Negative Egalitarianism Disillusions People From Sticking With the Left - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14795381
The left has a history of being associated with opposing not just nationalist prejudice for the sake of equality, but also opposing the anti-intellectual folk community common sense which encourages rugged individualism. It is looked upon as a movement that cares about civil rights to prevent people from getting ahead by screwing over others around them. It rejected retributive justice because it understands how the rule of law and order can be corrupted by special interests, and in a competitive environment, it will be corrupt. Those who don't corrupt are abandoned to fall through the cracks since they don't entertain, excite, and satisfy as much as those who do corrupt. Therefore, it substituted retributive with redistributive justice to compensate victims of abuse instead of depending on the unreliability of a potentially corrupt system.

The problem with this is it has enabled people to get away with criminal behavior in the first place which is comparable to the right's original rugged individualism. The only difference between those who believe in abuse, negligence, blaming of victims, and telling victims on a ruggedly individualist basis to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and deal with it...

...versus those who believe in tolerating wise guys, lazy bums, and screw balls to mooch and leech off of others while refusing to hold people responsible for their actions or else we're pushing our values onto them...

...is semantics.

In fact, culture today is increasingly bridging the divide between redneck hillbillies from trailer parks and ghetto gangstas from the school of hard knocks. We are increasingly seeing a society where people say that others had to deal with your problems too, so what makes you special? Instead of fixing problems to make the world a better place, problems are allowed to fester. Egalitarianism has met anti-elitism. Whether it's because of predatory, defensive, spiteful, or envious motives, we are increasingly living in a world where the pursuit of success and excellence is sabotaged behind the notion that tolerance is more than what needs to be done. Society can get by from doing what's merely sufficient instead.

This "negative egalitarianism" as I call it convinces people that the left is no longer the movement of liberation that stands up for civil rights. Does it persuade people to join the right? Not necessarily, but it does convince people that the left is no longer a movement to believe in. It is not a movement that upholds respect. In fact, we very deliberately saw this during the recent presidential election where Hillary was celebrated as a "nasty woman" to mock Trump's label of her. The left has embraced screwing around instead of contrasting itself against the right for screwing people over.
#14795697
It's about how equality was originally about elevating people who were knocked down, not about knocking others down to the level of others already knocked.

The twisting of equality from a positive to a negative force has disillusioned people from believing in the left as a movement about equality that cares about civil rights. If anything, the right has exploited it to encourage rugged individualism in society.

If you don't recognize Hillary as having to do with twisting the left, then there's nothing to be said.
#14795711
Dubayoo wrote:It's about how equality was originally about elevating people who were knocked down, not about knocking others down to the level of others already knocked.

The twisting of equality from a positive to a negative force has disillusioned people from believing in the left as a movement about equality that cares about civil rights. If anything, the right has exploited it to encourage rugged individualism in society.


Can you give any examples of this?

If you don't recognize Hillary as having to do with twisting the left, then there's nothing to be said.


Hillary Clinton is not a leftist.
#14796021
Are you a conservative subversive in liberal clothing?

You behave just like them in real life. They're the types who appeal to learning from experience for the sake of empowering folk community common sense while believing in abuse, negligence, and blaming victims to pull themselves up by their bootstraps while exploiting how people aren't born into the world with video cameras out of their eyes, microphones out of their ears, or hooked up to networks of surveillance equipment. That way, nothing can be presented of what abusers did in a hearing or trial.

Don't get me wrong. I believe in learning from experience for the sake of the scientific method, but we need to recognize how when people actually get knocked down in society in real life, that knocking is not always recorded. Much more often than not, it isn't. Expecting evidence there is dreaming about a utopian fantasy. We need to realize that society is not a controlled laboratory and account for the difference.

Of course Hillary isn't a leftist. She twisted the left with negative egalitarianism though. Let's not play dumb here.
#14796024
Dubayoo wrote:Are you a conservative subversive in liberal clothing?

You behave just like them in real life. They're the types who appeal to learning from experience for the sake of empowering folk community common sense while believing in abuse, negligence, and blaming victims to pull themselves up by their bootstraps while exploiting how people aren't born into the world with video cameras out of their eyes, microphones out of their ears, or hooked up to networks of surveillance equipment.

Don't get me wrong. I believe in learning from experience for the sake of the scientific method, but we need to recognize how when people actually get knocked down in society in real life, that knocking is not always recorded. Much more often than not, it isn't. Expecting evidence there is dreaming about a utopian fantasy. We need to realize that society is not a controlled laboratory and account for the difference.


Are you talking to me?

Also, how does this address my request for examples?

Of course Hillary isn't a leftist. She twisted the left with negative egalitarianism though. Let's not play dumb here.


Can you elaborate?
#14796113
Indeed. This is an argument about some ill-defined centre-rightism getting upset at another ill-defined centre-rightism because one feels a bigger victim than the other.

The left dispensed with this nonsense more than a hundred years ago:

Marx wrote:...It follows from this that man frees himself through the medium of the state, that he frees himself politically from a limitation when, in contradiction with himself, he raises himself above this limitation in an abstract, limited, and partial way. It follows further that, by freeing himself politically, man frees himself in a roundabout way, through an intermediary, although an essential intermediary. It follows, finally, that man, even if he proclaims himself an atheist through the medium of the state – that is, if he proclaims the state to be atheist – still remains in the grip of religion, precisely because he acknowledges himself only by a roundabout route, only through an intermediary. Religion is precisely the recognition of man in a roundabout way, through an intermediary. The state is the intermediary between man and man’s freedom.

...All emancipation is a reduction of the human world and relationships to man himself.

Political emancipation is the reduction of man, on the one hand, to a member of civil society, to an egoistic, independent individual, and, on the other hand, to a citizen, a juridical person.

Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his “own powers” as social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.


It is astonishing how often the people that rail against the left have so little idea what the left is.
#14796610
Decky wrote:It is the left who are work ethic orientated. The right worship business owners, landlords, aristocrats and capitalists and other do nothing soft handed types who are scared of working.

Eh, there's long been this anti-workerist sentiment on the left as well, starting with Marx's own nephew. The difference is that for leftist anti-workerism, the goal is to create a more leisure lifestyle for everyone, not just a small ruling class.
#14798599
Decky wrote:It is the left who are work ethic orientated. The right worship business owners, landlords, aristocrats and capitalists and other do nothing soft handed types who are scared of working.


Work ethic is a prejudicial belief dealing with how people work. It's not about whether you work or not. It's about judging people as useless because the way they follow through isn't compatible with how others follow through.

From this, we find the foundation of localist-nationalism grounded in folk community common sense.

The difference between the left and the right is the left doesn't judge people as useless just because they work differently from the norm. It tolerates the diversity of human nature instead. The left is supposed to address inequality by shoring up those who are prejudiced against despite working. It is not supposed to tell those who work that others who worked were prejudiced against, so everyone should endure being prejudiced against.

Paradigm wrote:Eh, there's long been this anti-workerist sentiment on the left as well, starting with Marx's own nephew. The difference is that for leftist anti-workerism, the goal is to create a more leisure lifestyle for everyone, not just a small ruling class.


To be fair, it's really not about leisure. It's about the elimination of struggle. When people relate with how they work instead of being compelled to work for another's dreams they don't relate with, they become naturally passionate about what they do. Hobbies emerge from taking pride in how people support themselves.
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