We have to agree where we ARE before we stand a chance to agree about what we do from here.
Sure, you may want me to be beaten to death, but at least you admitted eggs aren’t cheap now, this makes us allies.
Common Ground
Submitted 4 days ago by PapaSkwat@lemy.lol to conservative@lemm.ee
https://lemy.lol/pictrs/image/6fe531a9-8e6a-47ad-97ce-6d278fc559a9.jpeg
Comments
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
doingthestuff@lemy.lol 3 days ago
What’s funny is I have no idea if this is written from a red or blue perspective
Soulg@ani.social 3 days ago
Only one side wishes extreme violence on the other. It doesn’t go both ways.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Yeah. Definitely don’t need to take an responsibility for your actions. You can be both wrong and lied to. It’s not like there wasn’t 4 years of this already and a very large group of people telling you what was going to happen if you repeated your past mistakes.
But no. Keep on blaming others for your fuck ups. No one is perfect. No one can blame you for this mess.
Fuck you.
Godort@lemm.ee 4 days ago
You ever wonder how the right seems to move in lockstep while the left constantly debates between themselves about the details?
It’s shit like this that fosters that attitude. If some people on the right can look at something like this and then really examine their positions then thats a win.
The goal with something like this isn’t to get someone to 180 on their beliefs, they know that the government is untrustworthy. It’s to have them really look at what they’re supporting, and if they truly want those changes, after learning what it might cost them.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I don’t want 180s. I don’t want wishy-washy. I don’t want fair weather friends. Why? Because they are untrustworthy. Oh, you flipped 180 and support trans rights now? How long until the next grifter comes along and scares you into thinking the drag community is stealing children? Oh, you’re good with minorities having rights? Are you gonna feel that way the next time some old white man comes along and tells you they are bringing drugs into the country?
I’m sure you’d love to say that you’ll stand by your convictions, but history has show that you won’t. Repeatedly you have changed your positions. Repeatedly you have flip-flopped. I don’t care about you, anymore. Truly. Believe whatever you want to believe, just please do it quietly.
Photuris@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
We didn’t defeat the Nazis the first time with amnesty, conversation, and kindness.
We defeated them by stabbing them, shooting them, and fire bombing their cities.
We will have to do it again.
irish_link@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I think the point is really to give amnesty and try to move on. This idea breaks down and apart the team mentality. It allows people to unite. But by all means keep antagonizing people and see how they dig in their heels.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 4 days ago
How many times do I forgive the person who keeps kicking me in the face?
Photuris@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
That’s how we got the Nazis to stop the first time around: we sat down with them over a cup of tea and expressed our unity with them.
Oh no, wait, that’s not how we defeated Fascism, at all.
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Charlie Brown and the football gag.
Day after day.
Year after year.
There are always people on the left that think this is the time things will be different. They’ve been yanking it away at the last moment since before the civil war.
It’s time to stop being a Charlie Brown.
Septimaeus@infosec.pub 4 days ago
They’re not a monolith. Political ideologies gain and lose members every day.
The kid who kicked the ball over the fence today is never the same one from last time. The kid from last time is more likely to volunteer to fetch the ball.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 4 days ago
lol. Keep telling yourself that. I’ll keep seeing the same news stories about the same right wing politicians trying to take the rights away from the same people while spouting the same lies. Then, I’ll hear the same family members and old high school acquaintances repeating it all as though it were the literal gospel. The only time the conservative kid is volunteering to go get the ball is when they think that a minority might go get it instead.
tritonium@midwest.social 3 days ago
They were not lied to though… it was known they were going to do this.
Pilferjinx@lemmy.world 3 days ago
They were all under the impression it wouldn’t happen to them personally. While it is satisfying to say, “I told you so” it’s never helpful. We kinda need to lift up our dumb compatriots if they see the error of electing a huge mistake.
stardust@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Even when it happens to them it seems like they would still vote for him again, and they are more complaining they were affected than the outcome itself.
And they aren’t going to listen to liberals. Only ones who they will listen to is conservatives so the only way to change their mind is conservatives or false actors pretending to be conservatives to win their vote.
Suffering is better than voting for a lib.
ramenshaman@lemmy.world 2 days ago
They get their news from other places though, places that say Republicans are doing great things (lying). We saw this coming, but many of them did not.
2ugly2live@lemmy.world 3 days ago
They weren’t lied to. They had a whole road map for this. They just didn’t think they would also be affected.
NotLemming@lemm.ee 2 days ago
They have plausible deniability. Some of them truly think trump doesn’t mean most of what he says because he’s trolling. They have poor critical thinking skills, so they aren’t able to take a lot of information and pick out the truth. That’s also why they copy each other. They want the easy solutions.
They need to be given an appealing way back to sanity. We need them and they need us.
2ugly2live@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I guess I feel like being a decent human being should be an appealing enough way. Even if they thought he was joking, what he was joking about wasn’t funny. They were fine risking him, at the very least, being their mouth piece. Saying they were lied to removes the responsibility. It doesn’t make them inherently bad people, but they need to admit they made a mistake (if that’s what they truly believe) and want to come back into sanity because it’s right, not because they feel bad that it’s now their eggs and Medicaid that’s being fucked with.
deaf_fish@lemm.ee 2 days ago
The average person will only spend 5 to 10 minutes a day watching news. The networks they watch are owned by billionaires. I bet most people haven’t heard of project 2025 let alone know what it contains.
Just because you are tuned into politics, doesn’t mean everyone else should be.
This is our curse. We know things, but if we want things to improve, we must also convince the average retarded voter of the things. If we fail, we don’t get to write off half the population.
2ugly2live@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I guess I’m just tired of always having to force this horse to the river to drink. We’re told to make it more inviting, change the flavor, talk softly, and they still go galloping into manure, flinging it on the rest of us in the process. Then they look back, covered in shit, and go, “I didn’t know the shit would have this much shit. Why didn’t you warn us? Aren’t you at least going to help us clean up?” It’s like weaponized incompetence, but with politics.
but I’m also still incredibly bitter about the current situation. My anger is going to have to die down before I can be reasonable. Which is a me problem at the end of the day.
notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world 2 days ago
If this “let’s reach across the isle” approach was viable, the present thread would not exist. I’ll go beyond, trumpists watched Jan6 unravel like anyone else and they still voted for him in 2024. So while I’m not advocating for hatred, I would not consider any plan viable that heavily relies on trumpists changing their minds.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The fundamental problem with reaching across the aisle is that the people you’re reaching to aren’t influential in any meaningful capacity.
I’ve got family who voted for Trump. I can visit them, grab dinner, talk politics, reach sensible rational positions that would lead us both to be able to live freely and fairly. And none of it matters. Because neither of us write legislation, enforce the law, or adjudicate disputes.
Meanwhile, I’ve got friends who are working their way up the respective party organs at the local level. And I’ll periodically ask what they think about this or that. They tend to be as annoyed and disgusted as I do (although I’ll often get the “But your team is worse” rejoinder). Then I’ll ask what they are hoping to change. And the simple response I get back is “We just have to be patient until we’re in a better position”. But they’re never in that position. They’re always subservient to some other vulgar asshole. They’re always pandering to some gross freak of a mega-donor. They’re constantly getting hoodwinked by the Elon Musk / Jeff Bezos political turn.
I would not consider any plan viable that heavily relies on trumpists changing their minds.
There are plenty of voters who went from Obama to Trump in 2016 and then from Trump to Biden in 2020 and then from Biden to fucking Jill Stein in 2024 and it didn’t fucking matter. Even when you do get people to change their minds, they don’t get to do anything with the new information.
Vote for Trump or don’t, your district is as gerrymandered as ever. Vote for Beto O’Rourke for Senate or don’t, the SCOTUS isn’t changing hands in our lifetimes because the deck has already been stacked. If Dems retake Congress in 2026, it won’t matter because they’ll still be the same pack of sycophants courting elites in the Tech and Finance Sector that they were back in 2018 and 2006 and 1992. Many of them literally the same people just moldering in office for 40 years or more.
Winning doesn’t mean anything in a system where the outcomes are predetermined. Shaping opinions among the powerless doesn’t mean anything unless you can convince them to actually take back power for themselves.
Right now, its just voting for your favorite politician on American Idol.
notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world 1 day ago
people can take back economic power
Rivalarrival@lemmy.today 1 day ago
St. Luigi tells me that what we have in common is greater than what differentiates us.
afronaut@lemmy.cafe 2 days ago
Keep in mind, the amount of conservatives that have shown any regret in the slightest is an extremely small percentage.
The majority of them do not use social media outside of Facebook. They still get their news from Fox and Newsmaxx.
We do not owe them anything. Conservatives who have a conscience need to abandon POLITICAL conservatism. If you want to be socially conservative, go right ahead and do that in the privacy of your own home. But, if you think you’re going to cross the aisle and try to organize with leftists while still holding politically conservative beliefs you wish to eventually see enforced for everyone, then yea, fuck off.
GraniteM@lemmy.world 3 days ago
There’s a quote from Robert A. Heinlein that I like to bring up:
Of what use, then, are the American Communists?
They serve one function extremely useful to you and to the country, so useful that, if there were no Communists, we would almost be forced to create some. They are a reliable litmus paper for detecting real sources of danger to the Republic.
Communism is so repugnant to almost all Americans, when they are getting along even tolerably well, that one may predict with certainty that any social field or group in which the Communists make real strides in gaining members or acceptance of their doctrines, any such spot is in such bad shape from real and not imaginary social ills that the rest of us should take emergency, drastic action to investigate and correct the trouble.
Replace “Communist” with “Conservative” and the quote works the exact same way. People don’t take on awful political views in a total vacuum. Their lives and futures got messed up somehow, and in all probability by vast forces beyond their comprehension, let alone their control. And then they went looking for what felt like real answers, and someone was willing to say to them “I’ve got the solution to your problems.”
On some level, their grievances are real. They just got sold on a lie about what could be done to fix them.
NotLemming@lemm.ee 2 days ago
This is gold.
When I was a young teenager I was a communist because I believe in fairness and equality and on paper communism sounds great. Because of this I believed that Russia must just be misunderstood and maligned by the evil capitalist west - 2+2=4. I didn’t have access to a lot of info and my idealism carried me a long way. Then I read about what had happened under communism and in Russia, and it didn’t take long until my views changed entirely.
I think the (not sociopathic or psychotic) majority of MAGA supporters are that way because of what you said - MAGA uses real issues too - a clever mix of lies and truths, and because they believe the ‘fake news’ lies and immerse themselves in echo chambers of MAGA lies.
This has also happened in the UK with the BNP, EDL etc and now reform, which does well mostly in deprived areas (I wonder why?)
There has to be a point when they no longer believe the lies because reality directly contradicts them. But by then will it be too late?
the_q@lemm.ee 4 days ago
The time for solidarity has passed and this bullshit “sowwy” crap some cons are trying to put out there is disingenuous at best. No, will fix everything again and y’all will get the benefit again then go right back to being shitty Republicans again. Fuck all conservatives.
emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 4 days ago
Wow this thread is kinda fucked. Im way more left than most to the point that i think supporting biden/harris leading up to the last election was a mistake, although i would’ve begrudgingly voted harris when it came down to it. But this is just vindictive and unproductive. How about “lets both admit the corporations and their stooges have fucked us for way too long and come together to stop them” rather than some stupid childish finger pointing shit. Like i get the rage, but keep it pointing at the ones who are actively fucking you over.
chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 4 days ago
The ones who are actively fucking me over are the ones that keep supporting the ones that are also actively fucking me over. Accountability doesn’t end at the ballot.
stickly@lemmy.world 2 days ago
So we agree that the ones fucking you over are the billionaires with the bankrolling the fire hose of toxic media that gets people to vote against their interest?
Genuinely not sure of the stance you’re taking…
gofsckyourself@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Yeah yeah. We already get that “both sides bad” argument. You’re clearly ignoring that the Republicans are actively destroying our government, our rights, and our access to necessary infrastructure and services while giving even more power to corporations. One is orders of magnitude worse. So trying to equate the two parties is insultingly misleading.
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 4 days ago
This place has become a self-righteous circle jerk with no means of spreading the information we believe in as they’re hostile to anybody that isn’t exactly the same.
So if all use leftists are here and all the right wingers are on Twitter, then nobody is going to learn anything new as we have become our own echo chambers.
vzq@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Oh no! How will I know what right wingers think? That would mean I need to open a newspaper! Or turn on a television! Or spend an evening with my mother in law’s new boyfriend!
Fuck off with your echo chamber bullshit.
I know what they want. They want to hurt me and mine. And I’m not going to roll over.
afronaut@lemmy.cafe 2 days ago
It’s unproductive to try working with people who, for the best few decades, were actively voting to get rid of my friends and family because they didn’t fit White Heteronormative Christian Right America’s box.
They put all of their faith into Trump. They literally believed God sent him to save America from the Democrats and liberals trying to “destroy” this country.
I’m sorry, but I do not want to put my trust in the hands of racist bigots who can easily be lead astray by their own greed and prejudices.
ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
Geez. The being lied to wasn’t really very secretive, it was out in the open for a very long time.
This is a very weird apology for just being stupid.
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
They weren’t lied to by the right. They were lied to by themselves.
Themselves are the problem and one cannot not remove one from the other.
Those themselves will never be our allies. They will slink right back to their comforting lies at the first convenient moment, betray us, and laugh about it.
BigBenis@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yeah, no thanks. These people were fine with all the hateful and cruel shit the Republicans pedal until it affected them. Whether it’s because they themselves are cruel or just morons, that’s up for debate. But either way, I will not consider them an ally in this. They’ve got to change their shitty ways first.
AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world 2 days ago
100% this. They didn’t care at all until it affected them directly. They refuse to feel empathy for others so I refuse to feel empathy for them.
afronaut@lemmy.cafe 2 days ago
Nah, they should both admit that they were wrong and okay with extreme bigotry in the White House.
Meanwhile, the rest of us who will continue organizing with our fellow minorities, trans, and working class folks.
Alteon@lemmy.world 2 days ago
That’s it how you get people to start moving over to our side here mate. Sure, what they supported is pretty fucked, but if you’re not going to offer people a way to crawl out of the hole they dug themselves in, no one will want to leave the hole.
You’re not wrong for wanting that, but in your righteous superiority, you’re not helping to make anything better.
afronaut@lemmy.cafe 2 days ago
You are misunderstood. The path to crawling out of their hole of conservative bigotry is simple: abandon conservative bigotry.
It is they who want us to compromise our ethics and values. They want us to compromise on immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and helping the unhoused.
You can’t be a conservative AND join leftists in organizing a better future, sorry. Conservatism is antithetical to progress.
LordGimp@lemm.ee 2 days ago
Why in the fuck would I agree to give you people a second chance? Yall openly voted for the racist, criminally convicted sex offender. Fuck you, fuck your farm, and fuck your entire colonist bloodline.
OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
“So anyways, that’s how I made sure the Democrats wouldn’t gain any voters!”
“But I thought you were anti Trump…?”
wulrus@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I appreciate any attempt to win these people back. I mean, there’s nothing to lose. But they were not lied to. Trump was honest about the big picture and it’s exactly what they wanted.
These people are lost for democracy and for reason. To stupidity or to plain evil.
Just look how even people like Dick Cheyney saw this coming and tried everything to stop what’s happening now.
SamboT@lemmy.world 1 day ago
He didnt lie about what his plans of action were, but he was telling everybody immigrants and foreign aid are the source of our problems. (Redunctionist i know)
So he did lie. And most people arent equipped for the disinformation age.
Its easy to say they should be smarter than that, but its also easy to say our administration shouldn’t be fabricating reality to further their platform. Blaming the masses seems pretty pointless to me. We all want better for ourselves. Maybe some are more outwardly selfish or racist or whatever but when are we going to learn to not frame 50% of america as inherently evil? Whats the point of watering down our perception of others?
wulrus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Don’t Americans salute the flag and sing the national anthem every day at school, one of the main reasons being respect to the WW 1 & 2 veterans, who went through hell, and often died, to stop an ideology where some people have worth & dignity and others don’t?
A very conservative Jewish German journalist, Friedman, held an insightful speech in a German state parliament recently, attacking the right wing party that Musk and Trump love so much: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lizOiK1OHf8 (English auto subtitles are of very good quality.)
He is very conservative, been in the conservative party for decades (until they tried to pass an anti immigration law with the right a few weeks ago), strong supporter of Israel, but against Netanyahu’s government. His parents were saved from the Holocaust by Schindler. But he understands the general pattern: Even though they don’t directly attack Jewish people, at least not yet, they don’t accept that everybody is somebody, as he puts it, and that’s where it starts.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
We have to agree where we ARE before we stand a chance to agree about what we do from here.
We don’t do that with self-delusion and deflecting blame though.
The blame doesn’t rest solely on conservatives for this current situation, sure. Some of it falls on the huge number of people who “protest voted”. Some of it rests on the Democratic party for pretending to be the party of the people, but really just being a milquetoast center-right corporatist party that serves the same masters as the Republican party.
For any of us to “come together” and “agree about what we are to do from here,” for any one group to trust the other, we all have to come to terms with and accept our share of the blame. Deflecting blame or deluding ourselves with rhetoric like “we didn’t do anything wrong, we were just lied to” is unproductive. No side will trust the other as long as anyone is still making excuses for themselves.
Be adults, look inward instead of projecting blame, accept responsibility for your actions, and then maybe we can come together to fight against fascism.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Baby steps
Lemminary@lemmy.world 4 days ago
But I low key do want them to admit that they were wrong. Because many people told them a million times and they went 🙉
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world 2 days ago
This doesn’t work with cultists. Any reasonable republican left bailed on the party with Trump.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Good on you.
Kaboom@reddthat.com 4 days ago
The problem is that we are so fundamentally divided on so many issues.
The right wants the right to self defense, the left wants to lick boots, the right thinks that deporting illegal immigrants is the default, the left thinks that it’s another Holocaust, the right thinks that the government spending less money is good, the left wants the government to burn money like it’s coal.
At what point do you just say that they’re just not worthy allies?
Asafum@feddit.nl 4 days ago
The right wants the right to self defense, the left wants to lick boots, the right thinks that deporting illegal immigrants is the default, the left thinks that it’s another Holocaust, the right thinks that the government spending less money is good, the left wants the government to burn money like it’s coal.
So yeah… The part about being lied to. Right there. It’s all right there.
There are plenty of gun owners on the left for one and the conversation is pretty much always about the excessive “weapons of war” like assault rifles. Very few people are talking about getting rid of shotguns, hunting rifles, pistols, etc… hell Kamala even said she’s a gun owner, I think she owns a Glock or something.
There is an increase of discussion of actual concentration camps because you don’t need to gas people for it to be a concentration camp. The internment camps for the Japanese in WWII were concentration camps too. The right could help fix the immigration issue if they’d focus on a plan to legally process the people faster that want to move here so there isn’t a 10 year waiting period that makes people feel like they have to enter illegally, but they’re against that.
The last is just straight up nonsense. No one wants to just burn money. We already pay taxes, we want the taxes to help people, not just go to the military and corporate handouts.
Worx@lemmynsfw.com 4 days ago
Technically the left does want “the government to burn money like it’s coal” - we don’t want either to be burned :p
Lemminary@lemmy.world 4 days ago
the left wants to lick boots
I’m sorry? Come again? 😂
Kaboom@reddthat.com 2 days ago
What else do you call someone who wants the government to have all the guns?
Croquette@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Yeah, no nuances here.
Quadhammer@lemmy.world 3 days ago
The division is by design by the people in power. Weve got more in common than you think
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Image
If you are “conservative” in any manner, you’ve been voting for the destruction of both people and society in both word and deed for the past 40 years.
taiyang@lemmy.world 4 days ago
To be fair, they’ve also been lied to for longer than that, sometimes by their own parents who too we’re lied to.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 4 days ago
“conservatives” globally have been given more grace and caused more destruction outside of any groups other than literal nazi’s and fascists, of which they are the gateway drug. We put up with them and they offer almost nothing constructive to society.
They aren’t idiots, and if they were even a bit intellectually curious, they would know better.
Fuck them, fuck fascists, and fuck this sublemmy. It should be removed. The time for grace is over. The gracious that has been offered to conservative movements has been trampled upon repeatedly and perpetually bad this bad faith ideology.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
I don’t disagree, but just like the prison system, revenge doesn’t solve any problems. It only makes them worse. The goal should be rehabilitation to improve society, not revenge seeking to make it worse just to make us temporarily feel superior.
Lightor@lemmy.world 2 days ago
At what point do you stop letting the person cause damage in this quest for rehabilitation? If someone knowingly hurts groups of people and is proud of it what is your path there? To rehabilitate someone like that they need empathy, the one thing Republicans lack en mass. That’s the only reason they are upset now, because it finally impacts them. If a person is proud of hurting people and lacks any empathy I don’t see a path to rehabilitation for them. And trying to do so just gives them more slack to cause more harm. We’ve tried talking and reasoning for years, look where we are.
TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Nah… fuck all that.
afronaut@lemmy.cafe 2 days ago
Mr. Pink does
tipwork with fascistsTropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 2 days ago
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