Apollo wrote: ↑Mon Oct 23, 2023 4:15 pm
Over the last 15-20 years the Left in the US has turned against Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Expression and the concept of a Color-Blind society, they are refusing to allow advanced-placement programs for students, they hate Capitalism, they are increasingly against sending arms to allied nations to help them defend themselves and they have decided that Transgender Rights are so important that many want to make calling someone the wrong pronoun a felony. I could go on, but if you haven't noticed the Left in the US is also growing more radical over the years you're just not paying attention. These ideas were very rare or non-existent on the Left 20 years ago and yet they are fairly commonplace today. And it's not going to stop anytime soon.
Heck, nowadays the Left can't even agree on how to respond to the Israeli-Hamas conflict and who the bad guys really are.
Let's unpack some of this, because there's stuff in here that seems to come from a place severely to the right of center.
Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Expression
they have decided that Transgender Rights are so important that many want to make calling someone the wrong pronoun a felony.
I will be happy to read any sources you can point to with a factual breakdown of that. My searching comes up with this:
False claim Michigan bill would make using a person's wrong pronouns a felony | Fact check
The Michigan House of Representatives passed a bill on June 20 that would expand the state’s 35-year-old hate crime law to include protections for sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, physical or mental disability and age. It carries penalties of up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
The word “pronoun” does not appear in the five-page bill, which is still pending in the state legislature. Nothing in the legislation establishes any sort of structure that, for example, would make it a crime to use “she” when referring to someone who identifies as a man.
“Let me make it plain and simple: This bill does not infringe on anyone’s First Amendment rights, and it most certainly is not a bill that has anything to do with pronouns,” Democratic Rep. Ranjeev Puri, who is one of the bill’s 45 sponsors, said in an email to USA TODAY.
It would allow prosecutors to bring hate-crime charges against those who “maliciously and intentionally” intimidate people because they belong to a protected group.
...
It defines intimidation as a “willful course of conduct” involving “repeated or continuing harassment” that would cause a reasonable person to feel terrorized, frightened or threatened.
That reasonability standard is key, said Republican Rep. Graham Filler, who is one of three GOP members who voted for the bill.
“I think there probably are some people out there who think that using the wrong pronouns is a hate crime,” Filler said. “I don’t think those people would be able to somehow convince a prosecutor to charge” someone.
The bill also specifically allows constitutionally protected activities – such as free speech – and "conduct that serves a legitimate purpose.”
the concept of a Color-Blind society
The concept is an awesome idea. But, alas, the concept has met with reality. There are still plenty of examples today where race is a determining factor, even when accounting for other variables, that results in negative outcomes for people of color. I typed in "Race inequality" into Google News. I got some prefilled options:
On which I'm sure I could spend days reading and pulling quotes. However, the research and anecdotes of people being discriminated against because of their color are overwhelming. Hell, I heard a story of such from my programmer. He's a black man originally from Ghana. His name, however, reads as neutral at least, white at best. He has stated that he has seen people visibly shaken up and taken aback when they see him for the first time during job interviews.
You can not mandate a color-blind society. We don't even have a color-blind legal system. If we want to live in a society where All [People] Are Created Equal, at least in the eyes of the law, we have to undo centuries worth of damage that our past has done and continues to do.
they are refusing to allow advanced-placement programs for students
You're going to have to help me with this one, because all the vitriol about AP testing and courses appears to be coming from the right.
they hate Capitalism
I'm a upper-middle class white guy, and I hate Capitalism, based on the results I see today. While the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class gets smaller, one wonders what Capitalism has to recommend itself. But that's a deep topic deserving of at least one thread to itself.
they are increasingly against sending arms to allied nations to help them defend themselves
If we're talking Ukraine, they're not technically an "Ally". And remember, the Left is not monolithic.
But if we're going with:
Heck, nowadays the Left can't even agree on how to respond to the Israeli-Hamas conflict and who the bad guys really are.
Perhaps, just perhaps, there are no good guys here. We have an dispossessed and oppressed minority living in an area where they are denied freedom of movement, and basic societal needs of food, fuel, and medicine can be withheld at a whim by mostly one country's whims. A country that has just suffered, and has suffered, multiple terrorist attacks that have targeted civilians. A country with an autocratic right-wing government that has built settlements illegally, and has let the army stand by while its citizens forcibly dispossess those oppressed people of even more.
And remember, the Left is not a monolith. There are three Muslim representatives, nine Jewish Senators, and 26 Jewish representatives in Congress. What consensus do you think that organization is going to come to?
What do leftist critics of Israel do now?
They marched on the White House to make their demands clear: a Biden-brokered ceasefire — now; the release of hostages held by Hamas militants; more forceful American condemnation of Israel’s bombing of Gaza; and, eventually, major changes to the current Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians.
The protestors, gathered Monday afternoon by progressive Jewish American activist organizations, represented various segments of the US political left: Palestinian and Israeli Americans, Jewish and Muslim people, longtime activists, and newer allies sympathetic to a more nuanced position of peace and reform for Israel and Palestine.
Nuance... Now there's a concept that gets lost in soundbites and rabblerousing.
On Monday, 13 progressive members of Congress — not just the Squad — signed on to a resolution calling on the Biden administration to broker an immediate ceasefire in Israel and Palestine and urge de-escalation in order to bring humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
...
The hearts, minds, and policies they’re trying to change won’t be easily altered. Though most Americans were sympathetic to both Palestinians and Israelis and open to more nuanced solutions to the Israel-Palestine conflict, public polling from last week following Hamas’s attack shows Americans, including more Democrats and independents, warming to the Israeli military’s response. This shift is likely driven by a desire to support a nation that has just suffered a massive, graphic, and morally reprehensible attack.
It's almost as if people are the problem.