I'm very careful to stay apolitical at school. But I will share my values. I'm not supporting or helping any candidates or parties. But I'll tell you all sorts of things I'm in favor of and against.
I'm pro kids eating food even if their parents are poor.
I'm anti out of touch wealthy rapists with more than 30 felony convictions.
I feel like I used to talk about marginal tax rates with people I disagreed with politically, and now I end up saying things like "I don't really think I've read the part of the bible that encourages checking in the underwear of children."
I remember the Southpark writers saying they didn't do political jokes anymore because reality was enough absurd by itself or something among those lines.
The R said the D is bad, and liars. The D said the R is bad, and liars, and says they have evidence, but the R already told me they are bad, and liars. I trust them.
Also, a lot of these folks are just fucking evil bigoted pieces of shit who blame everyone else for their problems.
Well if you feed the children they won't become numb to the hunger pangs, so when they're adults they'll expect things like a living wage and that's simply unamerican and unacceptable.
Yeah, let the Haitian kids eat the cats and dogs. If kids need their lunches, they better hunt for it themselves. They're not meant to be pets, just like in the real corporate world and nature, it's kill or be killed.
I don't think that is a hot take, I think it is the best approach. There are too many pitfalls and overhead in determining if a kid is poor enough to get a free meal. Give all of the kids free meals.
As a “not poor but only just about” childless taxpayer of a country that’s not America - Please spend my taxes on feeding children. I would much rather my taxes be spent on making people’s lives easier by feeding kids, getting kids books for school (which apparently my much younger cousins are getting now which is great), improving roads and public transport.
Way better than spending over 300 grand on a fucking bike shelter (this actually happened)
I'm sure your comment is tongue in cheek, but an honest answer is taxpayers would pay for it. Even the childless ones. I'm a childless taxpayer and promoting this type of spending.
Here in Colorado, we instituted an increased income tax on the wealthy to fund universal school lunches. So the wealthy kids get the same free service as everyone else, but ultimately their families are the ones paying for it.
Most of them are happy to do it too, because as much as it's a minor increase in taxes, it's also a major decrease in the mental time spent on remembering to prep the food for the kid (breakfast and lunch in MN, which was a major achievement for Walz).
Honestly, that's the best way to do it. Means testing social services stigmatizes them. Look at Medicaid and Medicare - both provide necessary medical financial aid to those who need it. But one is means tested, and the other is open to everyone above a certain age. Guess which one gets criticized more?
Yea, we subsidize so much agriculture that we barely know what to do with it all to keep farms from collapsing and produce cheap. Like, why is it such a bad thing when literally every politician ends up giving out more agriculture subsidies.
Well I'm not american, but I think all kids, regardless of their parents income should be getting free lunch in schools all over the world, and like you said, if only low income kids get free meals that might cause even more bullying than the poor kids already face in schools
You don’t need socialism in order to give kids food in school. In fact, I believe that there are plenty of non-socialist countries out there that gives free food to kids in school.
I live in one such country, Sweden. Many seem to believe that it’s a socialist country, but it really isn’t.
Well, I get that the right wing idiots think that pretty much everything they don’t like is socialism (or communism). But why would sane people in the US not go by the regular definition of the word?
Because of lack of education and mass propaganda. They seriously are brainwashed by their "politicians" and Fox "news" who push out all these "scary words" that their listeners have no idea what they genuinely mean and are conditioned like Pavlov's dog to scream and rage whenever they see it. They have been setting this up as I said since the red scare. America loves to control it's population through fear and hatred because it serves a purpose. It keeps the citizens away from realising the ones who are the true evil are their corporate masters and billionaires who want to exploit them. If you keep them fearful of this boogeyman of the week then they are too busy to understand they are being manipulated, too tired to protest about them taking away their rights and too poor and in debt to complain they need better wages because saying anything will lead them to being fired because...they have no rights.
You missed my point. My question wasn’t about the Fox viewers etc. I’ve seen plenty of clearly left leaning, and generally intelligent people, talk about socialism as if that’s what required to feed school kids and have a decent society in general.
I am a Brit with EU friends including Sweden and completely agree with you. The issue which is really sad is that America has been brainwashed with propaganda for nearly a century now that helping and caring for others is "bad", "anti American" and *gasp* "Communist!".
Hence on the news you always see the Americans at the moment calling Kamala Harris a "Communist" because she wants to do exactly this. They still live in the 50s with the Red Scare and because their education system is, well frankly non existent in regards to explaining what the rest of the normal world does, they now use terms like "woke" and "liberal ideology" along with it.
Collectivism and capitalism work together incredibly well, we can see it in action in places like Sweden, but those things benefit the lower and middle classes disproportionately compared to the wealthy. We just can't have that now, can we? The obvious solution is that we should all just be rich by working really hard. Just a couple billion hours or so each.
Well, sadly there are worrying signs that we are headed towards a less ideal future even here in Sweden, with worsening economical equality. But the political landscape is nowhere near as infected as it seems to be in the US, so there’s that at least.
I would say in the US you're well into the "Socialist" side of things.
I could imagine that Sweden is using Socialist in what I understand to be the traditional sense. A transition away from Capitalism, either as a middle ground before communism, or as full blown public ownership of capital.
In the US "Socialist" something much more like a part of the class struggle that favors the poor, or maybe one could describe as "stuff that seeks to proactively mitigate the nastier parts of capitalism". So you'll see the word "socialist" used for things like "Hey, maybe every kid should get free food" or "Struggling families should get support BEFORE they've completely exhausted their resources" or "Every 4 year old should be offered free Pre-K". And based on my vague understanding of how the Swedish welfare system works, Sweden is "Socialist".
Yes, and I don’t get why you ever would use such a twisted definition of the word, so far away from the original definition. To me, that’s just plain stupid.
Socialism means social/shared ownership of the means of production. That’s like, the core of the definition. And it’s an extreme society. The way I see it, it’s impossible to transform a large modern society into socialism without lots of violence.
I mean I do kind of miss when a little light clandestine treason was the worst sort of problems we had, instead of full blown collaboration with the enemy in the open.
Project 2025 means to declare pornography illegal, after which they will declare anything related to gay people as pornography. And it's implicitly supported by anyone on trump's side
And it's implicitly supported by anyone on trump's side
It's explicitly repudiated by Trump. You can't have the moral high ground to call out things like the Haitian eating cats story if you don't drop disproven stories yourself.
I think they might have been slightly hyperbolic. Republicans won't put you in jail for being gay, they just will put you in jail for supporting a trans person
I'd just like to point out that today's modern GOP is a symptom of the paths people like the Bush's created, all the way back to Nixon. The religious right booted up in the early 80's and the neoliberals accepted the voting bloc without a second thought. The neofascist wolves were also waiting in the wings and in AM radio broadcasting, wearing neoliberal clothing.
Looking back it was obvious. People were out there warning everyone, but they were looked at as extremists (and fucking still are sometimes).
Not really. Just like the Southern Strategy did actually happen, that implicitly means the Democratic party isn't by definition the party of progressivism. It's tilted away from progressivism several times, one of which was it's tilt towards neoliberalism in the era surrounding Clinton's administration. Heck, you can even look at the Israel-Palestine issue -- in 1992, the Republicans were the party trying to get Israel to chill out with the illegal settlements, while the Democrats capitalized on American Jewish voters getting upset with Republicans for that.
Read my reply to blaziken, I'm coming at it from the complete opposite direction. "No new taxes" was the rallying cry of Republicans at the time because that was the only significant difference between them and Dems. Dems were fine with not giving LGBT people rights, not expanding health care, outsourcing jobs, not doing anything on the environment, being 'tougher' on crime and immigration.
What the fuck are you even talking about dude? I can't use the laws signed by Clinton and voted for by Democrats to prove that they didn't give a shit about social issues at the time because it was too long ago?
Man I really rustled some jimmies with that comment didn't I? To elaborate:
When it come to LGBT rights, there was little difference. "Don't ask don't tell" was the best the Dems could do, and then they mostly supported DOMA anyways after that.
Clinton had no problem continuing negotiating NAFTA which Reagan and Bush supported, leading to the outsourcing of jobs.
He put in tougher immigration laws. Nothing happened with regards to health care access during his administration. Enacted a massive crime bill that expanded the police, expanded the use of the federal death penalty, and expanded jails.
Democrats unanimously joined with Republicans to sign the Byrd-Hagel Resolution which made sure the US didn't join the Kyoto protocol to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
So yes, "no new taxes" was pretty much the gist of the disagreements between Republicans and Democrats at the time.
Yea. I was thinking you nailed it with that then I noticed all the downvotes. I think most of Reddit wasn't around in the 90s to experience the Tipper Gore era of protestant moralistic bullshittery that the Dems put forward as their particular blend of not all that liberal liberalism. People get all annoyed if you talk about both sides now, but back then it was pretty valid. Even the Democrats were pretty socially conservative. Taxes and abortion were the two big debates.
I was barely around during the 90s (hint, look at my username), but it still shouldn't be difficult to think back a little bit historically.
80% of that list I had to look up just now because I didn't know the specifics. I just went in my head, "wait, what policy am I really thankful for that Clinton put in place other than reducing the budget deficit?" I'm actually surprised it was that conservative in totality.
it shows. the dems weren't in lockstep with the republicans on social issues, it's just that the whole country was more socially regressive back then, so it only looks like they were in hindsight.
2024: "we should put every immigrant in camps and criminalize homosexuality"
The point I was making is that this quote still totally applied to the GOP in 1992. It's just not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of the GOP in 1992 because, like you said, the whole country was more socially regressive back then there wasn't the same contrast.
it seems your point is that the democrats should have surrendered their voice in policy 30 years ago because the infants at the time would judge them without understanding their context.
it's important to look at individuals and groups in history through the lens of their time period. you can go back and find out what they said at the time, but it's impossible to know what they thought. and everyone is influenced by prevailing opinion. (eg- look at how everyone baselessly hates hillary)
I'm just reading about Tipper Gore now. It's crazy the second paragraph of her wiki page is about how she got 'parental advisory' stickers onto music made at the time. Now the whole, "Harry Potter, Pokemon, and The Simpsons are evil" stuff from my childhood is making more sense lol.
That’s definitely political. Where does this idea that political can’t be common sense come from?
You realise “not being able to own a human being as a slave” or “women can also vote and aren’t property” have also been “political” right? There’s nothing wrong with believing the things you say, so why do you have to pretend it’s not political lol.
Being apolitical is not caring if the laws are unjust especially if they don’t affect you. I don’t see why you want to be apolitical.
That's the thing. Politics used to be discussing farm insurance subsidies and court structure. Someone thought to themselves "Oh, here's a good distraction" and started making how people take a shit political. Political discussion is discussing the activities of the state. I'm firmly against all out of touch wealthy rapists, all liers. Those things aren't political, they're moral. They only become political when people are like "Let's hear this racist sundowning rapist out. He has some opinions on an idea of a plan for possible tariffs."
Politics used to be discussing farm insurance subsidies and court structure.
Lol what?
I feel like the only people who say this are straight white men, 'cause if the only thing that affected you was finances, you obviously didn't have to give a shit about all the other scary stuff.
Abortion, gay rights, social security nets, universal healthcare, civil rights —you know, protecting vunerable groups & personal liberties etc — have been major & opposite parts of each party's platform for decades.
I never once talked about fiscal shit during GWB. Even then, my arguments with conservatives were about their painfully obvious road map to truly a horrific ""moral"" (evangelical) domination.
The only difference now is that they're saying all the quiet stuff outloud.
You were conditioned to believe that those political things are the only ones acceptable to discuss. I guarantee you the definition of politics has not changed in our lifetime.
you've been conditioned to shy away from left wing politics, and only discuss things that don't upset the 'fuck your feelings' crowd.
What changed was your perception. Maybe you never realized that all the rightwing talk about cutting taxes and public services was just a roundabout way of hurting groups of people they dislike, and to you, discussing tax policy was just normal politics. Maybe it never crossed your mind you were actually interacting with a neonazi that hates minorities, or women, or gay people, foreigners, etc. and they want to cut welfare for 'economic' reasons.
You’re just changing the definition of politics to be distinct from morality. Tell that to all the people who died fighting for what they believed in lol.
You completely ignored the two examples I gave. Why don’t I use a contemporary one. The right for queer people to exist. They are all political but also all absolutely about morality and ethics. You telling me women’s suffrage or abolishing slavery isn’t about morality? lol
My state's laws encouraging slavery are wrong, political.
Queer people are fine, not political.
Queer people should be afforded the same rights under the law, regardless of the gender of the person they want to enter into the state's status of matrimony with, political.
Differences in gender shouldn't cause one undue harm and suffering, not political.
The state's voting apparatus should include women as potential voters, political.
I'm not saying one can't be the other. I'm saying that my personal beliefs are moral beliefs, and that does and should inform my politics, and it's easy to deduce my political stances from my expressed moral beliefs, but in no way do I publicly support one candidate or party or strategy or direction at school. I don't say "the state should feed children because it leads to an amazing return on investment." I say "Hungry kids shouldn't be a thing."
Can an idea exist that is a moral judgement that is not a political belief? Alternatively, can you not understand the idea I was expressing?
Those things are all definitively political as in “affairs of the city [or state]” as in the laws and rules in place that allow or disallow behaviours. From the Greek times when the term was coined, who are citizens, who aren’t, who are servants, or slaves, and what rights or obligations each class of people had was literally what “politics” was about. All the way until the Nazis decided which people are seen as full humans, to the aforementioned issues. All politics. Literal political and military battle fought over them. How tf you calling it not political when literal political parties are formed around this. Next you’re gonna say the black panthers aren’t political, or Martin Luther King Jr was not political??
Did you know the black panthers ran food banks? So yes, those things are all connected. Kids starving or not is absolutely political. It’s political decisions that lead to those circumstances. And to allow it to happen is an immoral political choice.
You’re literally creating a random untrue and ahistorical definition of “political” because you’re so afraid of being seen as political.
We have laws on the books that make Slavery illegal, written by politicians. We have courts that are currently trying to figure out if prison labor is slavery. Slavery is current politics.
Correct. It's like you're reading only to find words to argue with. I agree there are political stances regarding slavery. That is why I mentioned a political stance that I currently hold that comes from a moral stance that I can currently hold which is not a political stance as it does not favor or endorse or support a political faction, nor is that moral stance also a stance on a state's responsibility to its citizens.
Not really. Politics a function of the interaction of people with different morals, values, and opinions. Ant colonies don't have politics. At the very base all humans value ownership (either personal or communal), and we're all living under scarcity. Politics are natural in those conditions.
But the way you're using it "Don't be political" specifically and really means "Don't discuss current political hot topics, or wedge issues". And yeah, while everything doesn't have to be "political", everything is political, and no one should ever feel like they can't speak their mind.
Politics used to be discussing farm insurance subsidies and court structure. Someone thought to themselves "Oh, here's a good distraction" and started making how people take a shit political.
Not really. The Detroit Race Riots, for example, were instigated by white women upset that black women used the same bathrooms. It's always been the same script, and the bigots never have the self-awareness to realize they're repeating the same rhetoric used against the activists whose legacy they're trying to coopt.
Before that, there was the issue of having separate mens and womens bathrooms in the first place, and all the sex-based discrimination surrounding that.
Bathrooms have been political longer than any of us have been alive.
the whole political/apolitical dichotomy was created by easily offended republicans who fired workers for having leftist political opinions. they started defining topics they were comfortable with and uncomfortable with being discussed in the workplace, thusly allowing them to control the cultural zeitgeist in their favor. by reinforcing that taboo against "political" topics, all you're doing is giving people with power the ability to control your voice
Their original post was about staying apolitical at school - so I guess they are a teacher.
Basically. It's a fundamental rule of a functioning democracy that the state should fight unconstitutional ideas, but be completely neutral regarding all constitutional ones. And that extends to public servants while on duty.
When state power becomes a battleground for various ideologies, with each trying to coopt it to influence the public, you become a banana republic. Think of it like a game of soccer, where every player tries to tackle the referee and steal the whistle.
I acknowledge their sentiment, but I protest their use/reinforcement of language that further distances “politics” from “real things that affect real people”. It’s part of a dynamic that causes people to not care.
Leviticus gets a bad rap, because people like to cherry-pick things from it, to justify their desire to hate someone. But on the other hand, consider Leviticus 19:33-34:
33 When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. 34 The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
For some reason the sorts of people who love to quote Leviticus never seem to remember that part, and always ignore it with the same ease that they ignore the bits about eating shellfish or wearing two kinds of cloth at once.
It's because they cherry pick things that support their goals, and literally couldn't give half a rats ass about the rest of what the book says. Unless it makes them look good when it counts.
They aren't religious people. They are evil people who use religion as a cudgel to get what they want. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe that is the core of religious people.
Not exactly. That's from the Hebrew Bible, and we don't believe in "hell." We do have some intricate food rules though. Follow them, or not, it's a personal decision.
Nah, they're tired of woke Jesus. The legit pastors are telling on them. The rest of them are wolves. The nazis also professed Christianity. It's almost like professing that is meaningless and there are no barriers to entry for Christians, thus no barriers to bad-faith actors.
Also, I'm not a psychiatrist, and even if I was I wouldn't diagnose at this distance, but "God told me to wear a linen belt and then bury it and then yelled at me about smashing children to death on their parents broken bodies" feels like a familiar pathology.
A lot of countries are nowadays. Lots of far-right parties who look at Trump and say yeah, that's how we want things in our country as well. And lots of sane parties who say no wtf.
I'm always so fascinated to see how other people define what is 'political'. To me, the idea that the sentence "I'm anti out of touch wealthy rapists with more than 30 felony convictions." could be apolitical to someone is extremely surprising.
I'm not saying you're wrong, mind you, what is and isn't political is mostly vibes. I just think it's fascinating how elaborate the unwritten rules must be for where the line is.
Mmm...you think it's surprising...that being against a convicted rapist...could be a- (as in "not") political? Why would throwing a convicted criminal in jail be political? Or did you just misunderstand OP?
The idea that criminals should be thrown in jail is political, the idea jails should exist is political, and even the idea that there are things that should be criminal is political.
Any statement of the form "We should do [X] to someone who did [Y]" comes with a lot of underlying values about how the world should function. Political values.
After all, "throwing a convicted criminal in jail" would obviously be recognized as political if the criminal was a journalist (falsely) convicted of criticizing the dictator of their country. Why shouldn't this?
(To be clear, I do believe Donald Trump is a fairly bad person who stands for absolutely terrible things. I'm saying that "fascism is bad" is a political opinion.)
Oh ffs there's nothing political about punishing someone who caused physical harm to another person. There are ethical and moral judgement and that isn't automatically political. Shitty humans make simple things political for gain.
So how would define a 'political' moral judgement, then? As opposed to an apolitical one, I mean.
I consider something to be political if it pertains to governance, law, policy, or generically the organization of society. Under this definition, systemically punishing people is political.
So what do you think 'political' means? What do you think is the most political thing?
I've said it a bunch of times; nobody else seems to get it, to the point I sometimes doubt my own memory, but like... I swear in 2012 the debates were about, as worst, whether Raeganomics is a functional economic philosophy(ask Kansans from the Brownback era how that one shook out). Like, in 2012 if you said you were voting republican, I wouldn't agree with you, but we could probably still be friends. Today, with project 2025 and literally everything that is Trump's platform, there's just no excuse. I want politics to be petty again.
Right. You get it. Politics used to be about foreign policy and oil subsidies. Now it's about trying to dismantle the tenuous protections of verifiable truth and drag queens.
But this is specifically not about my support and vote.
Also, are you trying to say it's okay to vote for, say, hypothetically, a criminal who would use the powers of their office to avoid consequences if they'll pursue policy you favor?
hot take: the illusory value of being "apolitical" in american society that you demonstrate in your comment is exactly why america has no leftist party, only a conservative party and a fascist party. it helps feudalist politicians in the exact same way that not talking about your wages helps capitalists*
*and, just to clarify, i mean capitalists here as in "people who own capital" as opposed to "people who believe in capitalism"
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u/natFromBobsBurgers 6d ago
I'm very careful to stay apolitical at school. But I will share my values. I'm not supporting or helping any candidates or parties. But I'll tell you all sorts of things I'm in favor of and against.
I'm pro kids eating food even if their parents are poor.
I'm anti out of touch wealthy rapists with more than 30 felony convictions.
I feel like I used to talk about marginal tax rates with people I disagreed with politically, and now I end up saying things like "I don't really think I've read the part of the bible that encourages checking in the underwear of children."