• lolcatnip
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    1 month ago

    Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleed, y’all.

    I really, really hate that expression. It’s like it’s purposely designed to alienate people with mostly good intentions telling them they’re no different from horrible people they hate with a fiery passion.

    That doesn’t mean all liberals are fascist, that means that fascism is an outgrowth of liberalism.

    Saying it means something other than what it plainly does mean doesn’t make it any better. Maybe it means that to you, but any slogan you have to explain is a shit slogan. All it does is signal membership in your in-group while telling everyone else who hears it that you’re part of their out-group.

    • jorp@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      This is a problem with slogans and not just this slogan. Another one is “ACAB” which people get upset about because they know someone who is a cop and they don’t think that cop is a bastard… But “policing has systemic issues that hurt marginalized people disproportionately, primarily exists at the intersection between haves and have nots in a way that mostly serves the capitalist ruling class rather than creating justice” doesn’t fit in a sign.

      • primrosepathspeedrun@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        okay but all cops, conclusively, ARE bastards, and we should say it so no idiot idealistic kids think they can join and be the good one.

        because its true, and they are. all of them.

        if one ever stopped being a bastard, they would stop being a cop pretty quick. usually via training accident.

        • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I’m not so sure training to be a cop has any impact on whether your parents were married 18+ years before.

          The police aren’t going anywhere. The path you described means no one who wants to better the system should join… so it will always just be people who want to abuse power. Am I reading your proposal wrong? We should workshop this.

          Edit: re-read what I wrote and realized it sounded dickish instead of constructive. Sorry about that, my dumb lump of a brain thought it sounded a lot different when I was writing it.

          • primrosepathspeedrun@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            the system cannot be improved ‘from the inside’, ‘reform from within’ has not worked in the past four hundred years of constant trying, when institutional culture was far less entrenched.

            what has changed, that it would magically work now? that the fucking mythical good-cop king under the mountain will return and save us all by making the often literal neo nazi death squads whose soul reason for existing is the maintenance of hierarchal violence and wealth/class disparity be nice and cool and prosocial?

            • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Last 400 years what has changed? A lot. I’m not saying the police are going to change anytime soon, but women have only had the ability to vote for 25% of that. That was a big change. The end of legalized slavery outside of incarceration hasn’t been around that long either… Kinda big one might say. Before I die I hope to see large improvements in rehabilitation during incarceration as efforts are growing world wide.

              We can live with hope and keep pushing towards a better life for people, or we can cower in fear and think nothing will ever change. Hell, 20 years ago a universal healthcare system in the U.S. would have been thought impossible to ever occur, now I think that it could happen in the next 20 years if people get out and vote for it.

              For every inch we take there is always backlash and sometimes we lose ground. We just need to hope we don’t lose decades, if not a 250 years come this election.

              • primrosepathspeedrun@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                okay but, like, specifically, this specific question:

                what has changed, that it would magically work now? that the fucking mythical good-cop king under the mountain will return and save us all by making the often literal neo nazi death squads whose soul reason for existing is the maintenance of hierarchal violence and wealth/class disparity be nice and cool and prosocial?

                what specific changes have happened? what did the police ‘reforms’ after 2020 fix? have the rates of innocent people gunned down in the streets in the woods in their homes gone down in the past four years? what about the time before that? or before that? or before that? your proposal has failed, constantly, invariable, without one exception, since before the invention of the steam engine. it’s not even stupidity anymore; it’s insanity.

                stop cowering. stop restricting your horizon of action to the things your oppressors tell you you’re allowed to do. look for the gaps. look the the real solutions. try playing a non-pacifist run of ‘wolfenstein’, see if you do any better.

    • primrosepathspeedrun@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      good aesthetics and good vibes ≠ good intentions

      and its the vibes that liberals really care about. its the obsession with feelings and aesthetics over truth. which is also why it’s such fertile soil for fascism to grow in. scratch a liberal, break the good vibes, snap them out of it, make them look at a homeless person, and they go fasch real quick. they certainly do a lot of shit fascists would approve of, they just kick some sand over it after. for example: the homeless purges about to sweep through california were ordered by a liberal, with the broad approval of liberals.

      the concentration camps for migrants were built as much under liberals and fascists. as long as they dont have to see it, any amount of horror is fine. if it helps them not see suffering, any amount of horror is encouraged. they’re nice, they’re pleasant, but they are not friends, and the assumption that we’re natural allies, that they can behave as badly as they want and still count on left support is how american politics got as fucked as they are.