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?
It's for people who can't even imagine that unhoused people struggling with addiction could ever actually get help...
In their vision of the future those people stay on the street instead of getting help so they can stand in their own again. Even if they never can, them having their basic needs met makes it safer for everyone.
It's not that they intentionally are arguing in bad faith, it's just a total.lack.of empathy. They don't see those people as humans that need help. Homeless desperate people are a "thing" to them, not a bunch of individuals.
I understand that addiction doesn't happen in a vacuum and every addict is a victim of their circumstances. I also understand you should be able to walk down a dark alley while waving a wad of cash without being mugged.
At a certain point you have to acknowledge reality and say "even if we want to work toward a perfect world where people get the help they need and we don't hurt each other, we don't exist in that world so we need to protect ourselves and those we care about through common sense."
Letting addicts set up a tent near a residential neighbourhood or handing over our wallets to the less fortunate guy threatening to stab us doesn't help anyone.
Imagine, we could have a better world if the capitalists would pay their fair share. If that happened, you wouldn’t need to argue!
I didn't think I'd have to quote myself today, but in the original comment I made which you're replying to, I explicitly said:
I am completely in favour of taxing the rich. Billionaires should not exist, and in fact it is unethical to be a billionaire because to hold that much wealth which you will never be able to use while others are suffering is outright evil.
But this is exactly what I was saying. You aren't centrist if you look at the Republicans and Democrats and say "they both make good points." You're a centrist if you look at the Republicans and Democrats and say "the Democrats are the only sane option, and even though they aren't ideal they're way better than the alternative and voting for them is the only thing preventing the United States from becoming a fascist dictatorship under an absolute idiot."