Whenever I try to talk politics (or ESPECIALLY world events) with Liberals, as soon as they determine that I am a leftist, they just get so fucking smug and have this sense of self-superiority about them. Exactly zero interest in having a good faith discussion. They are so incredibly dismissive and condescending.
Of course, no matter how much evidence that you provide, or how well you frame your arguments, you just get eye rolls and dismissed out of hand.
I am reminded of the Bernie campaigns when the liberal media pundits would behave with nothing more than sneering contempt at young people who just wanted fucking health care.
We know that they’re like this BUT WHY? Why are they all such smug shit stains? I stg it’s like their defining trait.
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We live in a neoliberal world. They currently have what they see as a good reason to be smug, their ideas are reflected back at them by the most powerful members of society. So those ideas can build and hold political power.
They just don’t fully recognise that they can’t build and hold it that way.
Edit: by “they”, of course, I mean workers with liberal politics. Liberal politicians and elites actually do have good reason to be smug, the world economy and political system currently serves their interests.
bunch of adults with teachers pet syndrome
Haha, that too no doubt!
I find there’s this strong instinct with liberals to treat the establishment, legacy press and institutions as sacrosanct. Sure, they’ll acknowledge that those can make mistakes on a technical level, but this is only as a nod to the logic of fallibility. Practically, though, what’s printed and disseminated from them is considered the honest reflection of reality.
So when they see some nonsensical take from the NY Times about how Marx was wrong because he failed to consider the advent of ordering Chinese food delivery through a phone app, there’s no consideration about what Marx actually said about labor and technology. There’s no pause to wonder why the NY Times didn’t have a Marxist counter perspective. And certainly not a trace of concern that who owns the NY Times would play any part in why there would be a take dismissive of Marx in the “paper of record.” No, to them, a bad take on Marx wouldn’t make into the pages of the NY Times because the editors couldn’t possibly allow it.
And thus when someone disagrees with the worldview put forth by the establishment organs, this is not regarded as a difference of opinion or perspective. No, that is misinformation, and you? You’re the rube that fell for misinformation. To them, disagreeing with the NY Times’ take on Marx is no different than believing in chemtrails.
Of course, this get socially reinforced. They don’t want to come off as being the rube, and sticking to the establishment organ lines is what will earn them the praise of the Very Qualified People in the Room.
To them, disagreeing with the NY Times’ take on Marx is no different than believing in chemtrails.
100 points to PKMKII
I have never ever encountered this in the flesh world. I dont deal with any libs except everyone but me on hexbear when im online unless discussing hobbies.
It’s really hard to get away with being smug face to face, smugness is a bad trait. Online…everyone is smug at all time. Im smug writing this. Smug comes wirh the territory here, it sucks but ain’t new, people were smug online in the usenet era.
I have. They are the ones who think of themselves as very political, especially the careerists. Also, maybe unsurprisingly, they love weaponizing tokenism.
I’ve encountered it many times, though at this point I think incredulous anger is more common (and I mean truly incredulous as in somewhat unbelieving, as compared to the fully-credulous anger that I see from Republican types).
Yes the anger is a big one. Especially about AES states when you fully come out and defend them. People will casually say completely false shit in everyday conversation as if its an obvious truth. Like “China is authoritarian” and then when you give the smallest amount of push back they short circuit.
Actual exchange between two lib friends of mine:
Lib 1: I have Chinese food.
Lib 2: (jokingly) That’s racist.
Lib 1: Only against Muslims.
i dont get it
They were presumably talking about the deradicalization campaign China did in Xinjiang that libs spuriously call a “genocide”, but I didn’t ask them to clarify because I didn’t want to subject myself to them bloviating about “China bad”.
Oh yes. Genocide is when China makes you go to school to learn not to be a terrorist. But when Israel kills thousands that’s just an oopsie.
Online…everyone is smug at all time.
Here in the bear community, from time to time the choking clouds of smug ease off a little and a bit of humanity shines through. I mean you’re not really wrong overall, this operation was born in the Reddit smug mines so that has some predictable outcomes
I think a lot of things we don’t necessarily recognize as such actually come down to a kind of darwinian selection process. Power structures will always tend to reward those who help reproduce and reinforce that power structure. And since we live in such a firmly capitalist neoliberal power structure, anticommunism is not only the default, but any acts or even attitudes that perpetuate it tend to get rewarded. It will always be the path of least resistance when you don’t, y’know, resist the prevailing power structure. And if you’re sufficiently pro-capitalist you will be closer to the top of the stacked deck when it comes time for some luck of the draw. It’s why the slimiest, the most self-serving, the most cruel individuals tend to float to the top and become CEOs because those traits are what best serve that system, the corporation. But it happens just as much in our “every day lives.” We live in an environment that socially selects for being a smug liberal shitstain and so we’re surrounded by smug liberal shitstains.
Unfortunately the environment that capitalist society selects for is incompatible for long term survival of the actual physical environment of Earth
Absolutely! There are selective forces working on the broader systems themselves. Neoliberal capitalism isnt just the structure that imposes a selection process on individual humans, it is itself also subject to the material circumstances of the entire world which puts selective pressures on economic systems. From geopolitical forces (China’s model being obviously more “fit” to survive and even pass on its “genes” in the form of being a model that other nations can emulate) to, like you said, running up against the literal limits of a finite planet when capitalism demands infinite growth to sustain itself. As everyone here of course knows, these are some of the many examples of the contradictions inherent within capitalism, but I think using a Darwinian lens along with the Marxist one often works pretty well to frame how a lot of these things work.
People are taught that strong beliefs that are not in the mainstream are inherently flawed by virtue of being “extreme” and conditioning like that can go bone deep. They think they know better because they are told that their position is the informed moderate one that accounts for all the facts.
I’ll add to what Blakey already said. Most liberals (openly or not) are firm believers in stuff like the US is a beacon of righteousness and goodness (in short: a city on a hill), the American dream, American exceptionalism, American civil religion (in a word: Voting!), etc. And liberals think they are exemplars of the best of America.
They don’t like anybody - especially leftists - that the US is an insane outlier when it comes to such undeniable stuff as police budgets and the percentage of the American population that’s incarcerated. It ruins their “If only I could go back to brunch!” mindset.
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Edit
I checked out Bluesky and this was literally the second post I saw:
There are no votes on the House schedule today. That doesn’t mean they will not try to slip in the 70 Billion so ICE can continue imitating the Gestapo. CALL YOUR REPS.
I hate that “call your reps” stuff. Dem pols don’t give a fuck about phone calls. If they’re gonna vote for the gestapo - they’re gonna.
They like to think of themselves as the centrist adults in the room. They pride themselves on being the mature, rational ones who chose the realistic way to help the most people. They see republicans as violent, uneducated losers, and they see leftists as violent, unrealistic idealists.
In short, they’re smug because they think leftism is childish and naive.
There’s a poverty of imagination in liberalism, too. If this is the best existing system, then by extension any changes that can be made to improve it are minor tweaks, so we shouldn’t aspire to any more.
It’s also limiting in their sense of scale. You know the old Wyoming saying ‘if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail’, then the liberal problem is ‘if the only tool you have is a nailclipper then a tapestry looks like a ribbon’. They can only think in incrementalism. The problems are then naturally reduced in their imagination into something that liberalism can solve.
I think its how they protect their cognitive dissonance. To them they are right and better then those evil Republicans. I mean suuure they get closer and closer to voting in a blue Nazi but they are good and everyone else is bad. Check mate contrarian child.
I think its how they protect their cognitive dissonance
This rings very true for me. It’s much easier to outright dismiss an idea that contradicts what they already believe than it is to grapple with the consequences of “Well what if that’s actually true?”
I’ll give an example. I was talking/debating with some libs about the war in Ukraine (my first mistake) and I’ll mention that I am Canadian - we are HEAVILY INVESTED in that war (and also have a huge number of ethnic Ukranians that live here). My point was that Ukraine joining NATO is a red line for Russia, and it shouldn’t have surprised anybody that things went the way they did.
“Well Ukraine is a soverign country they can do what they please!”
Ok, what if Canada wanted to ally with Beijing and have DongFeng missiles pointed directly at Washington DC? We’re a sovereign country, surely we can do that if we want to too, right? But how could we possibly not expect there to be dire consequences for doing something so reckless and stupid?
I thought that was an extremely straightforward and reasonable comparison, but it was met with eye rolls and immediately dismissed out of hand.
Maybe they were rolling their eyes at the assertion that Canada is a sovereign country?
No, that was me, and that was also met with eye rolls and immediately dismissed out of hand.
I find this usually stops once they realize what type of leftist I am. If they see you as some non-threatening electoralism following leftist they will act like that but whip out the “I hope Iran sinks a US Aircraft Carrier.” or the “China is the only hope for humanity’s future.” and it turns into outrage pretty quick lol.
when your income depends upon maintaining certain beliefs, most people find it’s quite easy to maintain those beliefs and keep getting paid
It’s worth remembering that 85% of the Democrat media ecosystem is laughing (or screaming) at Republicans for being stupid and backwards. They really get a concerning level of their self-identity from their sense of intellectual superiority that is solely enabled by their opposition being literally some of the most anti-intellectual people on the planet.
They are also taught to view any countrymen to their left as naive children who “make the perfect the enemy of the good” or who just want to start fires rather than engage in the adult tasks of getting things done. This can be seen in constant shower arguments they have both in media and to each other, which again are mostly directed at Republicans but can also be directed at progressives (see West Wing). You are liable to not be treated as a person but just this media-based archetype.
Some people expend very little energy on politics and injustice. They simply focus on their day to day lives and absorb the opinions of those around them. It isn’t malice… it’s just ignorance and arrogance
People’s energy and jokes reveal one thing… they don’t care.
Listen to West Wing Thing
From NATOpedia:
Guests on the show included … Abby Martin … Lee Camp, Katie Halper, several members of Chapo Trap House, Briahna Joy Gray …
Ok, I am intrigued.
It’s just the only palatable exposure to the quintessence of lib smugness that is The West Wing
I think Chapo has an episode or two just about the show, so there’s that, and
also did an episode.
Watch Dave slowly lose any chill he had early on and literally make actionable threats towards Sorkin. It is kinda amazing to witness
There’s one with our dear boy
talking about the very special 9/11 West Wing episode which is good as a standalone
A good podcast but one host is a dsa guy and the other is a lib.
Hopin’ the new soviet man we build in a new society is able to actually debate an idea and come to a better conclusion because of it instead of what people are like currently.
I literally point to the info I reference and try to tie it to a broader point to get the other person to totally ignore and just repeat the dumb shit they already said.
I find it hard to communicate with people when nobody seems to know what words mean
It’s tedious, but you can often get farther by agreeing on definitions with them at an early stage. In the process, if you are discussing ideas rather than trying to interpret what a third party was trying to communicate, it’s normally better not to get too hung up on wanting your preferred word to have your preferred meaning, because it’s very easy to just stipulate a new term that has whatever meaning you prefer for the purpose of the conversation.
Edit: I say this as someone who is very particular about words because, due to being particular about those preferences, I made the mistake of not doing this for like a decade even though it’s quite easy most of the time.
Could you provide an example, comrade?
Sure thing. As a low-effort example, here’s Lenin responding to a liberal professor making sophistical use of the meaning of “equality,” which he counters by accepting that definition of equality as a logically valid concept that no one believes and explaining that that concept is different from political equality (which both liberals and socialists believe in a version of) and that is different from economic equality (which socialists support in opposition to liberals).
As an example that I guess is also low-effort, if someone insists that the “real” definition of “socialism” is when the state makes you share your toothbrush, you can try explaining to them that there’s a difference between personal and private property, but if they just insist that “you’ll own nothing” is “socialism,” perhaps it would be better to simply say, “Then by your definition, I am not a ‘socialist,’ because that is not my position. What I advocate for is ‘economic democracy’ [i.e. extending the democratic process to economic operations that are currently dictatorially governed by the bourgeoisie]” instead, just for the sake of being able to speak with them. This sort of thing can come up with many terms, like the definition of private property. If they demand that “private property” be defined as the US legal system (for example) currently defines it, then you can say you aren’t interested in “private property” by that definition because you want to distinguish between “personal property” and, for the sake of being able to communicate, let’s call it “profit-making property.”
Does this make sense?
Does this make sense?
Totally, yes thanks.
I do sometimes wonder what comes first, the smugness or the incandescent rage whenever you reject their ideas and outflank them on the left. They need to be the adults in the room and also the only rational worldview. They don’t so much believe in what their ideology is, they flatly cannot let themselves comprehend that what they think is ideology in the first place.
This is why they hate Marxists so much, because we make them publicly look like the monsters they are. They need tepid “well I don’t love that we bomb children” to be the pinnacle of morality and kindness, and any argument that is righteous is an affront to their view of themselves. The smugness has to be there otherwise they realize the abyss they are standing over like Wile-e-coyote
