I’ve been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to “voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism” and “the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic” and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.
More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they’re replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.
It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling – in retrospect I’m pretty sure I could’ve built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that’s what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) – and the only reason I’m not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.
I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?
The Nolan Chart used to be taught in intro to Poli-Sci. I’m not sure if it is anymore, but it should really be taught in high school.
Here’s the quiz (oversimplified by today’s standards), that will give you an idea of your political ideology position on the Nolan Chart.
This is basically how you get horseshoe theory, but if you come at an authoritarian leftist with horseshoe theory they’ll mention the nonsense fishhook theory.
Frankly both are far too boilerplate for my tastes. Any legitimacy either has is outweighed by the fact that they’re almost exclusively used as a flippant response to handwave away arguments people don’t like or nuance introduced where they don’t want it. I often hear self-ascribed centrists use it to dismiss people they view as not centrist and to elevate themselves as the only rational actors in the room.
We’ve seen Horseshoe theory in the development of several dictatorships. However, I don’t really follow how fish hook theory is anything more than a defensive suggestion to mask authoritarian progress.
Finally an explanation for a dumbass like me. The quiz might be oversimplified, but it seems like a decent starting point for what I should do my research on
It’s helpful for learning the difference between economic and social legislation. They’re displayed as two separate axes, demonstrating that political ideology is more of a spectrum that is defined by two independent variables.
Economic: More tax socialization - liberal, Less tax socialization - conservative
Social: More social liberty - libertarian, Less social liberty - authoritarian