Hardkill

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Posts posted by Hardkill

  1. Posted

    I feel like everybody at the protests need to arm themselves with a weapon protect themselves in case the federal government tries to arrest the protestors. I used to be against the idea of civilians having the right to bear arms, but I am now making an exception to that given the serious looming threat of government tyranny we are facing now.

  4. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    9 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    No. Freedom and equality are a trade-off. To get one you sacrifice the other.

    Leftism is not freedom. You just want to call it freedom because you like that label. Leftism requires restriction of many freedoms for the sake of equality. This is why libertarians are mostly right-wingers.

    but left-wing policies that have granted civil rights and voting rights for racial minorities, women, the lgbtq+ community, etc. have restricted what kind of good freedoms?

  5. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    42 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    The right-wing has leftists beat on the freedom frame. Leftism is not about freedom, it is about equality. Libertarians are for freedom. And libertarians are stupid for it.

    What you want is less freedom and more equality.

    The right-wing is not truly for freedom either. Right-wing ideology and conservatism is really about hierarchy, order, and traditions.

  8. Posted

    1 hour ago, aurum said:

    You are talking about elite, instituitonal, non-partisan media. They may have skewed liberal but barely.

    And even that didn't last very long. Rush Limbaugh was already coming up in the 80s.

    Pretty much.

    The media environment used to be very centralized and relatively neutral. Before the 1980s-1990s, the internet and social media obviously never existed and there were only a very few amount of channels on the radio and on TV that had political commentary. Furthermore, every show on tv and radio that talked about politics had to present both left-wing and right-wing views on every single issue because of the Fairness Doctrine. That's it.

    That helped create enough downward pressure on right-wing propaganda, which helped Democrats, liberals, and moderates get their message across clearly and helped keep the spread of misinformation in check.

  10. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    10 minutes ago, Breathe said:

    I don't agree with this. It can take years for people to change their minds or see things from a different lens. Conversations aren't usually open or productive. People shut down and don't listen to new ideas. Disagreements devolve into insults and arguing rather than asking questions and trying to understand where another person is coming from.

    In my experience and in what I have observed in others, it usually takes some big life change to see a person change their minds.

    Yeah, I’ve tried convincing conservatives to be more open-minded about abortion, diversity, civil rights, and immigration rights, and they’ve responded with things like, “No! It’s murder! It’s murder!!!” or “I’m not going to argue with you about this. Obviously, we’re not going to agree, so leave me alone!” or “I’m sorry, but I just can’t get there… it’s so un-American!”—or they simply refuse to engage at all.

  11. Posted

    Just now, Leo Gura said:

    That's sorta my position.

    Not conversative in the regressive sense, but in the grounded, pragmatic, realistic sense.

    Right! I would mean that we fight another day so to speak on trans rights and other social justice issues.

    Also, have them talk about how corporate greed, Elon Musk, and Trump are the real Devils who are destroying the Judeo-Christian roots of our country. 

    The Democrats have to really talk A LOT more on masculinity and how there's nothing inherently wrong with male sexuality of men and men being good strong leaders of society. They should also say that while they respect women's right to work any kind of job and earn as much money as she wants, many women these days are not behaving as feminine as women in older generations did and don't have the right kind of men who can guide them guide them properly and protect them.

  12. Posted

    4 minutes ago, Emerald said:

    That's an incorrect assumption. And it's a total misunderstand of how power and influence works.

    You can always shape and form people's viewpoints regardless of where they are Spiral Dynamics-wise. People don't need to be on the same level of development as a political movement to get on board with a political movement.

    You just need to frame things in a way that normies will respond to and inch them closer to your position over time.

    It's just like how the far right has gotten a lot of Stage Green hippie folks to go Fascist by posing the right wing as the rebellious contrarian anti-establishment position and the left wing as the establishment position. 

    Of course Fascists aren't Stage Green. But the creators of the propaganda machine that's tasked with normalizing Fascism understands Stage Green enough to know how to rope them into their movement.

    So, you just have to use language that fits within the prevailing paradigm of society and that will resonate with most normies (which is mostly Orange with a bit of Blue)... and you can get people on board with just about anything. 

    And this should be obvious at this point... given all the outlandish extreme stuff that's been normalized over the past decade.

    Now, most people won't resonate with a deeper Green message about where trans identities come from and bla bla bla. But that wasn't going to carry any rhetorical weight anyway, as it's too complex.

    The narratives and slogans themselves have to avoid being too complex, ideological, or wonky. 

    Instead, you have to appeal to the value of freedom... and to the idea of minding your own business... which are already normalized in society and are situated smack in the middle of the Overton Window.

    And you have to frame people who get hung up about trans people as weird and neurotic and anti-freedom... because they genuinely are weird and neurotic and anti-freedom.

    You have to make it a taboo where people will try to avoid having that social stench on them because it's associated with creepy guys who never bathe or go outside and who post on 4-chan everyday.

    And you do it just the same way as the right wing did with blue-haired SJWs back in 2015-2016.

    They took a mainstream viewpoint of "accept people's differences"... and they found a group of screeching weirdos that held that viewpoint. 

    And they used these same images of screeching weirdos to stigmatize the idea "accept people's differences" to the point where some would want to run away from association with that value because they didn't want to be seen as belonging to the group of screeching weirdos.

    The left needs to learn to do our own version of that to re-normalize the "accept people's difference" viewpoint after 10 years of heavy right wing propagandizing and re-affirm it as the norm.

    We on the left may be developed enough to understand Green values. But we need to be smart enough to figure out how to wield power well enough to re-normalize this value through the current societal lens.

    And you need to show crazy creepy weirdos obsessing about trans people and transvestigating everyone in the same light as those blue-haired SJWs... and put it out there as a popular meme.

    Then, have the progressive politicians be like "Duh. In our party we're pro-freedom and we mind our own business... and we focus on the real issues (insert economic populist vision here) instead of getting hung up on neurotically fearing people like the other side does."

     

    Why can't we just hold off on fighting for more civil rights for another decade or so, while focusing on fixing the economic problems first?

  13. Posted

    33 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    @Emerald You can't bluster nor bull your way through lack of human development.

    This isn't merely a PR or leadership problem. This is fundamentally a problem of lack of education, intelligence, and development. And that will not be fixed with any kind of clever political manuvering.

    Humans severely lack intelligence and development. Which is why leftists will continue to lose and conservatives continue to win.

    So, then why don't run on socially moderate to conservative stances while running on economic populism from now on?

     

     

  14. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    25 minutes ago, Emerald said:

    The concept of moderate and normal are very malleable for people and highly contingent upon the narratives that are mimetically imposed and framed as normal and moderate.

    If the prevailing narrative is that it's normal to hate trans people and be Nazis... people will hate trans people and be Nazis. And you can notice how so much extreme outlandish stuff has been normalized just because the right keeps insisting all the extreme outlandish stuff is normal. 

    But if the prevailing narrative is that it's normal to live and let live and mind your own business... and that only weird people are hung up on what's in other people's pants... then people will avoid getting caught up in these neurotic anti-trans panic movements.

    If people are so malleable, then why did it take a bloody Civil War to free African Americans from slavery? Why did it require one of the largest and most effective civil rights movements in U.S. history just to secure women the right to vote? Why did it take yet another herculean effort—along with the traumatic loss of many innocent lives—to finally end Jim Crow laws through the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century?

    And why did so many gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer people suffer, face violence, die by suicide, or endure unnecessary death and suffering from AIDS during the decades-long fight for LGBTQ+ rights—before mainstream acceptance and the eventual legalization of gay marriage in the mid-2010s?

    Democrats obviously shouldn't normalize Nazism or Trump-like rhetoric. Hell, even most Republicans don't normalize Nazism.

  15. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    22 minutes ago, Emerald said:

    Again... you're focusing on conforming to old-school values from the 40s as opposed to influencing others with your own values.

    And it's a show in unsavvy weakness and submissiveness to the conservative paradigm.

    That's the difference between someone who asserts their power and wins... and those who conforms to the other side's framing and reasserts the normalcy of the other side, even as the other side is certifiably cuckoo crazy.

    So, what if we are conforming to old-school values from the 1940s?

    Most Americans are either conservative or moderate. How can you realistically expect to convince the majority of Americans to accept DEI, transgender rights, and other left-leaning social issues when many are undereducated and barely making ends meet?

    Let the right-wing and the Republican Party think they’re winning by siding with them on almost all social values—except on abortion and climate change—and then completely shock them when they realize they're losing the fight on economics through a revival of New Deal or Square Deal-style policies.

    That doesn’t mean Democrats have to sound insulting toward foreigners, racial minorities, women, or the LGBTQ community like Trump often does. And it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t call out serious, unconstitutional actions committed by Trump and the GOP—especially when those actions have gravely harmed individuals like Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Democrats just need to sound more like Reagan Republicans on cultural issues—minus the rhetoric on “welfare queens,” anti-abortion stances, and climate denial—while forcefully opposing far-right extreme freaks like Alex Jones and Steve Bannon. On economic issues, they should sound like New Deal Democrats.

  16. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    22 minutes ago, Emerald said:

    The bold above is exactly where you assert your position and the normalcy of your position. And then, you put your opponent on defense and having to defend their own neuroticism.

    The whole game is to put the opposite side on defense.... and you do this by going on offense and press people about "Why are you so obsessed with trans people?".

    NEVER play defense. It's a losing strategy.

     

    What you’re suggesting is not how TR and FDR successfully built their winning party coalitions that would last for decades and not how they successfully shifted the Overton window to the left. They too had to pick their battles by focusing primarily on economist populism to the hilt while putting on a believable performance that they stand for all traditional American values including Judeo-Christianity, abiding by what the Bible said, patriotism, the dominance of masculinity, women serving their men and raising their children at home, men being men, women being women marriage between a man and a woman, law and order, being tough on crime, being very pro military while also being strong diplomats, keeping America pure, prioritizing the well being of white people, etc.

  17. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    1 hour ago, Emerald said:

    None of that would have helped her cause.

    Taking time to state "Don't worry. We're anti-trans too." isn't going to be a winning strategy as you'll just push away more progressive members of the base without energizing anyone else to vote for the Democrat.

    The only thing that will work is a statement of unity and an acceptance of differences... and then putting forward a Social Democrat Populist vision for our economy.

    Obama and the Democrats consistently promoted unity and acceptance of differences during his presidency—but it didn’t work. By the end of his time in office, they had lost over 1,000 legislative seats at the state and national levels, numerous governorships, and many other key state and local offices across the country. Not to mention, his presidency and the party’s direction played a major role in creating the conditions that led to Trump’s election.

    Biden also tried to unify the country by running—and governing—as a good old white American “moderate” in 2020. Sadly, he failed at that too.

    Besides, how do you explain the dominance of FDR and the New Deal coalition, which was economically left but socially moderate, and managed to shape American politics for decades?

    When LBJ and the Democrats passed a series of landmark civil rights and voting rights laws for Black and Brown Americans in the 1960s, it cost them much of the South, large parts of rural America, and the majority of white voters for at least a generation. Then, when the Democratic Party embraced women’s rights in the mid-1970s, they lost even more support—especially among male voters and Protestant voters (who still make up the largest share of Christian voters in the U.S. today). In fact, the Democratic Party hasn’t won the majority of Christian voters since around 1976. They continued to lose ground in the South and rural areas for yet another generation. By 2024, they had even lost the majority of Catholic voters across the country.

    We haven’t won the majority of white voters or male voters since around 1964. We’ve lost too many Christian voters and have essentially ceded rural America. The vast majority of the South has been solidly Republican since the 2010s. In 2024, Democrats also lost a solid majority of young male voters nationwide.

    Too many people in this country feel like they’re losing their traditional way of life—while living paycheck to paycheck, stuck in miserable jobs, and watching their communities decay. And too many Americans still see the Democratic Party as a group of “woke,” overly educated coastal elites who talk down to everyday Americans—lecturing them about racism, xenophobia, misogyny, guns, and even climate science. Honestly, I’m not even sure anymore whether the majority of Catholic voters will ever again believe that the Democrats are on their side—especially considering that Christian voters still make up more than two-thirds of the electorate nationwide and Democrats have always needed to win the majority of Catholic voters since the 1990s or the Aughts to win the presidency.

    The Democrats have no choice but to seriously devote their time and resources over the next 10 years to winning back white voters, Southern voters, rural voters, Christian voters, working-class voters, and men—especially young men. If they don’t, they may never regain control of the U.S. Senate or the presidency for the foreseeable future.

     

  18. Posted

    17 hours ago, Emerald said:

    Stop playing defense and take a principled stance.

    Kamala took your advice, and she lost. She very deliberately stayed away from identity politics of any kind, and they still accused her of all of this despite her being your average run-of-the-mill Neoliberal.

    The right wing will accuse any Democrat... or really anyone left of the far far right... as being some radical blue-haired SJW out of touch leftist because they know it strengthens the dominance of their paradigmatic frame. 

    It allows them to define what "normal" is... and Democrats keep believing them and submitting to their frame instead of taking a principled stance and defining the frame of what is normal and put these right wing politicians on the defense.

    So, if they're going to accuse you of it anyway, you might as well own it and stand on principle and say, "That's right! We're the party of normal people and non-assholes who mind our own business and accept people's differences! And they're weird and neurotic for being so obsessed with trans people. Identity politics is all they ever think about."

    That's how you take power and dominance over the frame of things instead of trying to concede to their framing... and being like "Sure, we're economically left... but don't worry... we hate the transes and gays too!" 

    So, please stop submitting to right wing framing and trying to divide the working classes by trying to chuck certain groups out of the movement.

    You know, I used to believe in always taking a principled stance and challenging the Republican Party’s framing of what’s considered "normal" on every issue. And yes, Harris did a good job of avoiding identity politics altogether. However, Bill Clinton and other Democrats including moderate and progressive-leaning ones argued that Harris made a mistake by not responding to that trans ad with a clearer stance—specifically by stating that she does not support allowing transgender athletes to compete in sports, and that transgender rights are not a priority right now.

    It’s also clear to me now that Democrats and progressives can’t win every issue—especially given how much smaller and less influential the Democratic-aligned media ecosystem is compared to the Republican-aligned one. We have to pick our battles. Plus, it’s obvious that most Americans today don’t really care about social justice issues. Right now, people care more about having their material needs met, because millions of Americans are currently struggling to provide for themselves and their families due to rampant corporate greed, historic levels of economic inequality, and the lingering effects of inflation—which still haven’t fully subsided.

  19. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    10 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    When you combine serious progressive economic policies with diversity candidates, you lose the culture war. The stench of "wokeness" becomes too pungent.

    That's why I say that Democrats and progressives should try to eliminate the distraction of culture war by going on right-wing shows like Fox News and Ben Shapiro and agree with them on traditional social stances but disagree with them on economic ideas.

    However, they would also need to make it clear to the public that they will not talk to truly extreme right-wingers like Charlie Kirk, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, or Steve Bannon unless they are debating them hard.

  20. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    27 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    I think it requires a new bold Democrat leader. Someone new like Obama was back in 2008. I'm not saying Obama was an economic populist, I'm saying he was a fresh face. Dems need someone new who's like Bernie but younger and not a self-described socialist.

    This is about leadership. The party itself will not change. Someone like an Obama or a Trump has to come along and force it to change. Bernie and AOC are not going to do it. AOC is too unappealing to much of the country. It needs to be someone more mature and seasoned. And not a woman of color. It needs to be a white dude because people are too racist, sexist, and xenophobic to vote for an AOC.

    Also, a white man as POTUS will be deemed more socially acceptable to the public if he is a fiery populist in office then either a man of color, a woman, or a woman of color. 

    I believe that's partially why Obama was too conciliatory when he was president because if he pushed too aggressively, he risked being labeled “an angry Black man” — a racist stereotype deeply ingrained in American political psychology. Obama knew that millions of white voters were looking for any excuse to view him as illegitimate, divisive, or threatening.

    If a woman president came off as "too aggressive," she would likely face a double standard that male leaders are rarely held to — one rooted in longstanding gender norms about how women should behave in public life. Voters, media, and opponents might say she’s: “Cold,” “harsh,” or “shrill” “Overly ambitious” or “trying too hard to prove herself.” The harsh reality is that assertiveness in women is often interpreted as hostility, while the same behavior in men is seen as strength or leadership.

    If a woman of color became president and was perceived as “too aggressive,” the backlash would likely be even more intense and layered than it would be for a white woman — due to the intersection of racial and gender stereotypes.

    Biden on the other hand had tremendously More Political Experience and was a man with a White Irish-Catholic background, which made it more credible and "safe" for him to be more aggressive than Obama, which is partly why Biden's rhetoric became increasingly more populist and confrontational in office like Harry Truman.

  21. Posted

    32 minutes ago, Raze said:

    That’s already what they have been doing.

    They supported trade deals like NAFTA. They didn’t raise the federal minimum wage. They didn’t pass Medicare for all or even a public option.

    Biden did some stuff but most of those programs ended as Covid winded down.

    Only the ARP ended in terms of the legislation he passed with Congress.

  22. Posted

    17 minutes ago, aurum said:

    He's too old for president though. He needs to pass the torch, potentially to AOC.

    I don't see how AOC can win the Democratic nomination when too many Democratic voters including older and more moderate voters are terrified of anything or anybody who identifies herself as some kind of socialist and doesn't run enough on traditional American cultural values. Also, after Harris lost in 2024, I don't think now is the time for the Democratic party to put up a woman of color as the presidential nominee any time soon.

  23. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    31 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    Hell no.

    Dems need an economic populism agenda. The whole Dem agenda should be about fixing income inequality and corporate domination.

    Okay, good! I'm glad you're actually saying that.

    Obviously, the Democratic Party isn’t going to become the party of Bernie Sanders or AOC anytime soon, and we’ll have to wait until 2026 or 2028 to see how significant a shift they actually make toward economic populism. Still, it’s encouraging that the party does seem to be heading in that direction.

    And just because a majority of people voted for Trump and his hyper-capitalistic MAGA agenda in 2024 and America is still so attached to toxic stage Orange doesn’t mean the Democratic Party should throw up its hands and say, “Alright, we give up on progressivism and economic populism because apparently the American people don’t want that. We get it now—the era of big government is over, and from now on, we’re going to give bipartisan legitimacy to the economic philosophy of Trump and the MAGA Republicans,” much like how Bill Clinton’s “Third Way” politics in the ’90s essentially triangulated Reaganomics.

    So then, is the larger point you’ve been making that even if Democrats run on a more “progressive” and economically populist agenda in the coming years, those efforts would still be trapped within a deeper, systemic stage of development—namely, neoliberal capitalism?

    31 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

    But Dems should not raise taxes on the bottom 80%.

    That would be political suicide for Democratic party. Yes, we would need to do that to make something like Medicare for All (M4A) work, but of course we know that most Americans are never going to go for that for the foreseeable future.

  24. Posted · Edited by Hardkill

    This might seem like a dumb or crazy question—especially considering your political beliefs and mine—but if the country elects Trump 2.0 and embraces neoliberalism on steroids in 2024, with America still stuck in toxic Stage Orange mania, what then?

    Do you think the Democratic Party should start supporting more and more of Trump’s and the GOP’s policies—like more tax cuts for the rich, further deregulation of the financial system and environmental protections, and cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and so on?

    Or is that not what you are saying or suggesting?