Ask Lemmy

It's not the knitting projects at home or shooting cans in the woods people have an issue with, it's the legislature you vote for, the way you treat people when you're not at home, and the kinds of people you support (people in aggressive positions of authority)

I am the person who made the villain comment. No, we don’t think you actively go around acting like villains from cartoons lol. But while you quietly enjoy your life, you vote for and support policies that cause direct harm to tens of millions of people. You care about the things that impact you, but not about people you don’t relate to. The people you vote for spread hateful ideas that lead supposedly good, Christian conservatives to commit violent crimes because they think the trans person they meet is automatically a pedophile.

Hijacking to point out to both the dumb lefty lemmies and the dumb righty lemmies that this is an amazing case study in the failure of people to separate their culture from their politics. I apologize for using you as a prop, vector_zero, but you signed up in this thread so I assume it's all good?

Here we have a person who believes that are right wing, but lives in a decidedly left wing location. What examples do they provide to demonstrate their right-winged-ness? Gun culture, cooking, sewing, quilting, home projects. Note the absolute lack of policy. When pressed about actual politics further in the thread, we get things like "yeah we need to fix gun violence, healthcare, and the economy, but I don't think any of the solutions I've heard will work." Essentially we have here a person who is completely disengaged from the reality of politics, but places high value on their culture and identity, having confused one for the other in the process.

This is all reinforced by the fact that this person lived in left wing area and is active here on a left wing website, where their self-identification as "right wing" earns them demonization, along with some doomed attempts at political discourse. Since vector_zero only really cares about their identity and culture, the demonization is all they notice, internalize, and respond to. It provides a pressure that actually validates and encourages their perceived need to stand up for and defend their cultural values. The political discourse is entirely ignored because vector_zero does not actually care about or understand politics. Meanwhile, the attacking lefties are blind to this miscommunication, characterizing it as "convenient dismissal of the real issues." No, it's not convenient dismissal, it's literally a disability: Our supposed "right wing" friend actually does not have the capacity to see beyond their shoelaces and understand how their emotional reaction to being personally attacked translates into large-scale impact for the rest of the world. So they go out and vote red (or not, since they are "powerless") without any understanding of what the consequences may be.

Perhaps the lefties as well are so blind to the importance of identity and culture that they suffer from the same "convenient dismissal" of the content of the discussion that vector_zero values. That's harder to say, but it's an interesting supposition. If that is the case, then we're doomed to go around in circles and continue beating each other until morale improves. But maybe not, maybe one or the other can recognize the tragedy for what it is and learn how to engage with it in a more constructive way.

It's painfully obvious to me that everyone involved here actually wants the same things, and there's a very clear education plan to get us all together on the same track. vector_zero simply needs to be made aware that left wing culture and identity is actually almost the same as right wing culture and identity. That absolutely nothing of themselves would be lost or reduced by voting for a democrat every once in a while. The difference is the policies, and since vector_zero doesn't actually understand or care about those, there isn't really any reason for them to hold up the label of "right wing."

You can just be a guy who likes guns, simple living, enjoying the day-to-day with the wife, and wants to retire one day.

Signed: A guy who also likes guns, simple living, enjoying the day-to-day with the wife, and wants to retire one day, but also votes democrat every time because I don't want anybody else to get hurt along the way.

Posted 22 minutes ago... and already playing the victim. Big surprise. Must be so traumatic being you.

I guess the expectation is that we crawl down into our secret lair and laugh maniacally while thinking of new and creative ways to kill minorities?

Well not crawl down into it.

The problem is that they fall in a false dilemma.

Evaluating the world and the people around you with labels so generic as "left wing" or "right wing" is not useful at all. Another problem is being too politicized, as I think it can damage your relationships with others.

Being a man and giving the answer for a woman definitely confirms you are conservative.

The cognitive disconnect some in this thread would have to hear that I'm in a gay relationship and I'm somewhat right wing, whereas my boyfriend loves to watch Jimmy Dore and Tucker Carlson. We're also both immigrants. We disagree on a lot(also agree on some things) but someone reaching different conclusions to me doesn't make them dumb or a bad person.