Example: Biden made a massive improvement to the US’s greenhouse gas emissions, the impact of which is predicted to be a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030. Is that enough? Uh… if it had been by the year 2000, maybe. We’re still facing a guaranteed global catastrophe. We need to keep pushing for more change, right now, and anyone who’s satisfied with what Biden did so far is living in a dream world.
Where I have a problem with it is when someone extrapolates that out to “and that’s why there’s no reason to support Biden in his contest vs Trump, when Trump wants to undo even that much, and when Biden’s climate action was the first big-scale thing any US politician has ever done to make the problem into an actual priority.”
If anything I’m saying sounds like “and so Biden is good enough,” it is not. What I am saying is that affirmatively choosing the Biden solution in this election while also pushing for big improvements in any one of 10-20 additional ways to achieve actual progress sounds like the way to go.
I don’t disagree with your conclusion that Biden is not as bad as Trumo, I just disagree with your framing and methods for reaching out to disaffected Leftists.
The crux of my argument is that opening with minor, insufficient positive changes that come nowhere close to enough just turns these disaffected leftists away.
“Biden took the first big step towards addressing climate change of any US politician ever, and was able to achieve significant success even within our horribly broken political system. While I fully support extra-electoral change (it is 100% needed), I would say that that’s a relevant fact to the question of whether we should spend time shitting on him and only him, as part of our quest to produce positive change in the system.”
Votes are votes, if you’re going to intentionally use ineffective means of rhetoric when talking to potential voters, isn’t that just an admittance that you care more about your personal feelings than raw results?
I’m not trying to engineer any particular results. Notwithstanding the people who accuse me of running around supporting Biden just because I like Biden, I’m honestly just trying to talk about how I see the world and share my viewpoint and see what other people think in return. It’s part of why I am comfortable saying yes, Biden’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza is monstrous, and his little bullshit opposition to it is not nearly enough to excuse the majority of what he’s doing, which is supporting it. Overall, I’m just trying to say how I see it. I’m not trying to, like, convince people to see it my way or support who I’ve decided I want them to support.
I mean yes I sort of hope that people will read my comments and decide to vote for Biden and help not end the world like if Trump gets elected. But also, I think more people will be convinced by simple facts and good reasoning, than will be convinced by something that happens to align with how they want the information to be presented and is triangulated to what’s in their head currently and trying to push it around into the way I want it to be. That’s a dangerous path to go down. Like what about lying, if that was more effective? Or what about setting up a little bot to post my propaganda, what if that was more effective? I just don’t want to do it. Here’s what I think, here are sources, do what you like with that and if you get super offended instead, then I feel blameless with that outcome because I tried to be straight about how I think because I think it makes sense.
I may just be more Materialist than Idealist, but I don’t think people can merely be convinced of the correct take based on evidence or sound logic, they must also be at a point materially that allows for ideas that challenge their predisposed narrative to penetrate.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to withhold pretty straightforward relevant information until my imagined picture of the person reading it reaches a point where they’re ready for it.
Honestly, I have no idea what the average Lemmy reader is or isn’t ready for or accepting of. Why do you assume that all or even most of the people reading my message aren’t at a point where this pretty bland information would be useful to them?
Ha, fair enough. So let me rephrase: I am not “reaching out to disaffected leftists.” I’m just saying how I see it and why. If someone’s triggered by seeing a comment saying some good things Biden has done and starts literally shaking and crying and decides I am wrong about everything, then it is a shame but I don’t think it needs to be my responsibility to prevent that. I think that person needs to become capable over time of seeing things they disagree with without freaking out about it. It’ll be good for them.
Maybe that is a majority of Lemmy, IDK (and certainly lemmy.ml seems like it’s like that), so that a “kid gloves” gradual transition to the truth approach would be better, but in my experience people generally like the “here are facts and citations” stuff well enough, and saying I should stay away from it until this one category of people decides it would be acceptable to them, seems like it might do more harm than good to the messaging overall. And anyway, it’s honestly just not what I want to do – like I say I’m not here to “reach out” with my message. I just like talking about this stuff.
Oh, no doubt. Biden’s not nearly enough.
Example: Biden made a massive improvement to the US’s greenhouse gas emissions, the impact of which is predicted to be a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030. Is that enough? Uh… if it had been by the year 2000, maybe. We’re still facing a guaranteed global catastrophe. We need to keep pushing for more change, right now, and anyone who’s satisfied with what Biden did so far is living in a dream world.
Where I have a problem with it is when someone extrapolates that out to “and that’s why there’s no reason to support Biden in his contest vs Trump, when Trump wants to undo even that much, and when Biden’s climate action was the first big-scale thing any US politician has ever done to make the problem into an actual priority.”
If anything I’m saying sounds like “and so Biden is good enough,” it is not. What I am saying is that affirmatively choosing the Biden solution in this election while also pushing for big improvements in any one of 10-20 additional ways to achieve actual progress sounds like the way to go.
I don’t disagree with your conclusion that Biden is not as bad as Trumo, I just disagree with your framing and methods for reaching out to disaffected Leftists.
The crux of my argument is that opening with minor, insufficient positive changes that come nowhere close to enough just turns these disaffected leftists away.
“Biden took the first big step towards addressing climate change of any US politician ever, and was able to achieve significant success even within our horribly broken political system. While I fully support extra-electoral change (it is 100% needed), I would say that that’s a relevant fact to the question of whether we should spend time shitting on him and only him, as part of our quest to produce positive change in the system.”
“Well now you have turned me away.”
Yeah, I’m comfortable letting that person go.
Votes are votes, if you’re going to intentionally use ineffective means of rhetoric when talking to potential voters, isn’t that just an admittance that you care more about your personal feelings than raw results?
I’m not trying to engineer any particular results. Notwithstanding the people who accuse me of running around supporting Biden just because I like Biden, I’m honestly just trying to talk about how I see the world and share my viewpoint and see what other people think in return. It’s part of why I am comfortable saying yes, Biden’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza is monstrous, and his little bullshit opposition to it is not nearly enough to excuse the majority of what he’s doing, which is supporting it. Overall, I’m just trying to say how I see it. I’m not trying to, like, convince people to see it my way or support who I’ve decided I want them to support.
I mean yes I sort of hope that people will read my comments and decide to vote for Biden and help not end the world like if Trump gets elected. But also, I think more people will be convinced by simple facts and good reasoning, than will be convinced by something that happens to align with how they want the information to be presented and is triangulated to what’s in their head currently and trying to push it around into the way I want it to be. That’s a dangerous path to go down. Like what about lying, if that was more effective? Or what about setting up a little bot to post my propaganda, what if that was more effective? I just don’t want to do it. Here’s what I think, here are sources, do what you like with that and if you get super offended instead, then I feel blameless with that outcome because I tried to be straight about how I think because I think it makes sense.
I may just be more Materialist than Idealist, but I don’t think people can merely be convinced of the correct take based on evidence or sound logic, they must also be at a point materially that allows for ideas that challenge their predisposed narrative to penetrate.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to withhold pretty straightforward relevant information until my imagined picture of the person reading it reaches a point where they’re ready for it.
Honestly, I have no idea what the average Lemmy reader is or isn’t ready for or accepting of. Why do you assume that all or even most of the people reading my message aren’t at a point where this pretty bland information would be useful to them?
I was just responding to your position that some people aren’t worth convincing.
Ha, fair enough. So let me rephrase: I am not “reaching out to disaffected leftists.” I’m just saying how I see it and why. If someone’s triggered by seeing a comment saying some good things Biden has done and starts literally shaking and crying and decides I am wrong about everything, then it is a shame but I don’t think it needs to be my responsibility to prevent that. I think that person needs to become capable over time of seeing things they disagree with without freaking out about it. It’ll be good for them.
Maybe that is a majority of Lemmy, IDK (and certainly lemmy.ml seems like it’s like that), so that a “kid gloves” gradual transition to the truth approach would be better, but in my experience people generally like the “here are facts and citations” stuff well enough, and saying I should stay away from it until this one category of people decides it would be acceptable to them, seems like it might do more harm than good to the messaging overall. And anyway, it’s honestly just not what I want to do – like I say I’m not here to “reach out” with my message. I just like talking about this stuff.