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Did America's heyday have anything to do with liberalism? When do you think the "heyday" of America even was, and why do you think liberalism was it's defining feature, so much so that it gets to own all that greatness?
I don't know man. I used to think we had things figured out in the 90's. If you're going to give any particular era to "liberalism", whatever that means, the 90's would probably qualify. Culture seemed to have definitively move away from a conception of The United States as a white Christian nation, and towards a multicultural melting pot. When I think back on my public school education, probably 50% of our assigned reading were polemics about racism, and the importance of not being mean or prejudging the blacks. It felt like we were getting more color blind in the 90's. Bill Clinton had his "Sister Souljah" moment calling out anti-white racism.
I now question whether any of that was sustainable. I question whether the 90's were just the brief period between when the radicals had pushed the overton to a fairly neutral feeling middle, and then further off a fucking cliff. Maybe liberalism was always doomed, merely a stalking horse used by radicals to destroy the "heyday" you romanticize. A lot of those 90's liberals have had a fuck of a mask off moment of late. The ones that seemed sincere have defected to MAGA. Or at the very least realize MAGA is the lesser of two evils compared to the DEI race essentialist.
As a fundamentalist Christian that slowly deteriorated into an agnostic, son of a right wing libertarian that later turned into a radical fascist, who still tends to think with conservative values, I am a product of liberalism. I do not share values with many people, given that I am agnostic and yet still right wing, and yet still holding disdain for a lot of the rhetoric thrown around by the current administration. If liberalism goes away, what will happen to me? If liberalism goes away, what will happen to gay furry skeptic centrists like TracingWoodgrains?
Who cares? I've got problems enough without having to worry what happens to a gay furry. Like the local school districts fighting tooth and nail to keep secretly transitioning children, NGOs air dropping 50-100% of my towns extant population in Haitains on us for the crime of voting wrong, and all the hiring freezes of white male applicants at seemingly most major organizations.
After my kids are all over 18, haven't been talked into sterilizing themselves, haven't had their future stolen from them with explicitly anti-white policies in every institution, and haven't had their community destroyed with infinity third worlders, maybe I'll circle back and see how the gay furry is doing. Maybe he'll figure out a place in this world that doesn't involve going "I know the Democrats aren't great, remember that FAA thing I pointed out? But I still think we need to keep voting blue no matter who forever and ever."
"Who cares" is not the response I was looking for. This problem extends a lot farther than Trace, obviously. Do you think China fosters the type of environment that makes this type of forum possible? For how niche it is, for how many types of people post here, for how many ideas can be represented here, this website itself and everyone in it is a product of liberalism. Do you care what happens to it? Do you care what happens to everyone who uses it? Do you care what happens to yourself?
LOL, oh no, this forum. And it's many diverse views. So diverse the mods keep contriving new and creative reasons to ban me for mine.
This forum has more or less outlived it's usefulness, and effectively radicalized me against it's own principles. All I see anymore are liars using arguments as soldiers to trick the other side into not believing their own lying eyes.
This lack of empathy is not what I think the ideal person should have, nor is the victim complex. I suppose this is one example of someone whose values I do not share.
I have empathy for my family over empathy for the gay furry on twitter. It's that twitter meme about the empathy graphs come to life...
Is this just 'gay furry' as thought-terminating cliché? Heck, why do you keep bringing him at all? Why does TracingWoodgrains live rent-free in your head? He was brought up by someone else a few posts up as an example of someone who, whether you like his hobbies or not, has a place in the body politic, and oats then clarified that his point is to do with oddballs and dissenters of all kinds.
The point is not about TracingWoodgrains specifically, or about homosexuality, or about people who like to wear silly fox costumes, and cannot be addressed by going "lol I hate that guy". Oats' point terminated in the question, "Do you care what happens to yourself?"
Maybe you hope for a world in which the hammer of state power comes down on TracingWoodgrains and not on yourself, but that sure sounds like an awfully precise hammer - the type that squishes one specific type of online oddball but not any other type. How sure are you that a world that crushes one guy who posts spicy takes on obscure online discussion forums isn't going to crush another guy who posts spicy takes on obscure online discussion forums?
This conversation started out being about liberalism, not empathy. Whether you like so-and-so isn't really the point. But you're using "screw the gay furry" as an evasion. The point is - okay, sure, you can reject liberalism. You can reject the social compact that allows everyone from you to furries to coexist and even have their own discussion spaces like this. But if you reject it you open the door to a lot of boots stomping on a lot of faces, and maybe you shouldn't be so confident that the boots aren't going to be stomping on you.
If nothing else, your views seem significantly more repulsive to random normies than those of gays or furries or, heaven forbid, gay furries. Maybe a little caution is called for.
This would be better targetted at the person who brought up "don't you have any empathy for the gay furry?" With the implication being that I should give up on my political project of preserving my families future, in favor of his political project of depriving them of a future, because "empathy". Maybe I took obvious bait, but everything you are trying to but on me deserves to be on oats_son.
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