Liberals are catalysts to catastrophe, again

www.aljazeera.com

107 comments

Kimmel is back on air, and the American liberal establishment has heaved a collective sigh of relief. Not because liberals and their Democratic Party have learned from the incident and used it as an opportunity to galvanise meaningful opposition to Trump’s authoritarian surge, but precisely the opposite – because it allows them to go back to their blissful slumber, ignore reality, cling to cognitive dissonance, denial, ahistorical wishful thinking, and the complicity that is integral to white privilege within a white supremacist order.
In fact, liberals do not even substantially disagree with the core of Trump’s policies. After all, both right-wing and liberal elites are loyal servants of empire, the latter just give it a veneer of humanitarianism.
Both support policies that sustain the oppression of poor and marginalised people: the corporatisation of healthcare and education, labour exploitation, mass incarceration, militarised policing, censorship, corruption through corporate donations, and extractivism and militarism abroad. The liberals have put their spin on all these with talk about human rights, rule of law, and diversity.
Other than the semantics of "liberal" (substitute for Centrist or Democrat to taste), this is very well conceived. These are the same people who tone police and chastise the victims of being too angry, and will through as under the bus to appeal to "the middle of the tent".
This piece is really a breath of fresh air. If Democrats were so precious about other topics as they are about their late night comedians, we would have not descended that far into fascism. And this is why they are actually complicit.
Bla bla liberals bad amirite?
- Yes, we don't think capitalists should control the world economy here, and that workers should. Liberals staunchly oppose workers, and defend capitalists "rights" to enslave the world.
  
  I'm beginning to wonder if we shouldn't have an "Improve Reading Comprehension" and/or "Critical Reading" magazine. I could certainly benefit from it.
  
  I agree with workers controlling the economy. I disagree that liberalism's goal is to enslave the world or to blindly defend capitalism. The world is complex. No financial system is perfect. We have definitely found out the hard way how capitalism ruins everything. Things have to change. They will eventually. And that change definitely won't happen by people voting for "status quo" politicians.
- Yes, you are correct.
- There's a whole lot more to it than bla bla and it's right there in the article if you want to try reading it and being honest
- yes
- I believe there's a language issue here. This article (and Lemmy in general) uses a more global definition of "Liberal" which is completely different from the meaning the word has in the US. After arriving here (Lemmy) I've learned that the meaning it has in the article is a specific political position which is distinct from "leftist" or "progressive" - it's based more on economic policy than social policy, and basically means something like "maybe slightly left of conservative capitalist" - which I now understand US Democrats pretty much are economically.
  Before learning that, this article would have made zero sense, and sounded like it was written by an ally of Trump himself
  
  To add though, even US liberals still 100% agree with their world counterparts, that capitalists should control the world, and that communists / socialists are evil people that should be hunted down.
  
  To be clear, social views, political views, and economic views all shape each other. They aren't really sliders or scales like people like to think they are.
  As for the US, it actually uses the term "liberal" correctly, the US just has thoroughly shut out the left to the point that liberal is the farthest "left" mainstream discourse is traditionally allowed to go.
  
  Good point. I guess I still have not gotten used to the meaning of that word here, and keep thinking people are somehow hating on liberal ideals like equality, etc.
  Also seeing Trump et al. hating on "libs" (meaning people who want equality and accept people of color/lgbt, etc) makes this a really nice mess.
  
  The word ‘leftist’ entered the American lexicon in the lead-up to Trump’s first term. Before that it was commonly understood as a European word meaning something similar to liberal but more extreme and more locally focused within their respective countries. Now it seems to be still in flux, finding its particular American meaning without any previous word to replace.
- It's telling you got offended by this truth lmao
  Out with all right wingers
  
  just another American-centric .worlder, not worth the effort.
  
  I'm not offended. The article is just same old bashing with no substance :D liberals are bad, more news at 9.
  They are bad because I say so. I think they believe this, and that and that also means they be bad.
  Its all just useless garbage. Could be replaced with AI slop. Might already be slop.
- Yes??
  
  Yes

107 comments