Something that i find prettyd disgusting these days is how certain people put their political ideologies / viewpoints over human lives, for example, celebrating the russian invasion of ukraine because it is “a blow against US / NATO imperialism” completely ignoring all the warcrimes, the deaths, and the suffering generated by that war, the same happening with the palestinian genocide because “Israel is the only working democracy on the middle east”, acting like their ideoligies are going to bring back to life all the dead people somehow
I was at a skating rink this weekend. It was full of families bringing their kids so their kids could have fun. Even some kids birthday parties.
Oh, and the dad wearing an anti-Biden shirt. While hanging out and skating with his kid.
Priorities.
Yea, and I extend that to all Politics. I don’t want to see anti-Trump shirts, I don’t really want to see pro Trump or pro Biden. Politicians aren’t sports teams. Save it for rallies, and what not. Just tired of seeing it.
Yeah agreed. It’s so weird to make politics or politicians part of your identity like this and extend it to totally hnrelated situstions by wearing a message. I already barely understand when people do it for sports as if they personally have any connection to the team.
What a loser
Really owned the libs xd
I mean, did wearing the shirt stop him from doing that?
I think you’re missing the point that it doesn’t really fit the environment he was in. It says a lot about how much free rent a politician seems to have in his head, when he’s likely never met said politician, likely has nothing directly to do with said politician, and was also displaying it in an area where I’m fairly sure the majority already agree with him (knowing this region).
It’s just a weird topic to flex in THAT specific environment.
Being anti-Biden is literally giving priority to human lives. If palestinian lives matter, I mean.
Yeah we gotta get Trump into office, he’ll be MUCH better prioritizing human lives
Didn’t say that. I think u americans are fucked up anyways.
People have this problem where they subscribe to Us versus Them thinking. They dehumanize certain groups of people and see them as something less than human, and therefore they don’t care if they are harmed. Militaries all over the globe do this to train their armies to kill without discrimination.
We see it in the USA all the time with the two party political system. I think if the extremist liberals and extremist conservatives had to share a room, it would turn into a blood bath before any common ground could be found. It’s disappointing and disturbing to me that people can’t seem to act in a civil manner. People get tunnel vision and lose sight of the fact that we all have to share this planet and we have to compromise on a lot of things. Seems like most people don’t want to compromise anymore, they want to destroy the opposing side instead and rule the world. That’s so delusional I can’t even…
I’m trans. Tell me more. 🤷♀️
If authoritarians get their way, you’ll have to hide in my attic until we are liberated.
my attic
Isn’t that where you’ve been hiding your sex toys?
Amongst other things. Why you wanna come over and play swords in the dark.
No, I just thought you’d put them in with the rest of your sex slaves in the dungeon.
Maybe even write a book while you’re up there.
I don’t know why people are okay with trans people dying as well. Some people were absolutely sick when Brianna Ghey was brutally murdered.
You should ask your fellow Christians, trans folks are not so popular with the church if you haven’t noticed.
Every Christian I have talked to about this subject is vehemently against killing transgender people. What does my belief in God have to do with my opinion on not killing trans people?
You don’t have to strictly be for killing them, you can just be against their existence, and someone else will take that to its logical conclusion.
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest”
I think it is true that Christians who are against violence against trans people should be far more vocal over it. But the general thing I hear isn’t really wanting to get rid of trans people, more of if they should be validated as their desired gender or not, or how children should be approached about the topic.
the existence of trans people is quite literally conditional on them being validated as their desired gender.
if you don’t validate them, then when they keep doing trans stuff (like transitioning), you will freak out and attempt to stop them. For example by sending them to conversion therapy. And it should be obvious to any basically humanist person why that’s a bad idea.
No, because there are no effective conversion therapies that work, and it can make the situation worse. It’s not a binary. You don’t have to choose between “oh yeah sure let’s change the signs on bathrooms! You can compete in women’s sports and be in women spaces, too! Oh and please go and tell these children all about your sex change!” and “send them all to conversion therapy at gunpoint”. I don’t know why you keep jumping to conclusions so quickly and freak out at me stating the fact that killing people is abhorrent. Because apparently I am not allowed to condemn the murder of a young girl because I, like 2.38 billion other people, think that Jesus of Nazareth from 2024 years ago made a convincing case for actually being God.
Christians are not really known for being champions for transgender folks. Catholics and Orthodox are official opposed to the existence of trans folks as a whole, since it does not work well with their binary view on gender.
Okay? That’s a them problem. I’m not a Roman Catholic nor an Orthodox. Still never seen an Orthodox or a Catholic person advocate for the killing of trans people though.
Still never seen an Orthodox or a Catholic person advocate for the killing of trans people though.
They just say you don’t exist, which at least does not help.
I’ve seen Atheists say that. Including Dawkins. Killing people and saying someone’s belief in their own gender is or isn’t valid are different things, though.
Here’s an example of putting ideology before people. I see on here regularly people who believe in the Christian god but are told that them looking at the doctrine of their holy books critically and trying to change the nature of their churches to be better is a useless endeavor and use the opportunity to snipe at people of faith.
During they holocaust while some Christian organizations were supportive of Nazis others assumed great personal risk and extracted hundreds of thousands of targeted people out of the country ro safety because of their faith. Their contributions were not small or easy and should not be ignored.
So often on here when trans issues come up people choose to use the occasion to put their personal religious trauma or prejudice before the needs of solidarity in the fight. They snipe at other trans allies for being “bad leftists” for believing in god. The trans community does not have the luxury of petty in-fighting, if choosing who our protectors will be. We cannot be choosing beggars for solidarity and help. Everything helps. There are trans people of faith who feel isolated in their need for community of other people of faith. There are churches that are key to changing people’s minds, there are people of faith who need support and encouragement to keep fighting in their corner because creating an enduring culture of acceptance inside a religion can also create long term security. The needs of our community are varied. We of the trans community are not weapons to be weilded to score hits against our own allies so you can feel good. When you do so you are putting yourself first in opposition to the goals and needs of trans people. You want to hate on people of faith there are lots of people who could use the distraction but wearing out people who are actually empathetic and who we need fresh for the fight is not doing us a service.
Allies of faith, keep doing what you are doing. I may not personally believe in your gods but you have my respect and thanks because I have friends who are alive because of you.
I see on here regularly people who believe in the Christian god but are told that them looking at the doctrine of their holy books critically and trying to change the nature of their churches to be better is a useless endeavor and use the opportunity to snipe at people of faith.
Everyone who tries to change the Christian doctrine to be more in tune with the actual spirit and teaching of Jesus, has my respect.
During they holocaust while some Christian organizations were supportive of Nazis others assumed great personal risk and extracted hundreds of thousands of targeted people out of the country ro safety because of their faith. Their contributions were not small or easy and should not be ignored.
And during the inquisition Christians tortured and burned people for basically fun of it. As any dogmatic believe system you can use Christianity to justify what ever you feel like.
So often on here when trans issues come up people choose to use the occasion to put their personal religious trauma or prejudice before the needs of solidarity in the fight. They snipe at other trans allies for being “bad leftists” for believing in god.
Sure, but the dude I’m talking to is a christian fundamentalist who believes that abortion is murder and on trans issues just stated that trans people should indeed not be killed (pretty sure the person does adhere to christian dogma of two genders, even so they dance around an answer), wich I would not classify as ally.
It is still something I see very often levied at members of this community who don’t deserve it. It is so very common for people who have a history of just mentioning their faith in the same breath as their support of trans people getting completely dog piled on by people who having sighted a believer to decide to try and debate their faith and hurl abuse.
More generally I wish people would realize what they are actually doing when they are doing that.
Possibly. I personally don’t have any problems with personal faith but a general dislike for organized religions. In this instance I replied because I’m discussion abortions with the same person in the same thread.
Sometimes people’s veiws on abortion are dearly held and we can ask only that they not inflict those beliefs on others.
This person, despite their stance on abortion, seems at least fairly progressive on their stance on trans people. Maybe not a gold star of support yes but was coming after them undermining them for the general state of the church in regards to gender minorities ultimately nessisary? This habit of individual members of a faith getting shoved on the back foot having to defend all of Christianity simultaneously for beliefs they don’t personally hold is a way to express your distaste of organized religion… But Scapegoating isn’t pleasant to be on the receiving end of.
Welcome to Human History 101
Sometimes, but it’s more complicated than that. It depends on the ideology. Sometimes ideologies clash in ways that can’t be reconciled without the loss of life. For example, I think it’s a good thing that the rest of the world collectively put our ideology above the lives of Nazis, and fought in ww2.
The allies didn’t fight the Nazis because they took issue with their ideology, but because they became a threat to their own powers. The reality is, that many people, including leaders of the time, weren’t interested in helping those being persecuted, in some cases they even inspired the persecution with their own.
The U.S. and the Holocaust (BBC, PBS) is well worth watching the whole way through, especially for how it mirrors our world today.
Yeah, I’m generalizing here, and that’s a very good point you bring up. I think whenever you have an ideology that claims to be the “one true x”, which in the case of Nazism was the belief in a racial hierarchy, if that ideology is expansionist, it will by necessity become an existential threat to other ideologies. You can say it became a threat to their power, but is that not also a threat to their ideology? Perhaps I’m using an overly broad conception of ideology here.
I’ll have to add that documentary to my watch list. Looks informative!
if that ideology is expansionist, it will by necessity become an existential threat to other ideologies.
This is it right here, and it’s why the world didn’t really care what a threat Putin was until he fully invaded Ukraine, or about the Uyghur genocide, or the treatment of North Koreans, or Gazans, or Kurds, and on and on - the people responsible for those are, quite deliberately, trying to keep their actions as much as they can within their own territory to avoid giving any other country reason to physically get involved (though they are deeply involved otherwise in the supports, financial and otherwise, that they provide, often to both sides f a conflict).
You can say it became a threat to their power, but is that not also a threat to their ideology? Perhaps I’m using an overly broad conception of ideology here.
No, you’re right here too, the “good guys” aren’t that good at all, and are only acting to defend their own interests - hoarding wealth and power, and maintaining the systems that enable them to do that at the expense of everyone else.
In actuality capitalistic imperialism specifically has and continues to claim more lives than probably all of the others combined (not only directly through war and invasion, but also through hunger poverty and preventable diseases which are a requirement and an inevitable result of artificial scarcity and commodification of what are basic human rights for profit), but history is written by the victors, and we are indoctrinated from birth in to false ideas of what humanity, freedom, and justice actually mean, in service of keeping us ion line.
Protecting democracy in the middle east, bud, might save 30,000,000 lives at the expense of 30,000. You mistake that people defending Israel’s offensive don’t care about human life, we can just see what is at stake for the region, and I think 30,000,000 is a conservative estimate…
Speaking of the Russian invasion of Ukraine… A lot fewer people would have died if Ukraine had surrendered immediately. About 200,000 Russian soldiers’ lives would have been saved, and I find it rather unlikely that Putin’s repressive measures would have killed more Ukrainians than that. But somehow in this case I find myself putting my ideology over human lives.
Not all ideologies are the same, of course, but you should still consider whether you only see people you disagree with putting ideology over human lives because when you put your own ideology over human lives, it seems so obvious and natural that you don’t think about it.
Putin also could have … Not invaded ?? & the lives of those Russian soldiers would have been spared.
True but not relevant to the point being made.
It is perfectly relevant. Putin, and thus the rest of the Russian political machine that backed him up, chose to put ideology (his personal agenda of territorial expansion) over human lives (of both Ukrainian and Russian). Can one really fault Ukraine for making the decision to fight back when the decision was already made for them? From some philosophical point of view, one could then put the ‘blame’ on both- since both have chosen to put ideology above lives and extend the fighting. However, one forced the decision of the other. Blame cannot be equally assigned, when the blame didn’t even exist until the unilateral action of one party.
The concept of “ideology” is perhaps too narrow a definition for such a situation as Ukraine, however. Most people boil it down online to just “Western proxy war vs Russia”, but it is more than just politics, it is the threat of extinction of Ukraine’s independent self-determination, freedom of expression, and ethnic distinctiveness.
I think Timwi was getting at this part of ArbitraryValue’s comment:
Not all ideologies are the same, of course, but you should still consider whether you only see people you disagree with putting ideology over human lives because when you put your own ideology over human lives, it seems so obvious and natural that you don’t think about it.
Also worth emphasizing that they specifically say this preceding that:
But somehow in this case I find myself putting my ideology over human lives.
In other words, unless I’m mistaken, even supposing their thought might somehow hold true that Ukraine’s surrender would save lives, they maintain support for Ukraine’s fight against Russia as they’re putting their ideology over human lives. Nevertheless, they think it’s important to recognize that they are doing this, rather than think there is no ideology in play whatsoever in their position.
It’s not necessarily the best way to have approached this given the charged topic (particularly framing it as a certainty of far fewer lost lives), but I think that point is worth remembering. Introspection is especially important in serious matters, otherwise you lose sight of what you’re really fighting for.
Ah yes Russian soldiers are known for their mercy and self restraint. Even if Ukraine surrendered Russian soldiers would have continued committing crimes against humanity. Children would still be kidnapped, women would still be raped and men would still be tortured to death.
Neville Chamberlain called, he wants to club you over the head with a history book.
I got downvoted for saying AOC shouldn’t run for President because she’s unwilling to challenge the neoliberal ghouls in Washington. But somehow, I’m the bad guy for not wanting a representative that votes and funds a genocide. Blue MAGA is a joke.
blue MAGA
What is blud on about
Blue MAGA are the idiot liberals that insist we have to vote for Genocide Joe no matter what. Even if he bombs children or his brain doesn’t work. No thanks. I don’t like either option, so I’ll either vote third party or not at all.
I’m blaming you when we fall into total authoritarianism in a few months
I don’t care. Have fun.
Why not
Why should I care?
Politics sets the rules for how you live. Literally including things like whether you live or die. It’s hard to think about anything you should care about more.
This is a very grey topic for me. We can use the Russian invasion as an example since you brought it up. You can argue that more lives would have been saved had Ukraine just rolled over and surrendered immediately. But you can also argue their quality of life would be worse. But how do you compare that to resisting and fighting a war? How many lives would you trade for how big of an improvement in quality of life?
Btw I’m for Ukraine resisting, and I support them 100%. I’m just giving an example why it might not be always best to compare in human lives. Or at least, it’s really complicated.
The people who boil complex geopolitical events down to “haha western imperialism is finally getting challenged, lol shitlib get owned” are immature teenagers arguing in bad faith or on things they don’t understand. That would be what we call a “tankie”.
The same goes for those blindly supporting Israel because “omg hamas is terrorist” or whatever the hell they even justify it with anymore. A lot of those may just be quiet racists or fascists happy to see a dictator like Netanyahu have his way with Western support- obviously never thinking for a second that they themselves have an equal chance of being on the receiving end of such treatment, not the delivering end.
Both of these situations are absolutely horrible. But neither can really be boiled down to simple ideology over human lives as much as the lower-quality people love to do so. People want things to fit how they think so that they can feel good about their thoughts. Many things get shaped in that lens and it gets worse every day. And, unfortunately, the only real solution is just not to interact. Their minds can never be changed once they set up their world view to be self supporting.
Your views mirror mine closely. Ukraine’s war is awful, but it never needed to happen if Putin wasn’t such a trigger-happy, imperialistic dictator. His war is purely for territorial and ideological expansion of control at the expense of human life. Same goes for Palestine, while the operation was framed as being anti-terrorism at first, Netanyahu has gotten completely unhinged and fallen out of line in some crazy drive to control all of Gaza and eliminate Israel’s competition. However, I support Ukraine and do not support Israel, despite these being philosophically contradictory in the terms of “preserving human life over ideologies” since Ukraine is still killing people. The context makes the conscience.
Ukraine is killing people to preserve their people’s lives, it’s not contradictory.
“Killing Russians in self defense is comparable to genociding Palestinians” is the take of a very, very sheltered individual.
The people who boil complex geopolitical events down to “haha western imperialism is finally getting challenged,
I mean that is what is factually happening right now. The US can no longer hold its diplomatic and military weight. The US and its allies are unable to prevent the Houthis from succesfull attacks in the Red Sea. On Israels genocide in Palestine the European countries are dividing. Putin is managing to divide the US internally and to have some European countries break away to his side. China doesn’t give a fuck about US sanctions anymore and there is elaborate systems to bypass sanctions. As a result both Russian energy exports are laundered before being sold to the EU and US and western components end up in russian military equipment.
Cheering on the current prospecting alternative is stupid, as it is just another imperialist system.
But it is urgently necessary to realise the changing reality and use the window to create a world order, that puts all imperialists to limits and embraces a rule based international order of equal countries with equal people. Especially the EU could take this opportunity to renounce the remnants of its imperial ways and the subtle and open supremacist believes.
The EU countries made the terrible mistake to consider Trump an anomaly and were all to eager to remain complacent on Bidens presidency. But Trump wasn’t just a pimple you wait to pass. He is the symptom of a deeper instability in the US.
Every political position mostly tries to define in which ways violence is to be used. Realising this and knowing power is already established before you were even born. Seeing violence being used against your oppressor(s) is often times the only thing we feel we can still hope for.
Or from another perspective, is the war in Ukraine worth it for Ukraine or Russia, can you really say a war with so many deaths is preferable to being a russian subject, or an international embarrassment of the Russian state. Is the self determination of Palestinians really worth the terror and the war. We’re the PIRA justified in bombing London for their brother’s and sisters discrimination and deaths in Ireland. It’s ultimately all subjective, wether the violence of the system you fight against is bad enough you can bring yourself to fight.
Nothing brings back anyone but as long as there are people who want to, and do turn us into their machines, we have to rely on our interpretation of that being wrong, and fight them for it.
Is this “General”, or “General in the US”? I’m not saying it cannot be the latter, but if it is. I’m out. Best mentalt health choice I’ve done is reduce exposure to American “problems”.
Valuing human lives is itself an ideology/viewpoint. A great one obviously, and one I fervently agree with, but once you realize this it’s easier to understand how other people can put other viewpoints ahead of this one.
Yeah, tankies are the worst