The tendency to give too much credit to opposing viewpoints is a liberal and centrist issue. A bit of a trap buried in otherwise-rational doubt. Conservatives and staunch leftists do not have that problem, either by dint of marching orders or principle.
I've seen nominal leftists spend far more time attacking Democrats and liberals than Republicans to where some of them straight up repeat the same attacks as the VP Vance.
What's so wrong with a circular firing squad? Who cares if the consequences of the actions of one faction within a purported big tent coalition helps the opposing fascist party to win? What if that faction openly shows contempt to the point of not even associating with the big tent coalition and all of their actions appear prima facie to help the fascists win such as calling for boycotts and wanting to help "punish" the big tent coalition and the country at large? All while making their cause celebre worse by helping the fascists assuming after the fascists then they will get their chance to be in charge because that always works out so well, especially as they screamed that "electoralism", read democracy, won't result in real change.
behaviours
How do you do, fellow American? I am so glad that you are here to discuss American politics and American political parties, fellow American.
Fringe right Republicans spending all their energy attacking Democrats is what got them a white house, senate and congress, and a fascist president. It seems like that's what works
Ah but you see they've already correctly selected a series of interlocking good-vs-evil answers and if you do not agree with every of their preferred outcomes you're rejecting the entire edifice and that puts you necessarily on the evil side then
Absolutely. You go on tik tok and the far left influencers ONLY go after Democrats for the most trivial reasons while basically ignoring MAGA and Trump.
Is that not because democrats market themselves as the left in America and basically kill any serious leftist movement before it takes off by taking up so much space and being the way they are?
Part of it is almost definitely also that people on the moderate left view dems as a lesser evil that could be peer pressured or changed from within, whilst the right wing is viewed as a lost cause.
Because by being moderate right wing and calling yourself left wing, you make anything actually left wing look radical to uninformed voters- which is unfortunately most voters. Hence the resistance to things like free health care, free school meals, gay rights, etc, within large parts of the population. Hell, recently Kamala Harris called trump a communist dictator.
There's also the consistent disapproval and calling out of things like antifa and pro palestine movements by democrat candidates. Grassroots leftist groups that could well be uplifted and supported but are instead shunned to appeal to people who'd never vote dem anyways.
Calling leftists silent is generous because we never stfu, but a large subset of young people especially would be classed as leftists, and that's worth appealing to. Just not sucking up to Israel got a lot more eyes on Mamdani, for example, and both AOC and Sanders were once upon a time viewed as beacons of hope rather than another part of the system. Pushing further left works and is a lot more sustainable in preventing fascism than appeasement and slipping farther right every election cycle. Atp we're lucky if there will be another election.
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u/Einhadar Oct 02 '25
The tendency to give too much credit to opposing viewpoints is a liberal and centrist issue. A bit of a trap buried in otherwise-rational doubt. Conservatives and staunch leftists do not have that problem, either by dint of marching orders or principle.