It looks like OP has upset a lot of the divisionists on lemmy by positing that liberals actually want things they agree with….
“GASP! That can’t be! Because we are supposed to hate liberals because that what we keep telling ourselves to do! How can they possibly want things that are good when we keep tellingbus they want things that are bad! Owwwww! My braaaaiiiin!”
You misspelled “progressives.” Liberals are capitalist conservative corpos and actively enable all of these problems.
Fucking THANK YOU! Liberalism and progressivism are not related. “Liberal” is a pejorative made popular by neoliberal cockroach Ronald Reagan.
LMAO.
Oh, look! It’s a long list of things conservatives hate!
Hey, how about this hot take: Pedophiles should not be a fucking head of state.
That’s a good’n right there.
Oh, so now conservatives can’t be leaders at all?! Totally unfair!
Woah, woah… That’s a bit too radical. Reel it in a few notches and we can have a grown-up discussion /s
Since the label is an issue for some, let’s call them healthy policies, and then whichever platform supports the most healthy policies, vote for them, and if they get enough majority to pass the healthy policies we all do better! This is how to advance, not swing back and forth flippantly, and ruin progress each time they go maga, and then complain about shooting self in foot, ffs.
Access to clean drinking water should be a right.
That would require an illiberal regulation of the commons to protect it from individual autonomy, and Liberals HATE the commons and love individual autonomy
I’ve seen your post history, You don’t have the authority to speak for “Liberals”
LOL. Liberal isn’t a fucking identity. It’s a political philosophy with a rich and storied history, major foundational texts, and actual meaning. The fact that you think only Liberals can talk about Liberalism is exactly the sort of brainrot that makes contemporary Liberals so fucking intolerable and unmoored from reality
trolling isn’t an identity either but man do you try :)
blocked, move along
Way to prove the point
What if I told you that words change with modern context? Perhaps instead of clinging to your Ivory Tower and poring over your historical “texts” you could pull your head out of your ass long enough to recognize that modern liberals have different values and a more distinct identity than the original label would suggest.
Isn’t it funny that I am the one taking an international and historical perspective, developing my understanding of political terms from the actual historical and contemporary movements from all parts of the political spectrum and how their own histories are present in their current formations but you are the one saying “don’t do any of that just sit in this room with these specific people at this time and define everything in terms of what we say about ourselves without any interaction with anything else” and you think I am the one with my head up my own ass. You are literally smelling your own farts in a locked room and telling me that I don’t actually understand your fart smell because I won’t lock myself in the room with you.
Liberals love to accuse “the right” of being anti-intellectual but the minute anyone actually studies politics internationally and across time and domains liberals become the anti-intellectuals.
I had an argument with a co-worker who joined the Young Democrats about the lobby part.
Both parties want lobbies, BAD. My argument is that 90% of the issues with the parties stem from bribery and lobbying. Those positions should not attract the mega-wealthy, they should not provide unchecked power to make those people and their friends mega-wealthy. Those positions should pull large salaries and no extra benefits. They should be on the same level of healthcare as any enterprise company.
Actual lobbying is a good thing. It’s informing a politician about an issue you want addressed.
During my wife’s masters degree she had to lobby to a state representative. The issue she was lobbying was not putting parents who were convicted of non-violent crimes in prison.
Actual lobbying rarely happens, though.
Lobbying should be done by citizens, lobbyists that bribe politicians should be laid off. The former is a citizen, the latter is their job which should be a no no.
Well, kinda. Lobbying can be about simply informing a politician
Who lobbies. Corporations, trade associations, labor unions, nonprofits, universities, cities and states, and foreign governments all lobby. Some hire outside lobbying firms (often staffed by former members of Congress, congressional aides, or agency officials); others employ their own in-house government affairs staff. Last year, external firms took in $2.76 billion versus $2.46 billion for in-house operations, the first time on record that firms accounted for the majority of federal lobbying spending.
2.76 Billion.
Other sites put lobbying over 5 billion in 2005
There are only 13k registered lobbyists.
It is not a “good thing” that billionaires and their corporations pay billions to influence law.
That’s why I specified actual lobbying. Most of those companies are just covers for bribery.
But lobbying and bribery aren’t inherently mutually inclusive.
Both parties want lobbies, but most citizens do not; most actual voters, when asked directly about the issue, oppose money in politics and want to repeal Citizens United.
I don’t agree with the “especially veterans” part of the no one should be homeless. Veteran status, in itself, does not make one more worthy of a basic necessity of life. What I will agree with is that the government has a responsibility to make sure everyone is house especially veterans. The government owes them more than others for serving them. The universe does not.
It’s a key point to engage the moderates and the right, but fighting it risks sliding down the “all lives matter” slope.
The government hired them and fucked them up; the government owes them support. We (royal we) ‘let’ the government get to this point, even if it’s not specifically you and I. Our taxes going to that end is far from a travesty. Let’s cut back a little on defense and use the savings to prop up the guys that got fucked up on it’s behalf.
I don’t disagree with any of that. But if you’re framing the homelessness problem as a veteran homelessness problem then the applied solutions will likely leave non-veterans that still need help without. All homelessness is a problem. That is not the same as “all lives matter” because homelessness isn’t primarily a problem that veterans face. They’re estimated to make up 5 percent of the homeless population.
The government does have a particular responsibility to vets, and should be fixing that. But they have a responsibility to non-vets too. And the things that cause homelessness for veterans causes it for everyone else too. We can and should be helping veterans by addressing the root causes that effect everyone. But any solution that only results in helping vets (like supplying only veterans housing) when they could be helping everyone is unacceptable, particularly as plenty of people would consider the job done so long as the homeless that remain aren’t vets.
You mistook my answering the veteran part only as framing, no, we can easily afford to house anyone that is willing to be housed. (some homeless will refuse help/treatment even if they need it)
But do all liberals really feel this way or have they spent the last 50 years entrenching the system that celebrates all this shit?
They’ve spent the last 200 years creating and entrenching it
Fair
*250
True. I was rounding.
…and also before then. Since the beginning of society, really
😁Beautiful.
Lobbyists are not necessarily a problem. Lobbyists for corporate interests are usually a problem. But there are lobbyists for non-profits, unions, and advocacy groups, too. Their job is to be a face to face to those with political power and government authority to advocate for some interest. Those interests are can be a net good for everyone. They can bring awareness to issues, new perspectives on issues, and provide a voice for those who may otherwise be ignored or lost in the noise. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. When bribery gets involved, or behind the scene deals, or when lobbyists get to write the laws to financially benefit their employers at others’ expense, that is the problem we often see with lobbyists.
Update: y’all hate some nuance, huh.
Yeah. Nuanced thought has no place in lemmy. This is where kids go to get programmed by manufactured outrege and polarized idealism.
But there are lobbyists for non-profits, unions, and advocacy groups, too.
Correct, but those interest groups should be allowed some kind of formal consultative role in the political process, rather than being forced to throw money around
The lobbyist is the consultative role. Their job is to consult. The only money that needs thrown around to lobby is the salary of the lobbyist. Now because we have a corrupt system that does not suffiently enforce the law, plenty of lobbyists throw around money to gain favors and deals with government officials, and that obviously should neither be the expectation or even allowable. But that doesn’t made a paid role as a person who job is to advocate for some cause inherently a problem, so long as they do so ethically and, ideally, for a worthy cause.
So, I think the people doing that job should be making standard working class wages, and they should, for example, be elected by their respective interest group organisations to a formal legislative body that consults on and can propose legislation, but not pass it.
Like the house of Lords, but instead of being full of rich people named Baroness Killthepoor, it’s an actually useful body.
Lobbyists are an informal adhoc means of essentially legalizing bribery, that has been codified over time. While legitimate good might come from that system, as you’ve pointed out, some kind of formal democratic system by which formalise and democratize that consultative role should be enacted.
That’s not a the worst idea in premise, but the logistics of that is a concern for me.
Who decides who is allowed to be a formal interest group with a vote in the body? Is anyone allowed to form any group that has equal voting power? That is a terrible idea for so many reasons I can think of. Is it chosen by the legislature or executive? That gives it a ton of room for corruption, favoritism, etc. Are they restricted to one group per area of interest? If not then you could have proposals passed by the sheet number of co-interested individual interest groups alone. If not, then who decides what is a distinct enough interest to allow a new group?
That being said, the entire system being an above board process, publically accessible and answerable, would already be a dramatic improvement over the current lobbying practices, so… no matter how bad a mess, it likely would never be worse.
You’re thinking within the confines of the suboptimal system we currently have. What if lobbying wasn’t useful because there was no central authority figure to plead with? What if nobody’s voice gets lost in the noise because the people who can help are near enough to hear them?
You may have missed it, but this is an anarchist take, so your argument doesn’t really apply, whether it’s true or not.I’m not an anarchist. And we don’t live in an anarchy. And we will never see a true long term anarchist society of any real scale in our lifetime. That is fine if you are talking about some idealistic utopian goal. But I’m talking about the world we live in now.
And they didnt say that they shouldn’t be necessary or viable because there is no central goverment authority to advocate to. They said they shouldn’t be allowed. Those are two different stances (and not very anarchist to talk of disallowing advocacy roles).
Can I get a fuck yeah?!??
Fuck yeah you can.
FUCK YEAH!
Much better
Cosigned
How does “people should not like in poverty” fit with anarchy? I’m asking out of curiosity, not to be contentious.
Supporting unemployed or disadvantaged needs collectivism, some system to contribute to people in need, which then also needs some kind of tax collection and governance. Do anarchists expect individuals to support people in need as their own independent choice?
Yeah. See. You can’t ask lemmy “anarchists” questions. They only know how to yell at you about shit that only works in their heads.
How does “people should not like in poverty” fit with anarchy? I’m asking out of curiosity, not to be contentious.
Rich vs poor is a garbage social hierarchy.
Supporting unemployed or disadvantaged needs collectivism, some system to contribute to people in need, which then also needs some kind of tax collection and governance.
This is just capitalist/statist assumptions within the hegemonic narrative.
People don’t need “some system” to solve poverty. People need to end the current system that creates and depends on poverty.
Poverty is (supposedly) a made-up metric in result of capitalism. If capitalism no longer exists any worker gets enough to escape poverty just by working
How? How is that enforced? How are resources distributed? How can any of that actually work in practice?
Supposedly
I do not defend this statement
It’s so lovely watching pedantic, ideologically uncompromising nitwits “scorpion and frogging” us to the end of civilization.
See you all in hell!
I thought you were overreacting. I’m sorry.
NO ONE, ESPECIALLY VETERANS, SHOULD BE HOMELESS
Would be better without the ‘especially veterans’ part. WTF makes veterans so special? Why is a homeless veteran more concerning than any other homeless person?
I am a veteran, by the way. But fuck this shit.
I’m not pro military by any stretch of the imagination, but I see this fundamentally as an employer’s duty of care.
If you hire people to do a job, and that job results in lasting damage, you should be liable (morally and civilly) for fixing the damage. Anything else is just pushing the externalities off to society at large.
Then why specifically talk about Veterans and not, for example, Firemen. Surelly the contributions for society of the latter are vastly better than the former - in fact, in the US the former have always been used to pillage the resources of foreign nations (there has literally not been a military attack on the US for over a century, so it sure ain’t Defense), resources then overwhelmingly captured by a select elite which is thus made even richer, hence more powerful, hence more politically influent, the very opposite of the “Liberal thinking” that document claims to portray.
It looks to me like either the author of that is American and that shit is them leaking their lifelong brainwashing about the Military or it’s a piece of political propaganda whitewashing Liberalism (what’s in that list sure as hell does not match the actual policies of Liberal Politicians) which targets Americans hence blowing the “Veterans” dog-whistle, which pretty much only works in America.
The US doesn’t have an established history of firemen homelessness. The homeless vet abandoned by a stingy and heartless government is an established trope in American culture. That’s not remotely true for firemen. Calling out veteran homelessness is a useful tactic, people do it because it can cut across the normal boundaries of partisan politics.
Also, there technically have been a few military attacks on the US within the past century but they were not especially effective. During WW2 the Japanese military hit the US west coast a few times in submarine attacks, they also had a campaign of balloon bombings which killed a number of people in Oregon.
I think the government owes more to veterans. I do not think they inherently deserve more as a moral imperative of the universe.
MAGA & GOP view themselves as the pro-military party, which is really important because it means veterans often vote for them. The reality is MAGA & GOP is happy to vote for more military spending of the variety that puts money into the military industrial complex. They are way less willing to spend it in ways that benefit actual veterans.
I’m against war & the military and do not think highly of those that join. That said they are, technically, a public servant. And public servants should be granted public resources such as housing & healthcare & food. So yes, ‘especially veterans’, should get housing.
But also yes, everyone should.
I didn’t make it, if I did it would have been that way.
Because it frames the homeless issue in an undeniably harsh light. “If even vets end up homeless, WTF are we doing?!”
Logically, anyone homeless should be given enough to basically survive, but it’s usually drugs or psychosis, and it’s hard to morally force people into treatment.
In this case, I feel it’s being used as a right / moderate driving point.
Cuts both ways, though.
The government hired the vets.
‘We’ hired the government.
If, in the course of duty, a veteran got fucked up enough mentally/physically/pharmasudically, that they can’t function in society. The government (which we hired) owes it to them to try to make it right. Not like here’s your house and you car and 1-800-EAT-STEAK, but like here’s your support line, here’s a small apartment with a working bathroom and someone to check up on you.
Worst case, a service member fell down a dark path through no fault of the military and gets complimentary help, well, good news, we also think that everyone should get that complimentary help.
There are already housing plans, funding and assistance plans for vets, just take a little of that massive fucking defense budget and look after at least the people who did the fucking burn pits back in the day.
Housing first works.
I mean honestly, as a non veteran, they risked more than most of us civilians have ever had to risk for our nation’s security. And by Nation I mean the people, not the country. So yes I do believe all veterans should be entitled to certain benefits above and beyond the average citizen. The same was true for soldiers in ancient Rome.
No, that’s why this debate exists in the first place. Not a single US soldier alive today except the very few remaining who were stationed at Pearl Harbor ever engaged in defending the nation - and even the Pearl Harbor scenario is debatable because the US illegally occupies Hawaii and had we not been illegally occupying Hawaii it wouldn’t have been attacked.
Every single veteran alive today that needs intensive medical care received nearly all of their damage fighting wars of choice and aggression, not defending the US
I agree that every war since WW2 has been unjustified, but the soldiers did not know that when they enlisted. They still chose to risk their lives to defend our nation. You can hate them as much as you want, but many of them sacrificed their lives and their limbs for our security.
The Nazis were funded and supported by American businessmen. American involvement in WW2 wasn’t justified. It was an attempt to salvage Western fascism from destruction by the Soviets. That’s why the Americans worked with the Vatican and the Red Cross to save 10k Nazis from Nuremberg.
But I don’t hate veterans. I just think the reason they deserve care is not based on whether they did anything to protect the US.
Also liberals, “But the parliamentarian…”
Actually, that’s a good question to see if you live in a real shithole country:
Are you afraid that your child might be shot while at school?
There are some REAL shithole countries where that never happens :) You need to raise that bar a little :)
Sorry, but I can’t imagine a lower bar.
Americans have normalized the fear of their children being shot at school. What could be lower than that?
Ah, yes, having a mortal disease and being unable to afford the medical treatment…
Fixed it
Wait did you beat me to it? 😆
You made it leftist but forgot to change the title.
Normies don’t generally understand this distinction.
