messiah who will bring them into the past.

Like some people blame the Internet, but if you look at documentaries, like "Jesus Camp", you can see those fundies don't need the Internet: they meet and teach children that the government is their enemy because it "took away god from the school", that they teach evolution, and similar. And many moderates don't exactly condemn them because they are equally scared and are equally clueless on what the solution for keeping god would be.

(January 23, 2021 at 1:33 am)Angrboda Wrote: So, what should we do about "them?"

More Big Brother.

Have "them" ever not been part of America?
Looks to me that "them" is a symptom, a causal effect to the "other side" leaning a little too far to the other side.
It's how societies regulate and moderate ... just like economic cycles. Each side needs top tug so they can be somewhere in the center.

It's all normal. Even revolutions are a good thing. It just tells you enough people want change.

It seems like we've already got the majority of the next generation, and of Generation X now coming into 'political power age'. We have to deliver on our promises to improve lives and accept that success at that isn't enough to win over everyone. In particular we need to restore our education system, it ought to be our goal to be a world leader in pre-college education.

As with the American church, our actions have limited impact on its decline, extremists do the heavy lifting of driving young people out to the extent that they condone cruelty and display hypocrisy. A good portion of the crazed right's children are going to be rolling their eyes at the way their parents succumbed to loony political conspiracies presented by randos on the interwebz.

But I'm an admitted optimist.

(January 23, 2021 at 4:10 am)Belacqua Wrote:

(January 23, 2021 at 1:33 am)Angrboda Wrote: So, what should we do about "them?"

We can't change other people.

We can only work on ourselves.

I never mastered the skill of lifting myself up by the ankles.

(January 23, 2021 at 9:19 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: It seems like we've already got the majority of the next generation, and of Generation X now coming into 'political power age'. We have to deliver on our promises to improve lives and accept that success at that isn't enough to win over everyone. In particular we need to restore our education system, it ought to be our goal to be a world leader in pre-college education.

As with the American church, our actions have limited impact on its decline, extremists do the heavy lifting of driving young people out to the extent that they condone cruelty and display hypocrisy. A good portion of the crazed right's children are going to be rolling their eyes at the way their parents succumbed to loony political conspiracies presented by randos on the interwebz.

But I'm an admitted optimist.

Doing that, and doing that successfully, is also reinforcement for their illness.  You're coming for their kids, and getting them.  Genociding their culture by recruiting the next generation into your own - and in a way that directly strips them of political power, no less.

I think it's a great idea, and it's working (or at least was, who knows what will happen), but I wanted to point out that it's also radicalizing them.  So it's not solving -that- problem.

Additionally, a very large amount of their propaganda wasn't brought to the mainstream by random conspiracy nutters - but by skeptics and rational youtube channels and young influencers and atheist communities. They were rolling their eyes at "the radical left" - which has come to be a euphemism in american politics for the suggestion that we be less overtly racist or that we ever have been overtly racist.