What is liberal? Does being anti-Republican make one liberal? Is one a liberal because of how they self-identify or through their deeds? Everyone of those Antifa fucks probably think they’re liberal but they sure act far from it.
On those political spectrum tests I score farrrrrr left. Nearly Communist. (Which is weird cause i really don’t have strong opinions on the governments role in people’s lives.) I hate bullying, I hate dog-piling and shouting down. I’m a Constitutionalist, though I do believe in strict gun laws. And why not?? No one is going to take anyones fucking guns away from them.
I’m the only one I know who despised Obama AND it didn’t have shit to do with his skin color and everything to do with bombing funerals, weddings, emergency responders, and Americans without due process, including a 16 year old. *
FDR is the avatar for the ‘Being Liberal’ FB group. The guy who refused entry of the Jewish refugees on the MS St.Louis and locked up 100,000 Japanese Americans is their avatar??? Fuck that nonsense. I don’t want to be associated with people who call themselves liberal but in reality are just ‘not Republicans’.
*Towards the end when he started pardoning people left and right and did some prison reform work, I warmed up to him.
…sorry for the rant…I’l get off my soapbox.
What is your experience with liberals that is causing the identity crisis? Ever since Trump won I’ve noticed liberals getting more aggressive and open, but I haven’t really seen them go overboard, at least not in my life.
Anyone else noticing anything like this? I’ve noticed liberals have become a lot more enraged, but thats about all I’m seeing. What are other people seeing?
Yeah, I remember when the Iraq war started some people were saying any criticism of Bush or criticism of the war was ‘putting troops at risk’, basically claiming free speech and free media = dead US soldiers. I am sure this same line of logic will come up again under Trump. If a war starts, any investigation of the Russia/treason issue will be putting ‘American troops at risk’.
Republicans have been using “Liberal” as a slur for more than a generation and telling their people what Liberals believe and don’t believe.
I publicly call myself a Liberal, here and elsewhere. I don’t have to own any of the bullshit that other people try to tell me I believe, because I don’t. I have no guilt or shame just because idiots who listen to the wrong people think I’m something other than what I am.
I’m well educated, well informed and have excellent Google-Fu. I don’t have any problems showing people they’re full of shit, nor do I have any problems admitting when I am wrong. The problem with the Right is that, when your best media is Fox, with a 60%+ pure bullshit content and it only gets worse from there, they don’t have a lot of facts right.
Then there are just idiots and trolls like Dale Sams who constantly say “Liberals do X” and then hedge and whine when called on that shit.
It seems conservatives often have a cartoonish view of liberalism, but some people actually fit that stereotype. I know them in real life to be good, kindhearted, hard-working, genuine people, but they go absolutely bugnuts on social media. And increasingly in those contexts it’s become very difficult to offer a dissenting opinion even as a liberal. You will get shouted down and shamed for offering a critical view on anything related to the oppression of minorities. That includes if you are a woman critiquing another woman’s POV. It seems that one’s personal pain has been elevated above reason and critical thinking. And the desire to understand the other’s POV really seems to have vanished. People are just immediately villainized and discounted. This is the opposite of what I value.
This is within my circle of friends and colleagues, which would be the ‘‘academic progressive’’ set, people actually doing social change work in their chosen careers. I can’t tell you to what extent they are mainstream, as I am pretty much assuming that what I saw day in and day out on my feed was representative of mainstream liberalism. Perhaps that assumption is unwarranted.
With that caveat, I don’t agree with a lot of stuff that is dominating what I see as the mainstream liberal narrative in online media. I fucking hate most of what I see on HuffPo and I don’t even consider it news. The death of credulity began with FoxNews but it has spread like a disease across all political and ideological spectrums. People just go with whatever reinforces their own beliefs, and I got tired of living in an echo chamber, especially because a lot of it didn’t sit right with who I am as a person. There are some approaches to misogyny, for example, that I find very problematic, like the one that is overtly hostile to men, makes generalizations about men, and then get pissed off when a man wanders in to say ‘‘that’s not me.’’ Then there’s just the sheer volume of complaint. My husband follows a feminist entertainment blog called The Mary Sue, and he finds it very interesting, but as he puts it, ‘‘They’re always upset about something.’’
I am really opposed to any approach that singles out individuals for ridicule or shaming, absent something really extreme (though we seem to have lost sight of what ‘‘extreme’’ means.) I don’t see any real strategy with whatever liberals are doing, and I’m a strategy wonk. The Occupy Movement is a good, early example. There was no endgame, just unfocused outrage. Many of today’s liberals seem to be losing sight of the long game. And I have no idea what the hell these kids are doing on campus these days. We need another Saul Alinsky. I feel old.
Part of it was hating my own hypocrisy. Because I would get pissed off and self-righteous about stupid shit too.
Perhaps my rant is more about social media than liberals per se. I just saw it in action more with liberals because most of the people in my network are liberals. But dollars to donuts, the reason I left Facebook was because of my liberal friends.
To give an example, I made a post on Facebook after the election that said, in essence, ‘‘If you voted for Trump, let’s sit down and do lunch. I’d really like to understand your perspective.’’
Some people liked the post, but I had other liberal friends rip me to pieces over that. One, in particular, felt morally obligated to unfriend me, but he really liked me, so instead, he just followed me around my feed telling me (in the most passive aggressive way possible) he felt morally obligated to unfriend me.
What I think it is, honestly, is that they somehow felt guilty for their own close-mindedness and were taking it out on me. Because the rebuttals were basically defenses for why they should be able to hate people who voted for Trump. I never said they couldn’t hate Trump voters themselves, I just said I didn’t, and even that was too threatening for them.
Hilariously, when I asked my outraged friend what he was actually doing to make a difference on these issues, like maybe he could volunteer or something, he said, ‘‘I work in Silicon Valley, this is all I got.’’ As if Silicon Valley wouldn’t be the perfect place to start, I dunno, doing something about the white patriarchy he claimed to hate so much.
Right – from my own experience you can also often flip “liberal” for “conservative” on that first statement but I too see it often. People who are perfectly fine folk IRL but who catch the Internet Fuckwad Syndrome when on the networks.
ISTM that person is scared *HE *could weaken and go over the edge to embrace Trump if he doesn’t stay pure.
You’re receiving a warning for personal insults and accusations of trolling. You know that kind of talk doesn’t belong outside of the Pit. Please don’t do this again.
No, but being anti-conservative goes a long way toward making one liberal. However, the Republican Party is currently held hostage by conservative extremism.
Makes me think of the “What is a Christian?” threads. The answer is a good measure of both.
Shrug. Feel free to vent; it’s a free country and mostly a free discussion forum.
Eh, she’s allegedly worth $20 million. Her ego might not take to being out of the spotlight, but she has the bank account to live quite comfortably doing it.
I predict that Kathy Griffin’s career will resume at some point, and prolly soon.
Rob Lowe, Robert Downey Jr., Hugh Grant, Woody Allen, Martha Stewart, Chris Brown… the list of celebrities who survived much worse, often criminal, scandals and even went on to have great careers is loooooooooong.
Hell, Mike Tyson, who was already a convicted criminal, was convicted of rape, did jail time, resumed boxing for a few years, got arrested for cocaine possession, etc. He now has a successful one man show and recently had his 2nd book published.
She might have an entire production company that she has to deposit payroll for (most people in entertainment do I hear). If she lets everybody go and pays off contractual obligations to just simply say,
“Oh fuck you you assholes! You can’t take a joke? I’m done with you”, might have a lot less than $20 million. I don’t think that would sit to well with her, but maybe I’m projecting.
Plus there is the “the beach is boring” factor. There are only so many bright sunny days in a row that you can sit on a beach with a frozen drink before you get bored to tears. I honestly think that she LIKES politics… and keeping in the game… and keeping her mind sharp. I think that she’ll be back.
