Reveal Your Uncool Liberal Beliefs Here

Some of mine feel like they're getting more and more uncool by the day.

(I know there's a new age/spiritual beliefs spinoff thread, but I think the two are discrete.)

"liberal" meaning broadly left of center, or "liberal" as in the more narrow political philosophy?

As in the antithesis to whatever means "conservative" in the other thread.

*admiralackbar.gif*

(I know there's a new age/spiritual beliefs spinoff thread, but I think the two are discrete.)

― عباس کیارستمی (Eric H.),

That. won't. play.

3,000 miles are too far to be away from one's heart.

I'm a pacifist and anti-military to the core but also am glad the shittiest cockroach imperialist military states of the west are providing weapons of death to Ukraine so their resistance to a Russian invasion is strong enough to hold up. It's a contractionary bunch of opinions to hold and probably the most meltiest position I have on world politics. But there is no surety from me here either though, because I know there are plausible counter-arguments for prioritising de-escalation rather than maintaining a long war - but I can't brook privileged brit knobheads of the left like Oliver Eagleton having strong opinions on something that will never touch them, well unless it ends with nuclear armageddon.

i don't understand this thread, I think

I still think LBJ was one of the better ones, that certainly can't be cool

As in the antithesis to whatever means "conservative" in the other thread.

which thread is this referring to? perhaps that will make this more clear. are there 'cool' conservative beliefs? I don't think so. or is it about 'uncool' conservative beliefs, which IMO is 'almost all of them'?

Property, within reason, isn't theft, how's about THEM apples *mugs provocatively to the camera* what a badboy edgelord

*stuffs Mother Jones into his Noam Chomsky tote bag*

I still think LBJ was one of the better ones, that certainly can't be cool

― Andy the Grasshopper,

hey it took Robert Caro to make it happen

Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

yeah I guess I don't totally understand either.. is it:

* Kind of dorky, cliched liberal beliefs ("co-exist" bumper stickers, etc); OR:
* Contradictory beliefs that we sort of keep to ourselves since they're in conflict with the established lib consensus

maybe this counts: i'm increasingly convinced that civil disobedience, violent or not, no longer works in the western world. I believe it worked in the past, but I think the proliferation of controlled media has completely neutered it.

I'm still quite susceptible to the myth of Reasonable People Arguing It Out, and get excited when it feels like I've made someone reconsider something, whether it's about economics or queer issues or whatever. Not so much a "belief" I guess as I fully understand why it's bullshit, but am drawn to it nevertheless.

Property def is theft tho.

I'll come forward with the thought I had that inspired it, and trigger warning, it's more of an uncool "insufferable ILX film snob" belief than an uncool liberal belief: If efforts to restructure the canon have some Sight & Sound voters using their ballots to elevate marginalized filmmakers over already canonized "great films," that's an unambiguously good thing.

I agree with that and don't think it's uncool, certainly not on ILX. Uncool to Paul Shrader, maybe.

xp (And the resultant realization that I'm fine putting that and likely other uncool liberal beliefs in print than I am putting uncool conservative beliefs out there into the world.)

I remember hearing David Simon awhile back complaining about supposedly liberal universities (UC Berkeley, for example) not allowing wretched people like Ann Coulter or Yiannopoulos to go through with their scheduled speaking engagements; I think he just described it as a 'bad look', and found myself slowly nodding in assent

xp LOL the main reason I started this thread is because I wasn't ready to commit to posting "Paul Schrader is occasionally right, tbh" in the conservative thread

xp Like, better they speak to an empty room than declare themselves victims of liberal intolerance

i like to live, laugh & love

The thing is, which most commentators miss, if you're a public university you have to agree to just about every speaker unless the university can claim a threat of violence.

I think it is kind of a bad look to shout down these speakers, although I understand it. Agree with Andy that it would be best to leave them addressing empty auditoriums, but I guess on a university campus with emotions running high that is not possible

Am just wondering who is in charge of these events and why would any university, public or private, want to make an engagement with these people as speakers. The results don't reflect well on them. Maybe at Stanford the Hoover Institute has total control over who it invites

It would be best to publicly execute them, no platforming is the compromise position

Well, it just plays into their hands: that universities are hotbeds of liberal 'fascism' or whatever.. it especially looks bad at Berkeley, birthplace of the modern free speech movement

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~pQAAOSwF6Jg93Vl/s-l500.jpg

Yeah I’m going to agree with NV & say that an opinion Nazis having a “right” to speak belongs on the other thread. We know why those ideas are bad! There was a whole war about it.

otm

some very confusing opinions itt, let's focus on sasquatch-fucking plz

The thing is these fascist propagandists will do their hate speech whether you "give them an excuse" or not, so just cut out the middle bit

I am NOT defending a Nazi's right to speak: I'm only stating the law. I've come along some. I used to be a free speech absolutist. Meanwhile I still work with older folk who think we should run pro/con editorials in the school paper with Nazis and who don't understand how the opportunity valorizes speech that will turn violent against the very people we claim to defend.

Disagree gyac, the idea that every group should be given the right to speak is textbook liberal shit - part of the worldview where, again, Reasoned Debate solves all. Conservatives for all their faults don't really believe that.

I can see that, esp in the US

I remember getting in fights with libs that kept saying it made you as bad as Nazis to attack them at rallies.

"One side is LITERAL NAZIS, there is no 'as bad'"

didn't they watch Raiders of the Lost Ark

xxxp I don't think gyac was proposing that

One uncool liberal belief is that while I believe in cancel culture as a social movement to hold powerful people accountable and restore power to the powerless, especially regarding things like sexism, rape, racism, but that there is a sizable group of perpetually online folk that have used it to bully/severely harass undeserving people to the point of emotional duress. People whose transgressions were minor or non-existent. And it's usually perpetrated by people who do not actually gaf and that are there to enjoy piling on.

See: YA Twitter.

Obviously one does not reflect on the other but I think a lot of the latter activity gets excused because the abusers are on the 'right' side

Undeserving people who aren't rich celebrities mind

xps to Alfred, sorry, i wasn’t replying to you (or anyone specific in this instance), it was an exaggeration of a point floating around. I don’t think you were saying that.

Disagree gyac, the idea that every group should be given the right to speak is textbook liberal shit - part of the worldview where, again, Reasoned Debate solves all. Conservatives for all their faults don't really believe that.

I'm still quite susceptible to the myth of Reasonable People Arguing It Out, and get excited when it feels like I've made someone reconsider something, whether it's about economics or queer issues or whatever. Not so much a "belief" I guess as I fully understand why it's bullshit, but am drawn to it nevertheless.

I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your publication.

xps to Alfred, sorry, i wasn’t replying to you (or anyone specific in this instance), it was an exaggeration of a point floating around. I don’t think you were saying that.

― limb tins & cum (gyac),

no, I understood, thank you :) I was posting for the record.

maybe this counts: i'm increasingly convinced that civil disobedience, violent or not, no longer works in the western world. I believe it worked in the past, but I think the proliferation of controlled media has completely neutered it.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Tuesday, March 21, 2023

agree with this

this is predictably turning into reveal liberal beliefs you think are cool

in the sense that some posters would just post the same things anyway!

is it still cool to be against the death penalty?

the SMOB apparatus especially -- acronym for Symphony Museum Opera Ballet

Why SMOB when MOBS is right there?

A guess: the list is ordered by numbers of organizations of each type and the total size of their operating budgets

i doubt this is an uncool belief with the ILX audience, but it's something I've gotten pushback on from some liberals.

and that is...although yes, someone might legitimately struggle to understand someone that has a thick accent, most of the time I see it happen "I can't understand you" is mostly a form of weaponized racism and little else.

the 'pushback' I've received is "just because it was clear to you does not mean it was clear to someone else - and if someone doesn't understand, they have a right to ask to repeat, you can't just jump to racism". ok fine, except there are a significant number of times I've been told "ugh I couldn't understand this person and their thick accent", then listened myself and was at a loss how anybody could find them hard to understand unless they were trying hard to not understand them.

on one or two occasions at work in the last year, I've been asked to listen in on classes due to 1-2 learner complaints about how difficult the trainer was to understand, and each time the complaint was registered, the trainer was from India. and each time me and another manager independently investigated, we both found the person spoke very clearly and their pace was fine, and there was little merit to the complaint. each time, that was the assessment we gave back to the manager who requested the listen, though I wanted to say "this was pretty clearly your learner being prejudiced".

Limmy has a story of getting a meeting with the BBC and the exec just telling him "listen people just can't understand you" and he was like "well why do you think that is". I'll admit I found his Glaswegian tough going as a recent migrant to the UK but all it took was watching some hours of his stream, exposure really is everything.

you are describing a form of linguistic bias -- there is a whole field of study about it. see also: testimony of rachel jeantel :(

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_intergroup_bias

yes you have a right to ask someone to repeat, that is normal
you do not have a right to criticize that person for unintelligibility on the sole grounds of "i don't understand this person"

well i guess you technically have the right to criticize whatever you please but you run a strong risk of being an asshole

the field of accent reduction/modification has gotten a thorough revision in the last few years -- i have been TESOL teacher for long enough to see the pendulum swing to acceptance, which i support.

Limmy has a story of getting a meeting with the BBC and the exec just telling him "listen people just can't understand you" and he was like "well why do you think that is". I'll admit I found his Glaswegian tough going as a recent migrant to the UK but all it took was watching some hours of his stream, exposure really is everything.

Yes, it's a class thing in the UK. From my own experience, middle class people in the South of England are the ones who struggle most with accents that don't sound like theirs. Struggle is the wrong word though, I suspect they think it's not really their job to try to understand anyone else, so why bother?

xp yeah I have spent a lot of time trying to convince Chinese students that they don't need to copy an accent, they should practice their stress-timing instead, it isn't ever easy. I remember one 10-year-old girl had been meticulously trained to speak like a Jane Austin heroine, her teacher was very proud of herself for this useless training.

think it's best to have a foreign accent in England, nobody can work out your class and nobody will hate you for coming from the wrong city. English people hate other English people even more than they hate foreigners.

I once had a year working with an American woman, when she left the city she had a goodbye dinner where she got drunk and settled her scores, apparently she told one of my closest friends "I can't understand a word CaAL says and I hate him" and obviously this got back to me and I was annoyed, but considering the friend is also English it wasn't all an accent problem, I think she essentially hated me for being anxious/nervous when speaking to her, which is imo a bit of a dick move.

Thank you for that, LL! That was helpful to understand that as part of a bigger phenomenon.

Going to show this to my boss's boss after lunch

Ironically, because of its value as a lingua franca, speaking English in India is employed as a means of increasing mutual comprehension. Educated Indians usually have a complete mastery of English grammar and vocabulary.

The main problem with what we call accents is that they change the 'music' we are used to hearing. Because we use those musical clues to anticipate what's coming accents disrupt our ability to interpret the flow of spoken words. By changing the 'music' into unfamiliar patterns our brains have to work much harder, in part because that anticipatory mechanism keeps delivering mismatches with what is heard and we get confused.

I remember watching an American TV interview with Imran Khan where they subtitled him and thinking it was the most ridculous thing I'd ever seen.

I got no problem if they began to subtitle everyone all the time.

when I have a customer at work request something I am always wary of annoying them by asking them to repeat themselves more than once if I don't understand what they are saying. so if I can't tell what they have requested the 2nd time I just say we don't have it.

If this is about being “annoying” (it’s not imo) Isn’t it vastly more annoying to not get what one wants if it’s available than to be asked kindly to repeat something verbally?

generally restating the question is a good step anyway to confirm you understood what they asked, so if I made out some of it, but not the rest, I'll say "it sounds like you're asking about <object>, but I missed that last part - can you repeat the last thing you said?", or if I didn't get it at all, and I've already had to ask to repeat twice, try and say "I apologize, I know I just asked you to repeat - my hearing isn't what it used to be" (which is true), and asking "would you mind repeating your question one more time?", so they know I'm not blaming them for my inability to hear.

worst that can happen is they get frustrated with my inability to understand, and frankly I can't control how people react to me being honest so I don't worry about it. best that happens is I make it out and can help them! good enough trade-off to make the attempt IMO.

(because in my case, my concert-going lifestyle has genuinely eroded a bit of my hearing. I'm not significantly impaired, but enough where I miss things that others without said damage don't). I was doing the closed caption thing before it was a trend for that reason.

it’s ok to say “I’m sorry for not being able to understand you as well as I would like to.” It’s better than writing the person off and not answering their question? This is pervasive and we have a long way to go.

otm

If this is on a call rather than in person isn't it better just to say its a bad line when asking to repeat?

Yeah that works

Every president should be jailed immediately upon completion of their term

— Hamilton Nolan (@hamiltonnolan) March 31, 2023

um, that would only incentivize politicians near death's door to run for president. plenty of them would gladly trade up to eight years of massive power and attention against possibly a few years in a minimum security prison with decent health care, depending on how the dice rolled.

Joe Biden is 80

Every president should be jailed immediately upon completion of their term

Death or arrest isn't uncommon for many departing presidents around that world, so this is already true to a degree depending on where you live

since the formation of Pakistan not one president has served a full term. And loads of them have been arrested or forced out. I think they've averaged something like one military coup per decade.

Every president should be jailed immediately upon completion of their term

call it the Seinfeld Rule

Typically the path Illinois governors take.

Joe Biden is 80

and ilx is simply thrilled about it, too

What do liberals think of things like this.

Beautiful speech by @JLMelenchon on free time, explaining what the fight in France is really about pic.twitter.com/IJcn1JQL1u

— David Broder (@broderly) March 31, 2023

Liberals totally agree with this in concept! Idk why you would think they wouldn't?

tbh I think that most ppl on any side of the political spectrum would agree with that speech in isolation, it's not like conservatives don't enjoy having free time lol

the necessity of assuring that everyone gets equal access to this free time is where divisions start

Liberals totally agree with this in concept! Idk why you would think they wouldn't?

― sarahell, Monday, 3 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

"In concept" is the problem. How about just agreeing to it without that caveat? I think society should be transformed so that everyone has quite a lot of free time from work.

it comes down to "how much free time can society afford" as well as what Daniel cites re "equal access" and who gets to make the decisions and the basis for the decisions.

it isn't like liberals are spending their free time forming working groups to engage in mass struggle against capitalism ... I think the communist/socialist left is more concerned with utility than liberals are tbh

granted their definition of utility is different from that of the capitalist dominant ideology

"it comes down to "how much free time can society afford" as well as what Daniel cites re "equal access" and who gets to make the decisions and the basis for the decisions."

I would say that society can afford this. But the concept isn't even talked about by liberals, only the left. Why is that?

I'm a pacifist and anti-military to the core but also am glad the shittiest cockroach imperialist military states of the west are providing weapons of death to Ukraine so their resistance to a Russian invasion is strong enough to hold up. It's a contractionary bunch of opinions to hold and probably the most meltiest position I have on world politics. But there is no surety from me here either though, because I know there are plausible counter-arguments for prioritising de-escalation rather than maintaining a long war - but I can't brook privileged brit knobheads of the left like Oliver Eagleton having strong opinions on something that will never touch them, well unless it ends with nuclear armageddon.

― calzino, Tuesday, 21 March 2023 21:54 (one week ago) link

Sometimes I think of it as "the tie goes to your own side." If caught between imperialisms, I'm still going to choose my own side's imperialism over the other's. Course it's easier in this case that Russia is obviously the aggressor.

Not applicable to Ukraine, but considering the amount of countries ravaged by US/Soviet Union proxy wars I don't think there's a need to choose and in fact a strong argument for telling both to fuck off.

the only side that matters is the people who are victims of neoimperialism - as soon as you start arguing for your preferred team, you're wrong

I would say that society can afford this. But the concept isn't even talked about by liberals, only the left. Why is that?

― xyzzzz__, Monday, April 3, 2023 12:29 PM (yesterday)

talking about it in what context? You mentioned something upthread (or maybe a different thread) about increasing the "pension age" in the UK ... are you thinking along those lines? Because liberals do like writing and talking about their vacations and leisure pursuits that remind them of what happiness is, etc.

only a certain class of people get to do that though everyone else has to work till they die

returning to the theme of lefties who claim to reject liberalism taking ostensible liberal values more seriously than those who proudly claim liberalism ever will

which means that either leftists are the real liberals or that liberalism is a broader church than either group is willing to admit. or that there's something inherently self-undermining about liberalism's claims to universalism. or that the universalism always been kind of a ruse because liberalism has always only been an ideology of and for the bourgeoisie, and leftists are attempting to call its bluff by highlighting its shortcomings. or something

pissing everyone off by claiming marxism and anarchism as radical forms of liberalism

only a certain class of people get to do that though everyone else has to work till they die

they aren't working 24/7 though ... I am just ... idk ... trying to figure out what this is grounded in. Because it seems like you are greatly exaggerating the liberal position, and while you are doing so to make a point, it is still an exaggeration, and I am confused by it. Also I am American, so that could also be part of my confusion lol

and then there's the issue of "work" itself ... I'm assuming you are referring to laboring for others in a capitalist system where the worker is alienated ... I think you're saying some interesting things, Left, and I'm just trying to understand

it's true I'm most familiar with british liberals who are strong contenders for the worst people in the world

I don't have a point I'm just saying shit but I'm trying to make sense of why those who identify most with liberalism (IME) seem to be at best indifferent to the whole liberty equality fraternity their entire political/intellectual tradition is supposedly about - this is nothing new with prominent 1800s liberals supporting poor laws, opposing aid to ireland etc - maybe it's britain that's the problem but I hear talk of liberalism collapsing in on itself all over the place these days

I mean work in the way you defined it, if liberalism is (I contend) synonymous with bourgeois ideology (in all its contradictions) it relies on alienation to exist and can't really acknowledge this within its own terms (assuming for now that marxism isn't liberalism, or is a weird aberrant form of it)

I don't have a point I'm just saying shit

New board description

Anything to replace that onerous Fred quote

only a certain class of people get to do that though everyone else has to work till they die

Uh, yes, OTM x1000.

i know some of y'all here are dyed-in-the-wool liberals who are struggling to understand, for instance, some of the negative things i've said about liberals and liberalism. anyway i was just watching this new f.d. signifier video and i think he gives a pretty good breakdown towards the beginning of the issues a lot of us have with liberalism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiLlRwFX_9w

Marvelous, Kate. Thanks.

I would say that society can afford this. But the concept isn't even talked about by liberals, only the left. Why is that?

― xyzzzz__, Monday, April 3, 2023 12:29 PM (yesterday)

talking about it in what context? You mentioned something upthread (or maybe a different thread) about increasing the "pension age" in the UK ... are you thinking along those lines? Because liberals do like writing and talking about their vacations and leisure pursuits that remind them of what happiness is, etc.

― sarahell, Tuesday, 4 April 2023 bookmarkflaglink

I am taking a speech by a French left-wing politician who is thinking along my lines. If you didn't spend time working so much you'd have time for other pursuits, or you could spend time doing nothing.

Liberals here do have time to take a lot of vacations. Skiing holidays, they go away many times a year but they might be working pretty hard a lot of the year. Liberal politicians don't really spend anytime talking about the notion of not working at all. Although in the pandemic you got some of them reflecting on how there is something other than commuting, that you would bake bread, or something like that. It was a one-off though.