[dude with glasses in a communist t-shirt, arguing] I’m the only leftist here, your opinions are TRASH
[dude holding a theory book on smug, arguing] Read theory you losers, you’re all WRONG
[dude in an anarchist hoodie, arguing] Nuh-uh, I’m the only leftist here, you’re SHITLIBS
[the three dudes are now caught in a cartoon fight, glasses gone flying, punches everywhere, while a firing squad of nazis are targeting them with rifles]
[a confused nazi asks] Why… why are they still arguing?
The only thing that matters is policy, I’ll work with anyone as long as it’s toward an egalitarian society with wealth redistribution.
Labels are nice for classifying, but not for executing. I don’t care if you identify as leftist, or liberal, or progressive; I care if you support good policies.
The issue is that you’re a minority in your camp. Broadly speaking, the left sees compromise as weakness, neutrality as cowardice, working with opposition towards a common cause as treachery. These are all symptoms of purity testing, and it’s the reason why the left in so many places is completely paralyzed.
How do you know that isn’t confirmation bias? We have no idea how many leftists there are that see purity testers and decide to not engage.
It’s a similar to MAGA in a way. MAGA’s biggest problem, as an ideology, is that it revolves around blind loyalty to a single idiot and therefore the entire movement starts and stops with his whims, no matter how contradictory, damaging, or nonsensical. You could say it’s confirmation bias that I have this opinion, but I think given recent events, this opinion does have a basis of fact to it. The same applies to the left when it comes to purity testing. It’s really not hard to see how prominent purity testing is in leftist discourse.
Okay, but here me out? What if we just privatize the mechanism of wealth redistribution? Also we’re going to be spending a bunch of money on foreign wars, but don’t worry - this time the people were fighting are ontologically evil, we promise. Yes, we will have to make deep cuts to social services in order to pay for the war (while still running enormous deficits because haha, psych, deficits don’t matter), but it will be vital to get the Moderate Conservative on board with our program.
Also, we control every branch of government, but we still need to compromise with fascists in the opposition.
Okay, why are you leaving? You’re clearly not serious about progressive reforms.
And STOP SAYING NICE THINGS AND CHINA! This is a red line we will not tolerate!
You know what? You’re not serious. We’re forming a coalition with Liz Cheney. See you in the losers bracket next year.
…
You’re the reason we lost control of the government.
…
Okay, now stop voting for a popular leftist mayor, or we’ll burn this whole party down.
hear, hear
Yeah, but the question ultimately lies in how many bad and straight up harmful policies are worth the small step toward an egalitarian society? Where does it become ignoble to vote for one policy, when there are ultimately many more harmful ones outweighing the positive? Because it’s kinda rare that we get to vote on policy. We vote for people, with the vague promise of policy ideas that face an uphill battle and watering down— not to mention the straight up bastardization of those good policies, turning them into terrible ones.
I wish it were so black and white as us getting to vote on policy. The policymakers surely seem to be unable.