I've been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to "voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism" and "the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic" and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.
More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they're replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.
It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling -- in retrospect I'm pretty sure I could've built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that's what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) -- and the only reason I'm not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.
I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?
The difference is that revolutions HAVE happened throughout history, and have been successful.
Comparing a political act that has historical precedent to a bible story with no basis in fact is probably the most flaccid “both sides” centrist argument I’ve ever heard.
Most revolutions don't result in a better world for the common person. They result in warlords taking power.
So how long does it take to go from "overthrowing the new warlords" and "we have to stay this way because this is the way it is"?
Like I know you didn't mean to, but you just made a pretty good argument why a revolution isn't inherently a bad thing: it's replacing warlords.
Be a use even if you're right, and every single prior revolution has resulted in warlords gaining power...
That doesn't mean the next one will too. And the alternative is living under a system that's inherently corrupt and was created by warlords whose main desire would be maintaining power and preventing change at all costs.
Like, you can say you don't want to try, but why try to talk others out of the chance to make things better for everyone including yourself?
Why shit on people who want to make the world better just because they care to even talk about trying?
I almost think that's the intent of the original post. Lots of people are doing important justice work, but in some circles they are treated like traitors to the cause if they aren't threatening class warfare.
I feel like that's the important bit of what OP typed.
OP wants to make 20 claims in one comment, and expects anyone that replies to address all 20 in depth.
That's known as a Gish Gallop. The point of it is to overrwhelm someone with so many false claims that they can't respond to them all.
OP is claiming that instead of people doing that, they stop and address the first untrue thing OP has claimed...
Which is apparently their first sentence the majority of the time.
But the fundamental overall point of complaints like OP, is they feel there shouldn't be standards if you're on the same "team". Which ironically is what it's like for devout religious followers.
No matter the small disagreements, at the end of the day you're on the same team.
The left tends to have more varied standards of what's ok, and an unwillingness to compromise personal morals to fit in with the "team".
Most people think that's a good thing. The opposite is how we keep ending up with fucking nazis all the time.
No, I mean that I wrote a comment with five sentences and you literally only read the first one.
For the record, I wrote that sentence in reference to the post I linked to in the body. Take this chain, for example. Or this one where someone admitted point blank to not reading a single word I wrote.
Now. It would be incredibly hypocritical of me to not respond to the rest of your comment after chewing you out for not responding to the rest of mine, so I will. I do not think it is unreasonable, if I agree with 90% of your positions but disagree with the remaining 10%, to expect not to be treated like a fully fledged enemy. I absolutely do not think that saying I'm on the same team should be sufficient to demand respect, but I do expect to be given the benefit of the doubt, and to be able have a civil discussion about why the less-drastic methods I prefer to achieve the same aims you seek are insufficient. I was not in the thread I think you are referencing.
Can I offer a little advice..? I recently started doing this myself.
If the language starts to become emotional, nope out asap. These people just want a fight, and you won't get anything else out of them.
At best they are emotionally immature and might grow out of it some day, at worst they are trolls trying to drain your energy so it can't be used elsewhere.
I'm not really sure that a gish gallop can happen in a written medium. In this case, someone could very well just make an extremely long drawn out post that addresses all 20 points. It's not like a live chat or a conversation where someone can talk over you, or actually just raise a bunch of new points that don't make a lot of sense when bunched together.
And that would take a lot of time and effort...
For no chance of it working, your time is just being wasted
Why comment in the first place with only a single point that has absolutely no chance of working, then?
Meaningful change happens through incremental progress, which is what I believe OP is advocating for. Revolutionary change usually involves a charismatic idealogue who is capable of stirring up revolt in the common populace towards their own ends.
See: Lenin refusing to concede power after losing the election following the Bolshevik revolution.
Name one large change that happened slowly over decades that wasn't a slow build till the dam burst.
It's be nice if you used America, but you're not gonna find an example.
Minimum wage increase? LGBTQ rights? Hell, even segregation took a few decades to fully go away, and depending on who you ask, it still hasn't.
Of course we should be disruptive and protest and riot. But let's also focus on one issue at a time instead of saying "anything short of perfection in a single step is not worth fighting for at all"
...
Uh...
The federal minimum wage was last updated in 2009...
What was the campaign slogan of the president who won the 2008 election? I can't remember, but I'm pretty sure his campaign wasn't about sudden change was bad and we should move things slowly.
Besides, we're talking about incremental change. And I guess "every 15 years" would be an increment, but Biden hasn't talked about raising it, and trump won't, so the best we can hope for is "every 20 years"?
Like, you didn't get three words in before you started arguing my point homie.
You're too hung up on labels and not on how most voters want the same stuff.
If you want incremental change with the federal minimum wage, neither party is giving you what you want.
The federal minimum wage in the United States when it was introduced was $0.25. Any increase since then is exactly the kind of incremental change that OP was talking about.
And, yes, we have to fight for even those incremental changes. But they are always more longstanding than the kinds of changes that result from an idealogue riling up his followers to revolt, which will be overturned as soon as the next idealogue amasses a big and angry enough following.
Lol.
Cool, I'll buy your car for a billion dollars and make incremental payments.
I'll pay a penny a month, and increas a penny every month. That's an incremental rate, right? So it's just as good as paying at sale. In about 83 million years it'll be paid off, do t get impatient, the amount keeps increasing incrementally, you'll be paid eventually.
Hell, I'm being generous setting the schedule now, I could make you go decades wondering if incremental change will happen at completely unknown increments
I can tell you're young because you don't seem to be capable of grasping decades let alone centuries as a measure of time. How long do you think human civilization has been around? How long has our current civilization been building toward today? You want everything you want now or else it's not worth fighting for? Every luxury and right we enjoy now is the result of decades and centuries of progress.
If you're not happy with working toward a better future for those who come after us, and you want all the benefits of the future now, you're just selfish and don't have the mental fortitude to cope with the real world. What you want isn't happening in your life time. The best you can hope for is to do a little better at a time, and sometimes there'll be setbacks, but in general we keep pushing forward.
The times when we fall several steps back are when rash idiots back a revolution that they barely understand.
Hell, even if the "revolution" happened today it would take at least a generation to recover. We're taking years or decades without the already-inadequate food, healthcare, interstate commerce, and civil rights protection we enjoy now...and that's best case scenario where we stay 1 country. More likely, we'd devolve into something like Europe before the EU.
You know, when I wrote in the original post that leftists didn't read more than the first sentence of a comment before writing a reply, I thought I was exaggerating.
What about LGBTQ rights and segregation?
It says a lot your main complaint with "leftists" online is they ignore the gold standard of Russian propaganda...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
If you can't go a sentence before saying something false, don't expect people to write about everything else false you said and refuting each falsehood one at a time.
Like, you're the one saying this happens often to you, I'm just trying to help you understand why it always happens.
If you admit the first thing is wrong, most people will move on to the second. No guarantees how long their keep going
You have exactly one comment to do that before I report you for being a troll.
What?
You asked me to name one social change that had occurred over decades instead of all at once when the dam burst. I named three. The first of these, admittedly, was the least convincing. You only addressed that one.
Move on to the second, like you said.
How about any country with universal healthcare? Or do you think that the UK and Canada got our healthcare systems through violent rebellion instead of parliamentary action?
Now, go ahead and name any country that was better off after a revolution. Cuz all I can think of is China, Russia, and [ waves vaguely in the direction of America ].
Cuba. Haiti. The Chiapas. Uhh, probably brazil. I dunno, I guess my point would just be to kinda of gesture at anticolonial action more broadly, but yeah.
What?
Do you think the only sudden change is violent rebellion?
Do you think that an unconventional candidate like Bernie Sanders or even Trump winning a democratic election is a revolutionary change? Sweetie, that is change within an existing power structure, which is the antithesis to "revolutionary."
Revolutionary change is what the MAGAts attempted on January 6th.
Have you not lread anything I've typed?
But the "sweetie" is enough, anyone that uses that stupid shit in 2024 isn't worth interacting with, and it's clear no amount of logic will ever change your mind.
Have a nice life "sweetie" I'm sure that makes you super popular in /askmen
You all just witnessed a guy who lost an argument. Merch is on the table at the back.
January 6th folks were not revolutionists. They were there to re-install the same leader (Trump) into the same power structure that already existed. Their actions were pro-government, just for their side rather than the other.
To be fair, the Socialist Revolutionary Party split up right before the election, and the right-wing retained the name. The Internet didn't exist, so the public largely wasn't aware. The left wing program won the majority of votes, even though the right wing SRP, who did not support the left wing program, won the vote.
Adding onto this, there were 2 governments, the constituent assembly, and the Soviets. The constituent assembly additionally did not recognize the october revolution or the legitimacy of the Soviets.
Lenin then took the Bolsheviks, disbanded the Constituent Assembly, and took power through the Soviets, where they had the majority support.
All that to say, the constituent assembly election was largely a mess, and it can be reasonably argued that if the decision to retain the constitient assembly and retain the right wing SRP had witheld, the popular will of the people would not have been upheld and the White Army likely would have returned Russia to Monarchism under the Romanovs.
It really wasn't a situation with a clear democratic process at any time, neither before or after, which is the reality of a revolution during war time, so we can only speculate from hindsite what might have happened.
This simply isn't true. Throughout history you will observe longs periods of stagnation followed by a period of rapid change. This pattern is noticable in many things but especially in human political arrangement. Feudalism didn't decay capitalism and capitalism won't decay into socialism
Incrementalists reject the idea of punctuated equilibrium.