Every “good person” I know of every political strip is horrifically cruel and violent towards intelligent creatures many times a day. Absolutely needlessly. And they deal with this by simply not thinking about it.
Do you think there are some that are trying to balance everything as best they can? As in if they had to chose to cut health or housing you’re going to be an asshole either way
Every single one of them are needlessly – absolutely needlessly and to their own great detriment – participating in atrocity against thinking, feeling creatures who once had the capacity to love them. There’s no question of balance. Everyone loses.
I agree I think they are on a poor trajectory. I can’t see how calling them evil and disgusting is going to change their behaviour. We’ve done that. It doesn’t seem to work. If anything they wear it as a badge of pride because they don’t believe a word of what we are saying. I can only see a solution of showing patience and compassion to those who have been misled and being resolute in calling out the bullshit from the people using them. If we can reach the ones who are good and have been misled more might wake up after them. There will be no possibility of a majority or power and their party will be forced to change or cease to exist. And you’re right everyone loses. Do you want everyone to lose or do you want to be the bigger person. It sucks but there’s no fire with fire. It’s a race to the bottom and we’re already on our way
read into
vb (tr, preposition) to discern in or infer from a statement meanings not intended by the speaker or writer www.thefreedictionary.com/read+into
You read “calling them evil and disgusting” into the text. It was not there.
That was not my intention. I suppose after reading everyone’s comments that was the general vibe I was getting from most people. I apologise if that was not this individual comments intentions.
It’s just been you and me, man. If you go back and try to re-interpret, I think you can see my view that the people we label “good” and “bad” are more a reflection of our human or selfish needs of them than of their moral worth. We need to see the people around us, especially those we are emotionally attached to, as good even though by an objective standard, they are all likely actively participating in atrocity and pretending they are not. Being seen as “good” has more to do with moral fashion than actually working towards some set of values from first principles.
Ok so I’m on the same page now, I think when you wrote the are horrifically cruel and violent towards innocent creatures is where I read in the evil and disgusting. Tbh I’m not sure how being horrifically cruel and violent towards innocent creatures isn’t evil and disgusting. Still I’m making a lot of assumptions. Can you clarify by what you mean by being horrifically cruel and violent towards innocent creatures? Is there a particular event or policy or is it a generalisation, if it’s a generalisation can you point me to some examples, thanks
This is a good doco. And you are right that the reality is people just don’t care enough to keep it in the front of their brain. I do have a question though. If intelligence is the criteria for whether or not it’s cruel to kill or harm another life form, would it be considered better to kill a less intelligent animal over a more intelligent one?
Yeah but they are stupid. Its the same in my country. People are simply sheep so they vote for the person who they see the most in ads and thats the guy who distroyed our economy and does racist and homophobic stuff…
If you vote republican, you’re not a good person, and never have been since the party flip-flop. They’ve always been the party trying to suppress the rights of anyone who isn’t a rich white male.
And now they’re literally traitors trying to overthrow our government.
No I realise it could be taken that way. If you read further up their comment it says if you vote for someone it’s the same as overthrowing the government. I wrote I would never in response to the voting part, I didn’t need to go any further but I understand how it may have been taken that way
If you are republican you believe in cutting social safety nets, pro war, anti gun regulation, and anti lgbtq. I view all of those as “bad people traits”. I don’t think anyone who can say they are for gutting welfare can also say they are a good person at heart.
Exactly. You can say please and thank you all you want, hold doors open for people, smile at them on the sidewalk, but that’s all thrown in the garbage if you aren’t willing to actually do something to help people.
Welfare is a great example - most republicans use the “it’s being abused” line as their go-to reason that it should be scrapped. Being a good person is knowing that it is being abused - but the value of it helping people outweighs the 1ish percent of people who are on it and abuse it.
Half of the programs are so neutered it’s like, who cares that it is? Ohhh noooo this guy makes $23k instead of $22k he still can’t afford to eat let him have his blistering $100 of ebt. 🤷
My favorite is catching those “I wouldn’t work either if I could just live on a check!” types. I encourage them to get that ssi check if they can, while explaining that they’ll have to spend their savings down to under a grand, if they have two cars they’ll have to sell one, etc etc - all to pull like $800/mo that’ll drop to $50 if they log so much as a few hours at a part time job.
If that sounds like heaven to you, live yo best life fam. 🤷 But I don’t think that reality aligns with their vision of life of SSI.
I live in a very red part of Florida. They've all been pretty nice to me. Of course, I'm white, my baby is blonde haired and blue eyed, and I'm in the military. They usually get pretty surprised when I open my mouth and start spouting crazy commie stuff like Trans Rights are Human rights.
I’m a white redneck looking cis male in South Dakota. Many of these “nice” people think I’m one of them and will share their most abhorrent opinions with me, which they may not disclose in polite company. It’s to the point that I have to wear “woke” shirts that say things like BLM or trans rights to avoid these monsters.
I assure you my belief that Republicans are awful is not unfounded. Ask them what they think about LGBT+ people. “As long as they don’t shove it down my throat…” Ask them what they think about Native people – “That was so long ago, they need to get over [the genocide].” Ask them if climate change is real, ask them about the poor, ask them about undocumented workers.
Republicans are unfit for society. They would immediately be cast out of any functional community, and rightfully so. The only way to deal with them is to socially and systemically deplatform and disenfranchise them. That’s why I’d never make friends with a Republican.
Is it kind of the same thing as saying the Jews are greedy compared to something like that person is greedy and is also a Jewish person. The Jewish part doesn’t matter and it’s only used as a descriptor. As in when you say republicans are awful you aren’t separating the good from the bad, I cannot believe there are no exceptions and if there are exception what makes it any different to the argument against racism?
People are religiously and/or ethnically Jewish. Republicans are a political party (are you implying being a Republican is a religion or an ethnic group??) Seeing Jewish people as greedy is a stereotype based on racism. Republicans vote for policies and platforms that are bigoted. This is crazy that you think these two things are the same, or are even comparable at all.
The grouping and assumption of someone’s goodness or badness being based on something as complex as a political opinion is also crazy. There are multiple policies and sometimes people just do things to follow the crowd. Being misguided is not the same as being a bad human
Race is something you are born into and to assume all people of that race believe the same thing is ridiculous… They are a group of individuals tied together by chance. Republicans are a group tied together by beliefs. If those beliefs are bad, then the entire group is bad because they all believe the same thing because they all willingly joined that group
You’re saying all republicans are exactly the same? The awful, vile, racist nazi trumpers are the same as the quiet country family that go to church and do charity work and only vote r because they always have and their church community all vote r. They have an exchange student from Africa staying with them because one time they did some missionary work there and thought the people were great? If you think those two are the exactly the same and even believe the same thing I can’t see how that’s all that different fundamentally than racism.
People aren’t good for bad because of their ethnicity or religion. They’re good or bad because of the choices they make. A Republican is someone who has chosen to support the Republican party. That’s such an absolutely vile choice to make that I have no problem with condemning everyone who makes it.
I think you’ll find most people voting r come from backgrounds who always vote republican. It’s a way of life and the idea of voting another way has never entered their mind because of one or two issues like abortion or some other non money related policy. Take abortion for example, these people literally think they are saving innocent babies from being slaughtered. Sounds noble to me, even like they’re, dare I say it, good people or at least trying to be. Except when you take into account the infringement of someone elses bodily autonomy and the part where a bunch of cells don’t have the same consciousness of a fully grown human or even a late term baby which appears to be how they’re thinking about it. Then they’ll throw some other bullshit like it’s what could have been before you killed that fetus. Life is precious. Nearly every one of them then happy to take life saving medicines or wear glasses to change “what could have been.” And then they’ll never ignore that the bible gives instructions on how to abort a fetus and doesn’t appear to condemn it. These people seek truth and want to do the right thing. They’re just denying logic in the process.
No, this is not an all the same thing, and you are unhinged if you think it is. The entire Republican platform is anti-human/anti-progress, and if you align with it in any way, for any reason, you have gone out of your way to be a piece of shit.
There’s no such thing as being a Republican and simultaneously being a good person. These things are not compatible, and certainly not comparable at all to something like race or ethnicity, such as being Jewish.
Edit: If you are arguing that Republicans have the potential to be good people, then this is absolutely true, but it would necessitate ceasing to be a Republican, which they can choose to do at any time.
“Some of the Nazis were good people” – Get the fuck out
I’m a tall chubby cishet dude with a big beard in VA.
People say the quiet part out loud to me within 3-5 minutes basically anytime I go to a bar or something, and all the normies treat me like I’m the asshole when I disagree with the guy saying trans people are too in his face and need to dress appropriately because they’re such a nice guy otherwise.
Well clearly they’re not, are they, if they think entire sections of the population shouldn’t be allowed to live their life (or whatever the subject is?)
My partner passes as a straight cis white dude and works in finance and you are right, within the first interaction of meeting a bigot they will open their mouths and out themselves. And the worst part is, they nearly always phrase it as an in-joke, or an in-thing, like they are figuratively ‘wink wink nudge nudging’ him and it drives him fucking crazy that they just assume he’s one of them and will nod or laugh along. Instead, he pulls a reverse uno and shames them, very politely, for various super neutral reasons: like not being professional and staying on topic, or for being a hr violation, etc. He’s found the less progressive, more business-neutral language really fucks them up, they get super embarrassed
I don’t think I said I think they are all the same. I obviously think in general they are on the wrong side of history. But there’s also some acknowledgment that there are some really shitty liberals too
Well if you look you will find some examples. Didn’t the republicans vote for the veterans care act to push through the use of psilocybin and mdma for treatment resistant veterans suffering from ptsd? I would imagine it would have been hard to go against the grain to make that decision and I’m sure there were a lot of republican voters who weren’t happy but it seems like the obvious right choice
Wait, if you're a Republican and you're admitting that Republican politicians don't have critical thinking ability, then why are you still voting for having them run a country and affecting the livelihoods of millions (billions) of people?
If the only Republican policies you're supporting are benign ones (as a non-American, I don't know which those are), are they worth all the ones that oppress and take away the rights of others?
And if you're a Republican but not a fan or voter of the Republican party as it stands, then maybe you need to reconsider what your definition of a Republican is, because Republicans themselves today are defining themselves in ever-bolder terms.
Then that leads to the even bigger question of how you know that not all Republicans - at least, its uniquely American construction - are bad?
(If you mean to say that in your country, republican is a beautiful-smelling flower, then the answer to that is that in common internet discourse, it has come to mean the American GOP, and people who may be taking the hyperbolic stance that all Republicans are bad are talking specifically about those Republicans. Just FYI.)
And don't get me wrong, I'm a huge supporter of the idea that increased polarisation and demonisation of the other side is only going to push people towards extreme positions and alienate those who only support a small number out of the basket of things that are in that box: things that may be necessary for their continued survival or way of life.
Nonetheless, given what the Republican party has begun to stand for more and more, with its wilful ignorance and inexplicable support for Trump, it is becoming increasingly indefensible to believe that people who will vote for that particular team, regardless of the consequences, are not basically complicit in evil.
I personally don't think all Republicans are bad. But even the good ones have had years to consider if maybe they were the baddies. And if they recognise that there are deplorables among them, then maybe they shouldn't take criticism towards the loudest of them so personally either. And consider moving away from the Republican brand.
I’m basing my opinions off the internet. Can’t go anywhere without hearing about it. I’m not completely against the idea of conservation as a way to slow down some things that may be moving too fast and can have unexpected and unintended consequences. Republicans appear to have a funny idea of what conservative means. I think what I’m trying to get across is that as long as it’s an us vs them attitude and the idea that they are always wrong, dumb, brain dead idiots, there’s not going to be a bridge to figure out what the hell they are thinking
There's a difference between conservatism and regressivism, and as you yourself keep saying, the Republicans you see on the internet (your source, apparently) are not just being conservative.
Which again, begs the question of why you think you're qualified to claim that this is some "truth".
And again, I'm completely sympathetic to the idea that uncritical hatred and demonising of "the other side" leads to uncritical and one-sided ideas of the "truth".
What I think you're missing is the nuance that someone can consider both sides and still consider that one side is indefensible. The disqualification of the modern Republican from being "good people" does not mean that someone has not carefully thought through their stand.
Now about how you react to bad people: you can give them a chance to be good - the benefit of the doubt that they may not actually be standing for everything that being a modern Republican involves. But like I said previously, it might be a good time for those people to re-evaluate whether they actually are Republicans (an archaic term that has no real meaning today beyond a party affiliation) or feel like maybe it's time to recognise something has gone deeply wrong.
"I'm a good person. I just don't believe that kids should get food from the govt. So what if some kids are a little hungry. Their parents need to work harder"
There are a few but we must assume all cops are bastards as a matter of self defence because the consequences of being wrong about it are atrocious. But you know that, don't you?
Any individual cop may prove they specifically are not bad right now, but keep your guard up because it only takes a bad day to change that, and/or the system and constant exposure to bad cops and stupid laws and criminals to grind them down
It is odd to observe. It’s like the idea of being right or wrong has zero nuance to these people and the only viewpoint is being 100% right about everything but then again, may be I’m wrong about that
Are you saying “some republican voters are good people” or “some republican politicians are good people”?
For the first one, that’s probably true but irrelevant. I think most republican voters are trying to do good with their vote, but they’ve got so caught up in Republican fascism that they honestly think voting red is good.
For the second one, I highly doubt it. They don’t have the cult behavior excuse, so at best, they’re completely selfish, enough to put their job security over the lives of others.
I agree strongly with you. The problem is weak leadership from the republicans. The people are just along for the ride on the most part. If the politicians weren’t so spineless and scared of losing their own power they might actually stand up to the shit ones for what they believe in
Then you shouldn’t just vote republican or democrat, but as an american. I don’t label myself as either one - but over the last several elections the choice has been obviously democrat because of the republicans trying to seize power so much. If they could modernize their platform at all I would think about voting for them - but they’re stuck in the 1950s.
So to cut power stop voting on party lines. Show that you’ll vote based on who has the best ideas, not a simple “I’ll always vote R”
Everybody else is shooting you down here, But I’ll meet you in the middle with an even harder to swallow pill.
There are Republicans who AREN’T BAD people, they are just ignorant. Not stupid, necessarily, but ignorant and uneducated. They might think they’re doing good but they are very very wrong.
Yes this is what I believe but im not right all the time either so I try to listen. Often it will just confirm what I thought to begin with but sometimes a see it a bit different
I worked with a guy that was a hard-core conservative, like just shy or real far-right talking points. Anyway he told me he doesn't watch the news. Not that he only watches fox news, I mean he doesn't watch any news at all. He gets his information from Facebook and tiktok
“We’re good people, we just vote for politicians openly calling for violence and retribution upon all their political enemies and fellow Americans, and vote to make people different from us illegal, and vote to strip every safety net to pass directly to the 1%, and vote to protect our God given right to clear an elementary school in 20 minutes with an AR, etc etc etc”
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