Understanding the Liberal Mindset

[jt512]

I would separate liberal from progressive, but the progressive mindset is so obvious. It assumes oppressor/oppressed power relationships, and always assumes the more powerful in this contrived relationship is bad. White privilege? It's how you get "abolish police." It's how the genocide of October 7 is waived off or ignored.

Or supported.

 

[johnny karate]

The Bee is political cartoons for the new millennium. This entry lampoons the liberal mindset. It's not a mystery.

Good satire usually has to be rooted in some semblance of reality to be effective.

Satirizing a conservative’s fantasy of what liberals think is - much like most things conservatives do - a coping mechanism.

 

[johnny karate]

I would separate liberal from progressive, but the progressive mindset is so obvious. It assumes oppressor/oppressed power relationships, and always assumes the more powerful in this contrived relationship is bad. White privilege? It's how you get "abolish police." It's how the genocide of October 7 is waived off or ignored.

Baseless bull ◊◊◊◊ to rationalize voting for destroying the economy, killing children with preventable diseases, protecting sex predators, and releasing violent criminals into the streets.

Like I said, everything is a coping mechanism with conservatives.

 

[dudalb]

When positive elucidation is impossible or unlikely the conversation devolves to slang.

And desperate attempts to show how col

The conservative mindset, everyone: the conviction that it is repetition that makes a thing true.

I have seen people on the Left with that mindset as well. It is standard any stripe of ideologue.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Liberal Progressives (Lib-Progs) consider themselves as the bastions of Social Justice. They claim to believe in each individual's right to an autonomous, self-directed life, free from restrictions. They claim to believe in freedom of speech, arguing that is it an important part of challenging existing ideas and finding truth. Lib-Progs have an absoluteness about their mindset. They are utterly convinced they are always the good guys, that they are the final arbiter of right and wrong, and that anyone who doesn't think the way they do are the bad guys. They are also utterly convinced that they, and only they, know what's best for society. They operate on the basis of the "victim v oppressor framework" which views social dynamics via a sort of "binary" consisting of the powerful groups (the oppressors) versus the marginalized groups (the victims). In the Lib-Prog world, everyone but them is either one or the other - everyone is either a victim or an oppressor, and the Lib-Progs are here equalize everyone and make everything alright. They are fantasists, the ultimate expression of idealism. These are indeed lofty ideals, but sadly, the reality of the Liberal Progressive mindset is somewhat different from their stated ideals.

Their claim to believe in each individual's rights falls flat when it comes to any right that doesn't comport their mindset.
Their claim to believe in free speech only applies to speech they like. Speech they don't like must be restricted, and its speaker punished.

There is nothing that demonstrates how the Lib-Prog mindset works (and exposes its deep flaws) better than their relationship with Israel and the Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank. British Commentator Melanie Phillips currently writes on social issues for The Times and The Jerusalem Post from a socially conservative perspective.

Only a few days and your thread is already 30 pages long. Well done!

While I agree with all the above - which must surely be your own candid opinion because it's not in quotes or showing any obvious signs of parody - I do have a few nitpicks (apologies if any have been pointed out by others in the previous 29 pages which I can't be bothered reading):-

1. Everybody is utterly convinced that they are always the good guys, so this is a tautology.

2. The free speech thing applies to other political groups too - especially on the right - so this goes no further in understanding the Lib-Prog mindset.

3. Their relationship with Israel is indeed the best demonstration of how the Lib-Prog mindset works. The best example is Charlie Kirk, that well-known Lib-Prog who wrongly described Israel's wholly appropriate actions in Gaza as a genocide.

 

[Pixel42]

Only a few days and your thread is already 30 pages long. Well done!

Not saying it to excuse the pointless bickering, but the number of posts per page has just been reduced to 20 from, I think, 50. Personally I prefer it (it greatly reduces the unfurl problem) but it does mean threads have over twice as many pages as they did a couple of days ago.

 

[dirtywick]

a bunch of the posts are theprestige crashing out and trying to mock people and saying the liberal mindset everyone and amy smart biting on it, which kind of inflates the page count.

 

[plague311]

I have absolutely no idea what this thread is about anymore. Granted I don't see the posts from a myriad of posters in this thread, but this is hot garbage.

That being said, I'm pretty liberal and I'm pretty progressive and I find it ironic that there is simultaneous bitching about generalizing in a thread about making claims about the "liberal mindset".

 

[wareyin]

The liberal mindset, everyone. Doesn't comprehend political cartoons.

The Bee dumbs things down so much for their audience that I doubt even an elementary school child could fail to understand their articles. Finding such idiocy unfunny doesn’t mean the reader didn't get it, it means the reader has a better grasp of reality than the Bee or its fans.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

I have absolutely no idea what this thread is about anymore. Granted I don't see the posts from a myriad of posters in this thread, but this is hot garbage.

Not knowing what the thread is about means it can be about whatever you'd like. What does understanding the liberal mindset mean to you?

Personally, I think the original definition is best. A liberal is someone left of center, but not so far left that they cannot pretend to have been right of center the whole time, should it be needed. Phil Ochs's "Love me, I'm a liberal" is a great illustration.

 

[theprestige]

The conservative mindset, everyone: the conviction that it is repetition that makes a thing true.

Well, it doesn't make a thing false.

But the thesis of this thread is understanding. So what is it about the mindset AmyStrange portrays, that you dissent from? What part of it doesn't comport with your idea of a liberal mindset? Is he saying anything you don't agree with? Anything that doesn't represent the virtues of the liberal mindset as you understand them? Advance our understanding, if you think I've got something wrong.

 

[theprestige]

Yup, and the rest of the posts (that came with those made-up statements), don't offer any proof that they're right either, that every liberal/progressive mindset is the same as mine.

Hell, I might be the only one with that mindset. I don't know, but I do know that many people in this thread have proven that the liberal/progressive mindset is not consistent and is made up of a diverse group of people whose ideas are sometimes (if not mostly) very different from mine.

I certainly hope you're the only one with this mindset, but I haven't really seen any evidence that's true. If anyone else here thinks you're misrepresenting the liberal mindset on this forum, they're keeping quiet about it.

 

[wareyin]

Well, it doesn't make a thing false.

How'd that go? "A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth" ...or something?

But the thesis of this thread is understanding.

How do you get that idea? The OP didn't make that their thesis at all.

So what is it about the mindset AmyStrange portrays, that you dissent from? What part of it doesn't comport with your idea of a liberal mindset? Is he saying anything you don't agree with? Anything that doesn't represent the virtues of the liberal mindset as you understand them? Advance our understanding, if you think I've got something wrong.

Ah, good old "divide and conquer". If only it weren't so obvious you just might get someone to bite.

 

[theprestige]

How'd that go? "A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth" ...or something?

The truth doesn't become less true with repetition.

How do you get that idea? The OP didn't make that their thesis at all.

"Understanding the liberal mindset."

Ah, good old "divide and conquer". If only it weren't so obvious you just might get someone to bite.

Funny, I was just saying that part of the liberal mindset is to never dissent from any other expression of the liberal mindset.

 

[johnny karate]

I certainly hope you're the only one with this mindset, but I haven't really seen any evidence that's true. If anyone else here thinks you're misrepresenting the liberal mindset on this forum, they're keeping quiet about it.

Do you have a theory of the "liberal mindset" that can be applied to liberals in general, as supported by data? Or is it all just your fantasy and/or cherry-picked version of liberals?

 

[I Am The Scum]

The Bee dumbs things down so much for their audience that I doubt even an elementary school child could fail to understand their articles. Finding such idiocy unfunny doesn’t mean the reader didn't get it, it means the reader has a better grasp of reality than the Bee or its fans.

A lot of it is just right-wing pandering that is so poor that it doesn't even rise to the level of "joke that didn't land." There appears to be no sincere attempt at humor whatsoever.


Anyone here is free to read the article themselves and point out the joke.

 

[johnny karate]

A lot of it is just right-wing pandering that is so poor that it doesn't even rise to the level of "joke that didn't land." There appears to be no sincere attempt at humor whatsoever.

View attachment 67855
Anyone here is free to read the article themselves and point out the joke.

I guess "Right wing publication gargles billionaire's balls" is sort of a joke...

 

[wareyin]

The truth doesn't become less true with repetition.

You need to start with the truth first, though. Otherwise it's just typical conservative or MAGA mindset: repeat the lie over and over until your sheep believe it.

"Understanding the liberal mindset."

The title "Understanding the Liberal Mindset" is just false advertising. You can't claim to be providing an "understanding" of something when the content is just a list of grievances and caricatures. It’s a bait-and-switch: using a neutral-sounding label to wrap a one-sided rant.

Funny, I was just saying that part of the liberal mindset is to never dissent from any other expression of the liberal mindset.

Have you established that AmyStrange in any way represents the "liberal mindset" yet? I know you've repeated the claim many times, but I for one have yet to see any evidence establishing that.

 

[acbytesla]

I despise this thread. Not because it's picking on me. Which a few of the right wingers have done. I'm used to that. Go for it. I can take it.

But that it is just rants of sweeping amorphous tribal generalizations. A blob of name calling essentially.

Present specific policy positions. Maybe there is something I can learn. But I'm going to yawn when you call me a woke, bleeding heart liberal. That's meaningless to me.

 

[ahhell]

This thread was doomed to fail at producing anything useful on account of how its started. Maybe a question like, for those of you describe yourself as X political persuasion, what do you think it means to be of x political persuasion would work better but probably not.

The problem with politics and political groupings, you kind of have to talk about them in generalities but as soon as you do you end up with someone who thinks you haven't got it quite right. You want to see the extreme of that, look at the libertarians. You practically can't find two of them that agree the other is a true Scotsman.