I was thinking "ask out ur crush"

Exactly, focusing on the hypocrisy just lets them off the hook for the real crimes. They're not hypocrites, they're liars, terrorists, and supporters of mass murder.

Wait, do you think people here only downvote based on political affiliation?

You said something stupid. Maybe learn from it instead of lash out. Lashing out is something right-wingers do.

Sir I'm gonna need you to get all the way up off my back about the confused upvotes.

This user's mom should tighten those parental controls

It's going to fucking be Eggman and if you think differently you're lying to yourself and others

Ah, so you support BLM in their protest of the extrajudicial killing of George Floyd?

Fine! I give up adventuring.

What?

I retire before I even began. I go back to blacksmithing school and get my degree. I consider myself too broken for love, but a beautiful intelligent woman comes into my life and shows me what a good man I can be. We have three kids and buy a rock cottage in a country town. I work tirelessly for forty years making the highest quality horseshoes and iron pitons the town has ever seen. I am loved by my neighbors and family. No one really knew the true me except my wonderful wife, who dies long before I will. I am not the same man in my last years, hollow and spent, but many friends and strangers visit my death bed. I breathe my last breath with a smile on my face. This small pocket of the world will remember me for a generation or two, then my legacy will fade to nothing.

.....You wake in a tavern.

Boom, roasted

That's the grossest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. LET'S GO

Haha these weaklings who tell people not to do an image search, I am strong manly male person and I will bear this burden

OH GOD THE PAIN, PLEASE EVERYONE DON'T DO AN IMAGE SEARCH

XD oh Ben

You and your dry doctor wife and your short little feelings

Has cancel culture gone too far????

And when he suggested selling houses on the coast after climate change wipes it out.

I feel Amurica deep in my heart

Call an ambulance dear

Hell this is me at 37

They won't leave. They'll bitch and moan and threaten to. But it's all for show. They are fascists; like all viruses their goal is to spread, and handing a massive platform to their enemy isn't something they can afford.

They'll never stop. They'll use ever dirtier tricks until A) their politicians are voted out en masse and the conservative-fascist power base erodes via legal means over a slow period of decades of social growth, or B) a war breaks the movement in half.

Those are nummy. My GF likes coffee-flavored. I do not disagree.

How are you feeling after a rest?

Oh I know. I'm painfully aware that the billionaires are the real enemy. I know very well that this is not a culture war, but a class war. The conservative voters are not inherently evil; they are brainwashed pawns. They've been lied to for decades into radicalization against their neighbors and away from their slavemasters.

But what's your point? Where are you going with this? If you just wanted to point that out, I appreciate it and yes I agree. But if you want to use that logic as a stepping stone to some form of change of action or rhetoric, I'm not receptive to it.

Their take is not "both sides are the same so don't vote at all take," its a "neither side represents me so don't vote at all."

Those are functionally the same. The Right doesn't care about the precise reason why you wouldn't vote Democrat. They just don't want you to, so they'll push any line they have to to make that happen.

And I have seen both of those statements repeated on Lefty subs. I've seen all manner of wording to justify not voting Democrat, up to and including, verbatim, "both sides are the same."

I'm not saying that Democrats represent socialists. Of course they don't. All too many Democrat politicians are hardline, game-playing, corporate slug drones who vote in step with capitalist interests at the expense of the workers, every time.

I'm not saying the capitalist status quo is a good fit for a socialist. I'm saying that there is a world of difference between that and the warmongering fascist theocracy that will result if the reds take over. If you hate the concentration camps we have now, just wait until people like Trump can throw anyone they don't like into one.

Democrats may not represent socialists. But it's a better fit than actual fascism.

We seem to have a misunderstanding that stemmed from a poor word choice on my part.

When I use the word "siphon" here, I don't mean that the right thinks they can get leftists to actually vote for Republicans. I'm aware leftists wouldn't do that. But they could be convinced that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans, and that it's useless to show up. This divide ultimately helps the Right.

You already know this though, demonstrated here:

Their only goal is to get centrists to be more hostile to far lefties and get far lefties to not show up.

This is two goals, both of which feed the main goal: divide the left. More accurately: minimize the number of people voting Democrat. Leftists, on their own, are powerless to influence policy. But without full Leftist support, moderate Democrats are hard-pressed to overcome Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression.

So no, leftists wouldn't vote Republican. But that doesn't mean the Left is not being influenced by right-wing propaganda into helping the Right.

That's why I'm so sad when Lefty subs ban liberals. That's the right-wing propaganda they've been swallowing: Democrats are just as bad, so don't vote for them.

I agree with you in an academic sense. On a high level, capitalism and democracy do not naturally co-exist. They're ideologically opposed; capitalism concentrates power, while democracy diffuses it. The "culture war" we're fighting is those who like hierarchies and the oppression of the many, vs those who reject hierarchies and want true equity.

This is all fine on paper. And I think the more moral system is democracy and/or socialism. Equitable diffusion of power is the most important thing the species can achieve in its pursuit of advancement.

But I don't just exist on paper. I also exist here in 2021, dealing with the problems of our time. So my question is, do you honestly think Biden and other Democrats are more ideologically allied with the Republicans than they are with the all-too-few socialist elements in our government? Followup if you say yes: do you think it's therefore not worth even voting for them?

I understand being critical and skeptical of the Bidens of the world. It's good to keep pressure on them. But I don't understand not supporting them--or worse, actively sabotaging them--when they are the only realistic force that can oppose the actual fascists.

In other words, I would love to remodel the house--after we put out the literal fire that's destroying it.

...Or tell me you're an accelerationist and I'll just bow tf out of the conversation.

Strange, that.

Why?

You can even give him a bullseye to aim for