something being labeled a “disorder” doesn’t mean it’s “bad,” it just means it’s different from average

That’s until you start talking about “treatment”, at which point you’re discussing how to mitigate or correct the “disorder”.

And that gets you to Conversation Therapy, which is just medicalized torture.

The end game of “Transgenderism is a disorder” amounts to Gitmo for Trans People.

Let’s for a second assume it is a mental illness, how does that make the people feel who are experiencing it? Do they feel loved and understood?

“Hate the sin, love the sinner” has been the historical approach far-right evangelicals use to gull parents into conversation therapy for their kids.

Conservatives have adopted much of the same liberalish compassionate language up top and horrifyingly brutal physical, emotional, and sexual abuse on the back end for drug rehabilitation and prison reform.

The American idea of love and understanding is to brainwash them into compliance with social norms, while insisting the torture they’re inflicting is a kindness.

Wonder how much longer you’ll be able to question the impact professional gambling has on the outcome of UFC matches.

You had a better chance of stopping or slowing it if you didn’t let the other side take over our entire government

Too many Lemmyites didn’t vote hard enough. That’s why every single state in the country trended Republican in 2024. You fucking idiots on a 4th rate social media site ruined things for everyone.

When you think about it, this is really the fault of the Iranians for not submitting quietly to the Shah in 1979.

Everything after that was completely outside anyone’s control.

They’re both wrong

Those NICU babies bombed by the IDF shouldn’t have joined Hamas.

morons that decided not to vote

The only people I see on this board are people who held their noses and voted while complaining nobody else voted but them.

The non-voters aren’t on social media telling you they aren’t going to vote. They’re simply checking out entirely.

The only people who hear you are the ones that did vote for the shitty compromise candidate and are now getting abuse from you because they didn’t vote hard enough.

bOtH pArTiEs ArE tHe SaMe LoL aMiRiTe

The Daddy Party comes home drunk from the party and beats you with his belt.

The Mommy Party cries in the corner, telling you there’s nothing she can do because you didn’t support her enough.

Then I did nothing about it between presidential elections.

People blink in and out of existence between elections. Nobody actually exists when they aren’t voting.

Nobody organized with their coworkers to form unions. Nobody carried for relatives that had lost work or gotten sick from the pandemic. Nobody provided care for young children or volunteered to help impoverished neighbors or mucked out homes after devastating hurricanes. Nobody went to school to get advanced degrees in fields necessary for building out green energy or modern transit or dense housing or criminal justice.

Nobody. Did. Anything.

Four years later, I demand the party cater to me, Me, ME.

When you think about it, denouncing genocide is an entirely selfish act.

it’s giving him exactly what he wants, attention.

He seems to want worship more than simply wanting attention.

all collectively ignore him

I don’t think Elon is a problem you can solve by shoving fingers in ears and squeezing your eyes shut.

Most of his Carney Act is pointed at your Congressmen, not you personally. And they’re happy to use him as a tool for money laundering, whether you look at him or not.

Humans famously incapable of working in large numbers towards a common goal.

People are sleeping under bridges while they work 40hrs a week… Wtf did you people vote for?

People sleeping under bridges weren’t the ones enfranchised to vote.

I just don’t see a route for people to organize working class folks under a banner when all the banners have already been tarnished for 60-70% of the people

I don’t see the problem of banners being tarnished nearly so much as the Right Wing Wurlitzer media blinding and defeaning its audience at a scale no small community outreach organization can compete with. It’s less that anyone has an entrenched view of <insert ideology> as dirty and more that - at any moment - a talk radio host can unload a shotgun full of sloppy diarrhea in any direction.

we the working class are being robbed endlessly by the elite ruling class and it has to change

At some point, people do need to understand that they control the means of production in a very literal sense. Their hands are on the rudder and it is their collective effort that moves the ship. But building that class consciousness is hard. At some level, you aren’t trying to build a giant ideological social movement. What you’re trying to build is a network of people around you who like and trust one another.

That’s significantly more impervious to shotgun blasts of feces from a national media organ, because its no longer a contest between Army of Loud Mouths and Guy You’ve Never Heard Of.

Id worry if you expand it beyond that you lose a lot of support.

I think you have a large deficit of trust, generally speaking. There is no Perfect Messaging Strategy you can use to shape discourse. There is only the sheer volume of discourse blasted out over a wide audience. YouTube filling up with random right-wing hacks doesn’t happen because the hacks are incredibly good at their job. It entirely because the billionaire donor class is willing to spend enormous amounts of money to spew this message everywhere.

You, personally, can’t do anything about that. But you can build up a local group of friends and neighbors who like one another. Having a community around you who like and trust one another is the best defense against this kind of aimless hate. Sticking up for one another at every opportunity builds trust and confidence. Finding new opportunities to make new friends and expand your circle is all you can really do.

You’re going to implement a “No Elon Memes” rule. We’re going to get some of the dankest memes you’ve ever seen in your life featuring Elon. And then…

If there’s no competition, where’s the incentive for companies to innovate or improve in any way?

What if instead of competing we were cooperating towards a shared goal?

the latest innovations are always in money making

Look at the history of leaded paint and gasoline in America, and you’ll discover its far from the latest.

There is no incentive to innovate in a way that serves a common good, but there is massive incentive to “innovate” in a way that drives profits up.

The incentives tend to be towards ballooning consumption/spending/debt, which is rarely good for any given individual who isn’t on the receiving end of revenue.

You can’t organize the working class with a “Marxist” reading list

If you don’t read theory, you’re going to have a hard time with praxis.

I just said dont say marxism or communism because a huge percent of the population are literal sheep who have already been told thats bad

I tend to find that labeling things is a lot of wasted effort, but shrugging and owning the label other people give you is a powerful method of reclaiming the language.

If you’re an affable, compassionate, well-organized, and appealing organizer, and someone comes around calling you a Far-Left Sicko Commie, then that’s actually pretty great for Far-Left Sicko Commies everywhere.

The struggle I see, more often than not, is with individuals who come into an organization dogmatically adhering to a party line that lacks a party. The dogmatism in the name of Marxist Theory (or Anarchist Theory or Liberal Theory or whatever personal staunchly held belief you’ve decided to cling to) is what ends up wrecking an organization. Theories can only inform your actions, but at the end of the day you need to tackle your problems practically and make your case materially.

People bickering over the ideological underpinnings of the Spanish Civil War, then spiraling into calling one another Tankies and Scratched Liberals and such… not terribly helpful in the long run.

I probably hate Joe Biden more than most Republicans do. Unlike them, I actually know some of his policies.

Every day I get down on my knees and pray to the Sweet Baby Jesus that we get the kind of Far-Left Super-Woke Anti-Imperial Anti-Racist-Baby Red Diaper LGBTQ Sicko Pinko Communist that the average FOX News Republican keep insisting Democrats elected.

Trumpists: “We did it! We won! Trump is President! What’s the first step to Making America Great Again?”

Elon: “I think we’re going to increase the number of H1-B visas.”

Vivek: “Definitely more East Asian immigration. That’s what this country needs more than anything.”

Trump: “Sounds good to me.”

Trumpists: “… wtf?”

Advertisers are begging for it. The ability to ingest your data at record scale and bombard you with privatized propaganda as fee-for-service is hugely in demand.

Just have to recognize that these appliances aren’t for you to control. This is Microsoft’s world and we’re just renting space in it.