Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[garbon]

Luckily, there's real leftism, which holds as little truck with self-congratulatory identity politics as the right does.  We want to put the majority -- workers -- into power, not this minority or that, especially not when that group is an extraordinarily privileged one like the one pictured.

Yes that is rather tone deaf.

[DGuller]

I do think there is something wrong with having one's beliefs shaken by a tweet.

I didn't say it was just a single tweet.  Do you even read the posts before you start composing witty comebacks?  Things add up to an impression, one piece of communication at a time.

[Valmy]

I see that Huff Po's entire editing staff looks under 35. How Ageist.

[garbon]

I do think there is something wrong with having one's beliefs shaken by a tweet.

I didn't say it was just a single tweet.  Do you even read the posts before you start composing witty comebacks?  Things add up to an impression, one piece of communication at a time.

Okay, several social media posts.

[Martinus]

Luckily, there's real leftism, which holds as little truck with self-congratulatory identity politics as the right does.  We want to put the majority -- workers -- into power, not this minority or that, especially not when that group is an extraordinarily privileged one like the one pictured.

Fair enough. At least it's a honest way to convince me that I am not a leftist.

But I respect it more than identity politics, as perpetrated by one of the most privileged groups in human history, aka white Western middle class women.

[Martinus]

I do think there is something wrong with having one's beliefs shaken by a tweet.

I didn't say it was just a single tweet.  Do you even read the posts before you start composing witty comebacks?  Things add up to an impression, one piece of communication at a time.

I wouldn't even say that your beliefs are "shaken" - it's just what used to be described as leftism/liberalism got highjacked by a bunch of ideologues with authoritarian tendencies, only with a scenography differing (as it was changed from "God, country and guns" to various identity groups and "oppression"). But from a Marxist perspective, the foundation/base is the same (keeping down the working class/rednecks) - only the superstructure has changed.

[garbon]

But I respect it more than identity politics, as perpetrated by one of the most privileged groups in human history, aka white Western middle class women.

Well feminism has long been the doing of white Western middle class women. Only ones privileged enough to have the time to make a movement about it. Only with the emergence of 'identity politics' did feminism start to change when you had black women saying 'hey, those issues you, white ladies are all concerned about have little to do with the struggles we face as black women.'

[Martinus]

To me identity politics is guilty of the same sin as any form of totalitarianism - it stops to view people as individuals and instead ascribes to them motivations, needs and agendas solely on the basis of their membership in a group, such as gender, race or sexuality (and even goes so far as to deny those who "break the lines" an independent agency, dehumanizing them as "self-hating", "uncle Toms" and similar epithets). As such, it is an enemy of any movement based on personal liberty and personal responsibility - in short the entire foundation of Western thought (from classical philosophy, to Christianity, to the Enlightenment).

[Valmy]

To me identity politics is guilty of the same sin as any form of totalitarianism - it stops to view people as individuals and instead ascribes to them motivations, needs and agendas solely on the basis of their membership in a group, such as gender, race or sexuality (and even goes so far as to deny those who "break the lines" an independent agency, dehumanizing them as "self-hating", "uncle Toms" and similar epithets). As such, it is an enemy of any movement based on personal liberty and personal responsibility - in short the entire foundation of Western thought (from classical philosophy, to Christianity, to the Enlightenment).

I do wonder about people saying their identity is this big complicated intersection of all these naval gazing gender, race, and sexuality components. I mean I get those are part of who you are but surely ones identity is more about who you want to be as a person and what you want to do with your life than those things. But maybe that is just my 30-something brain talking since all that naval gazing stuff is something people tend to do when they are young.

[Capetan Mihali]

Luckily, there's real leftism, which holds as little truck with self-congratulatory identity politics as the right does.  We want to put the majority -- workers -- into power, not this minority or that, especially not when that group is an extraordinarily privileged one like the one pictured.

Fair enough. At least it's a honest way to convince me that I am not a leftist.

But I respect it more than identity politics, as perpetrated by one of the most privileged groups in human history, aka white Western middle class women.

Making the ruling class more "diverse" by making bosses out of some women and/or non-white people is cold comfort to a lot of people who haven't a prayer of making even their grandchildren members of that class.

Hence the fundamental inadequacy of Clintonian finger-wagging and mock-horror that the "Trump Democrats" who gave Sanders those 80/20 primary victories (hint: not young affluent "Bros") couldn't give a shit about the welfare of a party steadfastly intent on rejecting their interests or of a candidate who continues to ignore them as the general election gets closer.

[Valmy]

Making the ruling class more "diverse" by making bosses out of some women and/or non-white people is cold comfort to a lot of people who haven't a prayer of making even their grandchildren members of that class.

Hence the fundamental inadequacy of Clintonian finger-wagging and mock-horror that the "Trump Democrats" who gave Sanders those 80/20 primary victories (hint: not young affluent "Bros") couldn't give a shit about the welfare of a party steadfastly intent on rejecting their interests or of a candidate who continues to ignore them as the general election gets closer.

Free trade policies have lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. The temporary pain will be well worth it in the end. Besides how large can the "ruling class" actually be? Putting everybody in the "ruling class" seems about as realistic as trying to make all children above average.

[Capetan Mihali]

Making the ruling class more "diverse" by making bosses out of some women and/or non-white people is cold comfort to a lot of people who haven't a prayer of making even their grandchildren members of that class.

Hence the fundamental inadequacy of Clintonian finger-wagging and mock-horror that the "Trump Democrats" who gave Sanders those 80/20 primary victories (hint: not young affluent "Bros") couldn't give a shit about the welfare of a party steadfastly intent on rejecting their interests or of a candidate who continues to ignore them as the general election gets closer.

Free trade policies have lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. The temporary pain will be well worth it in the end. Besides how large can the "ruling class" actually be? Putting everybody in the "ruling class" seems about as realistic as trying to make all children above average.

Hint: the point is eliminating the existence of a ruling class.

And I'll just sit here and wait for the voluminous evidence that "free trade" policies have "lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty"; or else I'll just assert that they have equally consigned hundreds of millions to permanent economic instability and dependency.  "Oh but all those Bangladeshis making Nikes for $0.35 an hour were worse as rice farmers!" -- when the prospect of Bangladesh industrialisizing (and being permitted to industrialize) via an ISI scheme isn't contemplated as an alternative; it's either the neoliberal status quo or feudal rice farming, and that's it.

EDIT:  Turkey, India, and Brazil -- to name a few important players, and not to mention China! -- didn't lift their millions out of poverty post-1945 by abjectly accepting the "free trade" conditions imposed upon them by the Western powers, if you'd bother to do the homework for yourself instead of accepting the rationale of the World Bank/IMF/(Eurozone?) that any other means of development is impossible.

EDIT 2:  And the instability of places like the Shah's Iran and various Latin American and Middle Eastern countries is precisely due to the export-commodity-oriented demands of the Western powers and the subsequent neoliberal ideology (of dismantling the social state, etc.) that formed around it.

[Tamas]

I love you Mihali but such first world city dweller logic can get on my nerves. If you think it is such an injustice to lift a country out of subsistence farming it is still not too late for you to find a piece of land somewhere where you can live the True Life.

Just because people invested in shitholes for the own profit and not for the welfare of the general population, and that the process of improvement isn't an overnight thing, it does not make it bad, or net negative.

I know it is much more fun from the outside to let the third world remain on their farms and their funny little huts but let's give the chance to those who want more, shall we?

[garbon]

To me identity politics is guilty of the same sin as any form of totalitarianism - it stops to view people as individuals and instead ascribes to them motivations, needs and agendas solely on the basis of their membership in a group, such as gender, race or sexuality (and even goes so far as to deny those who "break the lines" an independent agency, dehumanizing them as "self-hating", "uncle Toms" and similar epithets). As such, it is an enemy of any movement based on personal liberty and personal responsibility - in short the entire foundation of Western thought (from classical philosophy, to Christianity, to the Enlightenment).

I do wonder about people saying their identity is this big complicated intersection of all these naval gazing gender, race, and sexuality components. I mean I get those are part of who you are but surely ones identity is more about who you want to be as a person and what you want to do with your life than those things. But maybe that is just my 30-something brain talking since all that naval gazing stuff is something people tend to do when they are young.

Well I would love to just be who I am as a person but this pesky brown skin, well people ascribe judgments and motivations to it.

[Capetan Mihali]

I love you Mihali but such first world city dweller logic can get on my nerves. If you think it is such an injustice to lift a country out of subsistence farming it is still not too late for you to find a piece of land somewhere where you can live the True Life.

Just because people invested in shitholes for the own profit and not for the welfare of the general population, and that the process of improvement isn't an overnight thing, it does not make it bad, or net negative.

I know it is much more fun from the outside to let the third world remain on their farms and their funny little huts but let's give the chance to those who want more, shall we?

  I love you too Tamas, but this is really the most laughable kind of argument.  It's not too late for you find yourself a plot of land in the Third World and show them the glories of free-market capitalism, either.  Why aren't you on that ship?  Why did you instead catch the ship in the other direction, rather than convincing your fellow Hungarians of the free market's glories?