It's maddening to watch all of the progress made around the world getting pushed back for no good reason aside from making a minority of the population uncomfortable—with their beliefs being based on lies and misinformation.
People have been saying the "last so and so" or the death roll, or the movement is dying out by attrition. I just wish I had your optimism. I mean I did, but as I grew (in 40s now), I noticed that the numbers don't matter when you have power and a plan. Just keep your opposition from organizing properly by controlling the message and manufacturing outrage for the supporters to talk about instead of actually problems. The media sells their story to make money and also distract from the real problems (their owners).
Did the average person hear about the Senate hearings during covid? The oil execs that stated their board of directors only care about making record breaking profits during the pandemc, instead of trying to alleviate the burden on the general population. They probably wanted a yacht for their yacht. Can't let a good opportunity to make money go to waste. It's actually against the CEOs fiduciary obligation to the board to not make as much money as possible. Even if they have to factor in payouts for a faulty product that kills someone the life cost doesn't matter, legal, the only obligation is fiduciary.
Sure we have the "numbers," but the numbers don't matter too much when the system is set up to be run by a smaller group of people that just have to keep others out and confuse the majority by making news harder to shift through.
The thing is, they are only uncomfortable with it because some fascist politician is telling them to be uncomfortable with it. I am a same-sex married person with children. When people are face-to-face with a regular person like myself who happens to be married to someone of the same gender and has kids, most people actually have very little problem with it. But then some politician feeds them lies, lies that are then propagated on Facebook or Twitter, and suddenly they have an issue with the concept.
What is happening in Italy terrifies me. It's terrifying because it is the same slippery slope Russia went down and the same slippery slope we're heading down in the USA. We're watching it happen in real time with kids who are transgender. The GOP is not stopping there. They have already shown they are a full-on fascists. They will not stop until the USA is their authoritarian utopia.
This is EXACTLY my biggest worry and frustration. We are seeing a large group of people who think the way they are told to think and believe what they are told to believe. Unquestioningly.
These people cannot be reasoned with or educated when it comes to the subjects in question...
... except at the same time they're completely different when talking to individuals from the targeted groups face to face. I see it every day. For instance railing about something LGBTQ+ related from Faux Newz then greeting a friend and his husband 15 minutes later.
It's mind boggling: not just the behavior but the number of people who are so gullible.
Since the progressives and people who want redistribution of wealth, more regulation and bureaucracy, and for the state to take care of them are highly intersecting groups - I'd say they have made their bed and have to lie in it now.
It took just a little nudge, it seems, to make governments sufficiently insensitive and powerful again to start taking the rights one may consider secure, because it's other people being forced, not you, right?..
Sad but not surprised.
Still scary to see that it's Italy, not, you know, Hungary or Poland or at least Austria.
Love seeing the sheep who think that "progressives" are the problem will happily elect the assholes that expand government reach, take more of the peoples' money while simping for the rich, and work to screw the people the most in any other ways they can imagine.
People like you are the problem. It's just ridiculously easy to convince you simpletons it's not. Run on and piss off.
will happily elect the assholes that expand government reach
I won't. However I'm in a country where election doesn't decide anything anymore (and if it did, the last time was a few months after I was born), military force will at some point of decay.
Love seeing the sheep
It's peculiar to see a whole crowd of people illiterate in economics calling everybody outside their group "sheep".
take more of the peoples’ money
Progressives are usually friendlier to the idea of raising taxes. Which is taking people's money. No, it's not different.
It’s just ridiculously easy to convince you simpletons it’s not.
But it's people like you doing the same thing in every generation and acting surprised when it turns out that for any big corporation (including the goverment) they are bugs.
Run on and piss off.
OK, now that's my grave mistake, I really didn't want to piss on you, but the wind ...
I'm not engaging with a sheep that has swallowed every crumb of bullshit they've been fed.
And since you're slow with phrases, this one's hopefully more clear: Go fuck yourself. Seeing the flavor of your comments on a thread concerning women's rights, that's likely all you'll ever do anyway.
Some of us read books and have a bit longer attention span.
Now, it doesn't take any effort for me to inform you that you are to me what I am to Mozart using just a bit more text than you're used to, so I'm doing that.
Raising taxes on the people that chronically find ways to never pay taxes. Not raising taxes on regular people. Nice try framing the argument the way you think it ought to go.
Raising taxes on the people that chronically find ways to never pay taxes
You said it yourself.
Not raising taxes on regular people
Regular people range in age, income, education, districts where they live, various kinds of health, ethnic background and so on. Dunno why I wrote that.
How do you determine "regular" in the law, in simple unambiguous words?
Everyone that wants the state to have more power over people's life, property and labor is to blame. You can't give power to a position that is selected through a popularity contest.
Your blind devotion to libertarian politics has prevented you from even understanding the issue we're all discussing. We're talking about a right wing government taking children away from their parents because of their sexual orientation. Progressives didn't vote for that.
Can you be a little more succinct and explain the direct link between what progressives want and the government taking children away from their families?