I’m in my 40s and I honestly still don’t understand the appeal of the GOP to the average American. I have never seen them put forth a policy that does not seem to be shitting on one group or another. What has the GOP done in the last 40 years to make the average citizens life better?
That's the interesting thing they don't. They typically do the best they can to make lives worse for their constituents and they'll be happy about it as long as the "others" are getting fucked over more than they are.
That they hate some of all the other people the consevative voters hate, and they are happy to starve if the group they hate starve too.
It is a stupid premise I know, but you can see posts about evil things the gop does, and somehow "centrists" find a way to blame the democrats for that.
I think that is actually true. The average poor republican doesn't want to be wealthy, if that would mean that would also become more wealthy or have more rights. This also applies to other political subjects. I mean a poor republican who works a terribly paying job with no worker rights or healthcare would actively vote against politicians who say they'd want to change that situation, just to make sure that underage girls that got raped are forced to give birth to their unwanted childs they then can't provide for.
Its partly like that but its MORE so that they are utterly convinced that all thier troubles including that they are poor is some other groups fault, and even when they do have doubts they are unable to express them without fear of losing thier status in thier in-group. So they will keep on voting against thier own interests and blaming the wrong people for the results.
Yes we need the society to look like Hercule Poirot's England where you had to wait for your uncle to die, or help them on the way, to get some inheritance.
That study states that brain damage can cause more conservative views, but the reverse isn't true. Not everyone with conservative views has brain damage.
One of the defining traits of the left is empathy.
One of the defining traits of humanity is empathy.
If you're not left you're less than. I said it. I stand by it.
Humans are really good at empathizing. But we are also really good at delineating between in and out groups. It was crucial to protect your tribe over every other human. We now have a massive problem of entire countries or even the world being the "in-group" since we have enough resources for everyone to survive.
But those people wanting power are really good at exploiting that group mentality to cause groups to form in people's minds. Then they use that delineation to withdrawn empathy from those new out groups. And when those delineations aren't coherent among actual groups, it causes a lot of divisions that can be exploited.
as somewhat of a 'commie' yea kinda, but again its crazy that someone who toils away at work for the better part of his life and earns a salary for his contribution to society will sometimes have to be hungry or homeless. on average you do all that and are at least always struggling for money come on.
considering we have smartphones, rockets and AI, at this point im surprised some people are not considering alternatives.
Pretty sure the general attitude toward .world is that the users tend to be liberals, especially those who came from Reddit during the API fiasco. Generally people who mean well but probably haven't engaged with the Linux, FOSS, Privacy, Anarchist, Socialist, or Communist communities before coming to Lemmy.
.ml itself is generally more leftist, a common misconception is that there are only Marxist-Leninists on .ml, when there are tons of Anarchists and Socialists as well, just much fewer liberals.
Where Hexbear is a big-tent "dirt bag left" server, and lemmygrad is an explicitly Marxist-Leninist-Maoist server, .ml is actually just focused on FOSS and privacy, and as such tends to attract more leftists than .world.
An example of the differences between .world and .ml I have noticed are on the recent death sentence for the KyoAni mass murderer posts. On the .world version, most seemed celebratory of the death sentence, while on .ml most were deeply saddened by the event but held the belief that the death penalty is wrong fundamentally, and that instead it should've been life in prison.
Do you think the Means of Production should be owned collectively, or individually? Do you agree with horizontal power structures being dominant, or do you believe more in centralization?
There's a ton more to it, but those 2 questions pretty clearly give you a direction.
Yeah I think Republicans and centrist Democrats are involved in a massive gaslighting campaign against the American citizens. ie: the overton window, aka shifting what's thought of as acceptable towards corporate donors requirements. Empathy is what makes us human.
There's also the fact that it originated as an expression meaning "doing something impossible" since pulling on your own bootstraps would PREVENT you from getting up.
Well, if you want to abolish currency, inheritance, and all personal property you may be far left. Otherwise you may just be a compassionate for the poor.
Why is the proposed solution always to just pay people more and not just make things cost less? The only reason I can find is that making things cost less doesn't provide a scapegoat for everybody to rally behind, even though it would be more effective.
Money is a means of determining the distribution of resources. It doesn't matter if stuff costs less or if people make more money, what matters is that nessecities, at a minimum, are more equitably distributed. You can make that end goal take different forms. Money is a little awkward for that end because you use money to purchase both food and nice cars.
I think the down-votes illustrates my point exactly.
I'm pro expression of freedom, full bodily automony (my body, my choice), anti censorship, reign in corporate power, higher top marginal tax, ending foreign wars (inc Ukraine), diplomacy with every government (inc the ones labeled terrorists. Remember; Nelson Mandela was also labeled a terrorist), tax included high education, tax included healthcare, more money to public transport.
Well thats some of it, and most of the first points are traditional left-wing issues, but in todays society, you get "right-wing" label immediately.
I used to be that guy the first 28 years of my life. Then I realized many so called socialist gvt are backed up by the biggest monopolies, which in turn grow freely thanks to socialist unbalanced rules of competitiveness.
It's cool to think socialist. It's not cool to feed the monopoly.