That this post was made in good faith. The way conversation between the left, the right, and the centrist voters is either dishonest, or shows a horrible misunderstanding of common opinion. If it is the latter, I am wrong about the good faith bit, hence the “I hope I am wrong,” though I am not happy about either outcome.

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies.

From Wikipedia.

The comment I am responding to never denied that there is an influx of tankies here. Instead you said I shouldn’t be surprised to find leftists here, inferring that leftists are tankies. Being authoritarian and manipulating information to manipulate people is not a leftist value.

You can disagree with me all you want. I’ll respect that. I would appreciate if you had better respect than to treat me like I am insane and my statements make no sense just because you disagree.

That is not my experience. I hope I am the one who is wrong.

Authoritarian manipulation is not a leftist value.

Don’t conflate my concern in speaking out against discourse like as “seething and coping.” My goal is to call out attempts to divide and other people for what it is.

And here I thought statements of lemmy.ml being overrun with tankies were exaggurated. Boy your deconstruction of my post sure showed me!

This is a bad faith meme that represents anyone making any form of compromise as a rude, close-minded, genocide supporter, posted by an account that frequently posts pro-China, sometimes pro-Russia propaganda, and hops between Western country-focused lemmy’s pending election cycles.

Just making sure the context for this post is visible.

This is not how I have understood the criticisms being thrown around Lemmy lately, but I appreciate the perspective. Even so, I’m not sure I can agree that the best solution to dealing with the right is to fight the centrists first, but I can at least appreciate your point in the specific context of the current two-party system.

I wouldn’t know. I’m not an American, and not a card-carrying liberal voter on my country.

What I do know is that this constant othering is how these problems were created in the first place. Spending time and energy building straw men on the Internet is creating enemies, not allies. If you are genuinely dedicated to spreading information and awareness, as your earlier post suggests, making assumptions and jumping down people’s throats is hurting your cause, not helping it.

We are currently in the process of creating a larger divide in left-minded individuals, and I am unbelievably sick of it. As the right rapidly unifys, we seem to be learning nothing.

Thank you.

Real sick of this argument right now. Just letting the right win because the left-most party is too willing to compromise isn’t a moral victory.

Everyone always talks like defeating Trump in the election is the end-all be-all of the disussion. Voting Democrat and preventing Trump from taking the white house should have been an obvious step. It is not the best outcome for the election, nor is it the end of the ongoing decay of late-stage capitalism into wealth-based fascism, but all this whataboutism and strawmanning Democrat voters as believing Kamala was going to single-handedly save democracy is disingenous. It was never “Plan A”. It was one minor, marginally better compromise in the collective of shit we should be doing.

I actually disagree. They’re the same kids. The problem isn’t that this is a different demographic, or even that the same demographic has suddenly become malicious and ill-meaning. It’s that that’s not how they see Trump. They’re not as educated on his past actions, being too young to vote and therefore too young to care during the 2016 or even the 2020 election cycle. They’re bombarded day-in, day-out by news media and social media giving them conflicting information. For many of them, their beliefs boil down to “well, my parents seem to think Trump is good for the economy, and there’s too much other stuff to pick through,” and a single-issue voter is born.

Others are simply tired of standing for morally and ethically good issues, only to be constantly told that, as young men or white people, they’re the issue. When you fight for someone else for so long and are still met with people who blame you for being born just because you seek a deeper understanding (as one 16 year old student in my class recently did when he tried to ask what the problems with Trump genuinely are), it becomes easy to fall into the political sports team paradigm.

And these are far from the only two reasons. But we have to try an understand that the same students who want the environment saved are the ones who vote Trump, because no other option speaks to them.

I’m a highschool teacher. This generation of students isn’t even more tech savvy, let alone media savvy. Your exactly correct about the design of modern technology; this generation grew up with tablets and iPhones, they have no idea how to do some incredibly basic tasks unless an app does it for them, and they no understanding of really core - and in my mind simple - computer use concepts like what a folder is, or how find a file on a device and attach it to an email.

We’ve begun teaching media literacy in the highschools, but it’s unfortunately falling into the pitfalls or most education. We pull specialized articles from sources that students would literally never engage with, discuss how to read such articles and how they can be misleading, and never make the connection to the kind of content that students actually absorb. Students are day-in, day-out learning from influencers and social media, and we’re handing them articles from 2010 reprinted into textbooks and news posts they’d never have the patience to read, while continually reinforcing that cell phones are toys that are meant to stay out of the classroom and used in private or with small groups of friends.

The kids aren’t alright, but that’s not on them.

The only people this was a “secret” too are people who weren’t looking or listening.

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Fuckin’ preach. It’s easy to see that it’s all shadows on the wall once you’re out of the cave. That doesn’t make the people chained up inside any less intelligent or human. There’s something else keeping them there, and it’s hard to be convinced that something you’ve lived with your entire life is chaining you down.

The “they called me racist, so now I’m going to hate immigrants harder!” memes are both more real and more damaging than anyone, self-included, realized.

The only way to start bridging this division is to keep in mind that they’re people too. I’d even argue against calling Trump Voters strictly shitty, hateful people (though truly shitty, hateful people are among them). More often than not, they’re scared, hurt people. They’re people who have been convinced that if they don’t defend themselves and their neighbours, the “other” will come for them.

Never forget that these people all genuinely believe that what they are doing is right. Attempting to dismiss and demean them is only going to further validate that they are right and you are the enemy. We need them to see the right-wing brain rot that has wormed it’s way into the hopes and fears for what it is, and we’ll never get there through further division and demonization.

It’s very easy to fear becoming the minority when you are willing to treat minorities like they’re sub-human. This is the divide: it’s not that I don’t think the world is becomming less white; it’s that I don’t care. I WANT diversity, and I am willing to become a minority in support of that. Hopefully in a world where diversity is the standard, one wouldn’t need to be afraid of being a minority.

Oh boy, I can’t wait for abstinance to be taught as the only form of sexual education in America.

To be fair, I have heard a lot of vague fear mongering around the project with very little clear statements of exactly what it’s proposing, until this thread. None of this is to suggest it’s not as bad as people were making it out to be - it seems fucking horrific and regressive - but I won’t attack someone for wanting to know the specifics.

Mind you, I’m Canadian. If I were American, I suspect I’d have read at least parts of the primary text, because that’s what I tend to do.

EDIT: Okay, I decided to start reading about it right after making this post. It’s fucked. You all are fucked. Welcome to a White Christian Nationalist Ethnostate.