Excellent analogy. I am promptly stealing it!
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Agreed entirely. As a previously self-proclaimed “Star Trek communist” my only interests lie in pulling all of society significantly to the left. My approach to getting there is deeply rooted in my nondualistic philosophy.
I feel that these arguments are missing something crucial: unaffiliated/independent voters. That is the group of people that we really need to be building bridges with and winning over. A big part of that will lie in explaining to these voters what is at stake in elections and why they should go blue.
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Just want to pipe in and say I totally agree — and this is why a number of my comments have made clear that I am including non-registered Republican voters as the primary group that ought to be targeted as potentially “peel-away-able.” 
And if that wasn’t clear, well there it is.
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Well, we are talking about it in public. They have the internet too…
I think that’s definitely true. I’m with George Orwell in thinking that fascist is so overused a term that it’s essentially lost all meaning for most purposes.
‘Evil’ is also tricky for essentially the same reasons you already described. No one can agree what constitutes evil. It’s also an extremely emotive term with a lot of religious baggage.
I think once youve got to a point where one is having to think in terms of peeling off fascist-adjacent voters/legislators from fascists, it’s too late for that.
What’s needed is dealing with the fascists.
How? I don’t know. But I really hope someone with a lot more political history and political philosophy than me is thinking about it very hard.
I’m not sure you have the luxury to do that. I mean, obviously you need to do that as well.
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Not all of us are going to contribute the same thing to this fight, nor are capable of doing so (for many reasons), and that’s fine. It’s not the most fun gig trying to convert a few percent of “the enemy” and based on the thread here, it certainly seems like it’s an extreme minority of leftists/progressives who will be willing to give it a go. This too is fine — there is no reason I see to not take a multifaceted approach, so long as you’re not editing truth out of your messaging to appeal to a particular audience. I don’t think that would be wise, at all.
As for the term “fascism.” I am a big fan of adopting the definition of “the opposite of little-d democratic.” Seeing as “democratic” itself has a very loose definition, but strong implications, I think there is a taxonomical and ontological “hole” for the opposite of that thing. Well, I’d submit that democracy’s opposite is fascism.
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For the record, my friend and I ended up agreeing on, “Republicans are very bad.” He felt that evil meant devoid of any good, which seems like a pretty stringent criteria for defining evil, but I digress.
It’s 2am in my part of the world, so I am going to have to duck out of this conversation for a while, but I have thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you all.
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But it’s a great topic to digress on.
Just in case it wasn’t clear - when I said ‘you don’t have the luxury’, I didn’t mean you personally. In fact, I should have said “we don’t” because it’s certainly not a uniquely American problem at the moment.
Although it’d be nice if ‘your’ idiots (and the Russians and the Chinese , oh and Iran, and the Saudis) could stop giving money, ideas and encouragement to everyone else’s idiots.
But then it’d also be nice if we all got a nice unicorn to ride around that never poops.
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at this fraught political moment, possibly the safest solution to the problem of the republican party would be to actually fulfill marjorie taylor greene’s dark fantasy by outlawing it and sending its followers to reeducation camps. as is true of many things the safest option is not always the best or even most practical option.
as far as the larger meaning of what we’ve been discussing here i say that if the survival of our democratic (small “d”) union were to be personified, this is “the problem of tolerating intolerance” written in that person’s blood. it took more than 50 years to get here, it probably won’t be corrected soon.
or poops gold and precious stones, i’d accept that.
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certainly the German Democratic Republic would agree!
my working definition of democracy is that your political power does not depend on you being of a certain class; fascism exalts certain classes above others.
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6 posts were split to a new topic: Egotism
A nondualist would say, the only possible definition for evil is the lack of awareness of truth. One can’t actually deviate from the ultimate truth, because the ultimate truth is simply that there is only one actual “thing,” and it’s not a “thing” in our typical terms, more of a foundational generative principle (based on logic, I’d argue), and everything that is, has been, and will ever be, is that One. 
This deep-rooted way of looking at things, which I came into this round with, as I’ve been thinking about it heavily since childhood, is a significant part of how I look at the conflicts in our world, and fuels my perspectives on how we might navigate through them to situations of more relative pleasantness and utility for everyone (and I do mean everyone).
I’m a person who believes that the actual reason we haven’t yet solved these things, is because what I just said is not universally understood by everyone. shrug My belief system also suggests that Earth is what it is when we arrive, and all we can do is to try to make it a bit better than it was, for our having been here.
One thing I also felt since being a kid, is a very strong feeling that I would be alive in a period where these issues would likely come to a head. And that this would happen at the same time of “Earth changes” (we now think in terms of climate change, geo-catastrophe, random CME that turns half the planet to Mad Max overnight, etc. – but all the same stuff). And at the same time of some kind of seriously exponential shift in tech and the Internet.
Well, here we are. I actually think it’s all going to keep accelerating for a while, on many fronts. These are strange times on Planet Earth. The interesting thing about it is, we all get to choose which perspective and actions to take, as we’re all continually swept up in it…
Anywho, thanks for hanging @Jesse13927. Been a real pleasure. /hattip
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When I talk with a Republican and they fall on that old “you’re a socialist!” crap because I want universal health care, I just say “so you’re a Fascist then? Because you dont want people to vote and you’re always itching for war. In fact you complain about the government spending money on anything except war.”
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This bears re-posting:
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Maybe they just sort of, you know, go to the same places sometimes?
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I had some fun with a conservative I knew who thought he was oh-so bright:
Me: “I think more money from taxes should go to schools.”
Him: “The government shouldn’t ell me how to spend my money! I don’t have kids, so why should I pay for that?!”
Me: “I don’t have any kids in the army, why should I pay for military body-armor and guns?”
Him: “…that’s different.”
Me: “How?”
Him: “They’re trying to defend you!”
Me: “And schools are trying to educate you. I know which I prefer.”
Him: “Well, you should move out of the country then!”
Me: “You first.”
What conservatives really want: Preserving the status quo of white male power, and guns, guns, guns (not in the hands of people of color, naturally).
Everything else conservatives claim to want (small government, fiscal responsibility, unfettered capitalism, and unrestricted individual freedom) is a smokescreen, a lie, and a con, even when they’re lying to themselves.
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I remember when Ron Paul was in the GOP primaries and his campaign slogan was “Revolution” with the letters E V O L backwards to spell “love.” Wtf. He wants us to believe a guy who thinks the uninsured should just die is really all about “love”?
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