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Comment by andrepd | Hacker News Reader

>I think the name change does more harm than good because it trivializes the movement.

>If the goal is to change minds and open hearts then where appropriate, we should endeavor to communicate in ways that will be well received by those who need to hear the message. Stuff like this is just preaching to the choir and alienating the rest.

> Also not actually changing anything that matters in the lives of black people.

I couldn't have put this better myself. There are two issues

- What people want is justice, including economic justice, and progress. They want to stop being discriminated by gerrymandering politicians and trigger-happy cops. They want an economy that serves everyone and not just those on the very top, and that does not disproportionally discriminate those on the bottom and especially minority communities with a history of disadvantage. In this sense, changing master to main is nothing but a feel-good measure for privileged white people to feel good about themselves without actually having to put in any effort into tackling hard problems like improving democracy or improving the economic system.

- Besides this, it's actually a stupid move in a political, pragmatic sense. Like you're saying, it alienates precisely those you need to bring to your side ("it's pc gone mad!") and it's only going to be well received by those already pre-disposed to agree with you. It's actually my main criticism of the Left nowadays: we are shit at politics! You have to be pragmatic and somewhat calculating to actually get shit done. Many activists on the left today rather childishly think that simply being right is enough, as if you didn't have to be smart, convincing, use rhetoric, etc.

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I think you overstate the level of lasting alienation and understate the cumulative impact that a bunch of small "trivial" changes could have over years.

For a hundred years after the Civil War, and then a solid 50 more after the Civil Rights movement, we had "white people doing nothing" plus "some still-racist white people actively trying to roll things back." Doing things, and keeping the issue in the forefront, even if the things sometime look silly to some people, is going to make us more progress than going back to doing nothing because some people think only the perfect things are worth doing.

(People getting affronted, offended, and alienated by actions that they think are "silly" is another problem entirely... You don't think it'll make a big difference? That's nice. Why are you making a big deal out of it, then? There's a virtue signalling of "look at how more evolved I am to not be fooled by your silly change, and still spot that the world still sucks after it!!")

As much as we pretend otherwise, people's attention and resources are limited. Time spent bikeshedding these inconsequential things is time not spent tackling more important issues. Each newsflash that opens with "pc culture gone mad! the word "blacklist" is being banned by radical leftists" is a newsflash that doesn't open with

"wages have been stagnant for the past 50 years despite gains in productivity"

"prices of tvs and smartphones falling, prices of housing and healthcare skyrocketing"

"statistical studies show voter preferences have near-zero correlation with effected legislation, while preferences of the wealthier 0.5% are very strongly correlated"

etc.

In short: you're alienating people that you could bring to your side, you're wasting time and effort in inconsequential changes, you're giving fuel to those who use these trivialities to distract the populace from the real issues. I see no upside here.

Each newsflash could cover those things anyway, but they choose garbage wedge issues and will continue to foment them when they cant find any: biden's dog was a recent controversy because talking about systemic problems doesn't get clicks and doesn't make people upset in the same way this type of BS does.

they choose garbage wedge issues and will continue to foment them when they cant find any: biden's dog was a recent controversy

I can't believe anyone really believes that story

Pull on every thread. This is one thread, there is no opportunity cost of this sort of thing.

We all need to get over ourselves

So let it happen quickly without complaining about it so that tomorrow we can be arguing about something else, instead of arguing about the same thing for ten straight years.

"People get pissed off even by small changes" is a MUCH bigger impediment towards real progress than "people are making small changes that won't fix the whole world" is.

I don't believe most of the people who say they're only problem is that the change is "too small." I think that's just an excuse of convenience to resist any change or challenge to the status quo. If your problem is that the change isn't big enough, the solution is to push for bigger ones yourself! But that's not usually what we see those people doing...

The problem with that is we never graduate to the real problems.

People who are after a quick, delusional dopamine hit from changing harmless terminology will just go after sillier and sillier stuff instead.

It's not "too small", it's irrelevant and selfish.

It's not the size of the change that's a problem, it's that the change doesn't address the problem at all, and that the only metric for success for these changes is how angry they make people (which, in the circles of the people proposing these changes, means the change is "working").

It's entirely possible to hire more engineers of color and pay them fairly, but it turns out that pitting workers against each other by introducing a handful of inconsequential process and standards changes is much cheaper and hinders the solidarity that enables coordinated advocacy for better working conditions.

As a Native American this comes across to me the same as how the savior complex drives people to talk down to Native Americans about their persecution.

And that's pretty much what the OP article is complaining about, people with savior complexes doing performative things that don't really fix the problem on a larger scale.

If I may ask, (why) do you prefer Native American over Indian (assuming you're talking about being a United States native and not a native of other parts of America, ie. South America)?

I have no preference, so sometimes I will say Native American, sometimes its American Indian, sometimes its indigenous... No real preference other than I tend to use one or another based on context at times. Its more clear and not mildly politically loaded to say "Native American" in this context.

I do not really like using Indian to refer to Native Americans as I work with a lot of people from India. This is a personal preference, I don't correct people who say Indian to refer to Native Americans and I will often use it in a conversation where its already being used to avoid confusion or bad vibes.

An of course, there is the confusion you noted that can happen between the super-continent America and the country commonly called America.

Do USA schools teach that America is one continent divided in north, central and south America? Or is it America=USA ? I'm from South America and we learn it's one continent

There are multiple, separate issues in the question.

As a matter of actual geological fact, North America and South America are separate continents (they have their own cratonic cores). Geographically they are considered distinct in the USA also. Central America is a cultural or political region refering to the isthmus -- it is not a continent in any sense.

Nationals of the USA are called "Americans" by USA nationals, and by people from other parts of the world, including Japan, Russia, etc (in their own phonologies). Canadians refer to USA nationals as Americans, and do not call themselves Americans.

Europeans frequently object to USA nationals calling themselves Americans, claiming that the word should refer people's of both North America and South America. People from South American nations seem to feel the same. Mexicans seem to me much more likely to refer to a USA national as "Americano" than they are "Estadounidense."

USA nationals will sometimes describe people from North and South American nations as be from "the Americas."

> Europeans frequently object to USA nationals calling themselves Americans

Many Europeans object to calling themselves Europeans.

Ex: From my travels and conversations - the English don't refer to themselves as Europeans. I asked them what continent they lived on. Doesn't matter.

In my experience, a lot of people from the United States tend to conflate "America" and the "United States of America". It's a pet peeve of mine, so I sometimes correct them. But usually people just get annoyed with me. ;-)

People from the USA often use "the Americas" in place of the sense of "America" that refers to both North America and South America.

At least from my experience, America is the US. If you want to refer to the giant landmass that makes up the majority of the land in the western hemisphere, you say "The Americas".

This blows my mind, because it never occurred to me that this would actually be taught differently. But yes, afaik, in NA we're taught that North and South America are two separate continents. In Canada however, Americans are from the USA, but we don't generally refer to the USA as America. Only they do that. We refer to the middle nation in NA as The U.S.

It's hard to recall what I was taught about Central America, but I believe it was that it's sort of a region shared between both and only a colloquially separate entity.

So you learned "there are six continents"? That's really interesting. Growing up in the US, we always learned it as seven. I never really thought about that as something that was taught differently based on location.

(Unfortunately though, I think that ignorance is fairly common for a lot of aspects of life for people raised in the US.)

Side note: I was going to say "aspects of life for Americans", but realized Americans means more than just those in the US. So I propose a new term for "people from the US". USers. :)

> you're wasting time and effort in inconsequential changes, you're giving fuel to those who use these trivialities to distract the populace from the real issues.

That's probably a valid perspective, but I see a lot of well-meaning comments like this, and this thread now has more comments on it, than github has employees. Perhaps the time "wasted" on this at github isn't as high as the time wasted discussing it.

As a software engineer, my workflow is forced to change all the time. As a software engineer, I don't complain. I've been praised for not complaining. I will work on Visual Basic code if you want me to.

Similarly, I'll change how I speak and work if it makes someone more comfortable, no problem.

I'm also desperate for there to be more conversations about unionizing, corporate lobbying, the outsized influence of the 1%.

Maybe if we both just shut up about this topic and get on with our other work, the world will be a better place?

> Similarly, I'll change how I speak and work if it makes someone more comfortable, no problem.

But does it? Is there a clamour of people demanding immediate change due to the grievous usage of... a technical word?

With regards to "main" vs "master" I honestly don't care. It might make some people feel better, and it might not. Should I care, and comment here about it?

Why?

Brilliant. (Truly!)

> Why are you making a big deal out of it, then?

Achieves nothing; breaks build scripts; imposed by faceless outsiders who have no interaction with the project.

I'd argue it doesn't just achieve nothing, it works against the cause in two ways:

* First, as others have said, it builds resentment in those that see it as not worthwhile compared to other things and who are negatively impacted like how you describe.

* Second, which I haven't really seen people bring up, by succeeding at a visible but inconsequential change, the activists who brought this about are less likely to bother with something that actually matters.

I'm not sure that I really agree with either of those.

* firstly, I expect that most actual resentment is from people who object to the change on political grounds rather than technical, and 'there are big things to do' is not a reason to not do little things. Not doing changes like this will probably not meaningfully change the amount of resentment to 'political correctness' in the world.

* secondly, the pattern we normally see is that we encourage people to make big changes by helping them succeed with small ones first

>I think you overstate the level of lasting alienation and understate the cumulative impact that a bunch of small "trivial" changes could have over years.

I'm a very liberal person, and have actively fought prejudice, especially the type of unconscious bias that is so difficult to stomp out, my entire professional career. I'm especially keen on the dynamics of power in conversation, it's crazy how often people from a less privilege group get interrupted, and people rarely realize the dynamic as its occurring.

But all of the PC policing and the with-us-or-against-us rhetoric has really soured me on giving a shit about any of this. While I'm privileged by being white, I was born to a lower-middle class family in a rural area and don't feel particularly privileged. I went to a backwards high school where I was bullied for being a nerd, with curriculum from 60's( graduated in ~2010 and we didn't have a single CS class, and highest achievable GPA was 4.2, while people in neighboring districts could go to the GATE high school and graduated with a 5.0). I had undiagnosed/treated mental health problems which were significantly exacerbated by my family's inability to afford healthcare (we had insurance, but couldn't afford to actually see the doctor). Despite this we were too wealthy to qualify for any student aid and I was unable to win any substantial scholarships. I was mature enough at 20 to know I wasn't doing well enough nor did I have adequate direction in school to take tens of thousands in what I understood at the time to be an undischargeable debt on the gamble that it would pay off. I remember looking for help about how to do better at the community college I was attending and basically determined that I, as a straight white atheist, didn't really have allies as when I asked people where they got e.g. counseling, it was always through a channel i didn't have access to, whether it was a church group, a family friend or some support group for people who weren't me. My parents are both 40 years my senior and were so far out of the loop that they didn't even know that GPAs went higher than 4. I also didn't know that if I saw a psychiatrist I could turn everything around, and had no access to one, so I dropped out.

>Why are you making a big deal out of it, then?

Because I, personally, find all this woke shit about race and sex from bougie whites offensive, classist, and racist. I completely support it when it is coming from the (dis)affected community in question, but when there is a dogpile of privileged people virtue signaling in a way that completely negates the actual issues (like people not having equitable access to justice, healthcare, education and housing) I find affront. I would argue most of the problems that minority communities face are also shared by poor white communities, the only difference is that those communities have virtually no actual voice in modern discourse and have privileged whites talking on their behalf instead. Admittedly a common problem generally, but I don't want people with power, and make no mistake bougie tech workers have a lot more power than the poor do, to feel they've "done something" and pat themselves on the back until they actually make poor people's lives better, changing master/slave to main/source, or whatever the fuck language change you choose is literally doing nothing to make things better for anyone but github/micorsoft. It's paying lip service, full stop.

I also find some of talk about the historic enslavement of Blacks in the US kinda weird. I can track my lineage back thru 100s of years of serfdom, my ancestors literally fleeing Europe to America during Reconstruction in 19th century to escape brutal peonage and serfdom.. and nobody cares. I'm of the "priviledged class" because people who I have no relation to but shared my skin color were of the ruling class 250 years ago when we didn't respect human rights. Sounds racist as hell to me, all things considered. I just don't get it.

I agree with much of what you've said, especially the part about the shared problems that poor minority and poor White people face. Based on what you've said I wouldn't say you were very "privileged."

But responding to one of your points, and I don't think this is taught very well in schools, the specific discrimination that Black people faced went on for a long time after the end of slavery. For example, here in what is now considered progressive Oakland, CA, Black people were kept out of many jobs through the 1940s and 50s, including as streetcar drivers. Also, they were excluded from government subsidized mortgages through the 60s, which impeded their ability to build wealth and live in good conditions. These examples of explicit racial discrimination happened well within living memory.

That was then, and this is now. To call the descendants of people who went through that period either "privileged" or "marginalized" is no different than visiting the sins of the father upon the son. It's morally reprehensible.

"Privileged" and "marginalized" are not moral judgments.

In woke cultures view of the world, they most certainly are.

The disparities in access to COVID vaccinations as of the time I’m writing this should tell you that this is still happening.

Oh I understand that completely, which is why I state that I do have privilege as a white person. but the left has a messaging problem wherein too many of the bougie whites narcissisticaly believe all of their privileges are shared amongst whites.

Even apart from your examples, (you missed Japanese interment camps/stolen wealth, probably the worst thing the US did domestically in the 20th century) racial profiling is still extremely real in this country. Which is on everyone radar, but it's really put into focus the times I've traveled cross country and consistently see POC on the side of the interstate.

>These examples of explicit racial discrimination happened well within living memory.

I mean, the way I see it, explicit financial discrimination is still happening today. Its just called affirmative action.

> I mean, the way I see it, explicit financial discrimination is still happening today. Its just called affirmative action.

Nope. Redlining, the entire history of USDA subsidies in the 20th century, the GI bill etc are far more economically impacting than any meager adjustments to the dominance of white people in business and government. White people need to STFU about affirmative action as it has not meaningfully changed the shape of leadership in our workforce.

Thank you for taking the time to write this and for thinking the way you do. The most common trait among successful (not necessarily wealthy) people in my opinion transcends race, creed, religion, or sex; it's persistence.

> I think you overstate the level of lasting alienation and understate the cumulative impact that a bunch of small "trivial" changes could have over years.

Not even close. Everyone I've talked to about it makes some mention about the left having lost its mind, myself included.

>Besides this, it's actually a stupid move in a political, pragmatic sense. Like you're saying, it alienates precisely those you need to bring to your side ("it's pc gone mad!")

Alienates at best, emboldening the racists at worst. Clearly even the author was pissed by this change, not just because it's an empty gesture but also a change to workflow. I'm imagining some f̶a̶s̶h̶y̶ ̶e̶d̶g̶e̶l̶o̶r̶d̶ "Western Chauvinist" programmer throwing a fit every time they accidentally git checkout master, racism intensifies.

> "It's actually my main criticism of the Left nowadays: we are shit at politics!"

a good point in the making until this line, where you aligned yourself with a shallow identity. fuck left and right. stop trying to find a team to mindlessly root for. yes, it's hard, and yes, it means more mindshare devoted to evaluating what you think rather than who you want others to think you are in subservience to ideological hegemony. politics is shit because not enough of us do this, but rather settle on a tribe and leave our brains behind in the process.

the left isn't right, it's a coalition for power, which is for delivering advantage to some people at the exclusion of others. power doesn't value or uphold right and wrong, so you're premise is profoundly misguided here.

if you align yourself with nobody good luck being the single person changing the world. i guess it could happen

coalitions can form without being braindead. it's about being cognizant of the mechanisms of control that are impinging on us and resisting those so we can have meaningful dialog on issues that matter, not this bullshit.

The world is only changed by individual people. Alliances, parties, movements, schools of thought, etc., are just mobs who have adopted the ideas of particular individuals.

Tolstoy:

In their present condition men are like bees which have just swarmed and are hanging down a limb in a cluster. The position of the bees on the limb is temporary, and must inevitably be changed. They must rise and find a new home for themselves. Every one of the bees knows that and wishes to change its position and that of the others, but not one is able to do so before the others are going to do so. They cannot rise all at once, because one hangs down from the other, keeping it from separating itself from the swarm, and so all continue to hang. It would seem that the bees could not get out of this state, just as it seems to worldly men who are entangled in the snare of the social world-conception. But there would be no way out for the bees, if each of the bees were not separately a living being, endowed with wings. So there would also be no way out for men, if each of them were not a separate living being, endowed with the ability of acquiring the Christian concept of life.

If every bee which can fly did not fly, the rest, too, would not move, and the swarm would never change its position. And as one bee need but open its wings, rise up, and fly away, and after it a second, third, tenth, hundredth, in order that the immovable cluster may become a freely flying swarm of bees, so one man need but understand life as Christianity teaches him to understand it, and begin to live accordingly, and a second, third, hundredth, to do so after him, in order that the magic circle of the social life, from which there seemed to be no way out, be destroyed.

But people think that the liberation of all men in this manner is too slow, and that it is necessary to find and use another such a means, so as to free all at once; something like what the bees would do, if, wishing to rise and fly away, they should find that it was too long for them to wait for the whole swarm to rise one after another, and should try to find a way where every individual bee would not have to unfold its wings and fly away, but the whole swarm could fly at once wherever it wanted. But that is impossible: so long as the first, second, third, hundredth bee does not unfold its wings and fly, the swarm, too, will not fly away or find the new life. So long as every individual man does not make the Christian life-conception his own, and does not live in accordance with it, the contradiction of the human life will not be solved and the new form of life will not be established.

My note: Tolstoy's Christian concept of life is quite different from what most people think of Christianity. He places emphasis on Jesus' teaching of non-resistance to evil by force and was against organized religion.

Single men do nothing. They still need others to do the hard work. The people who were truly successful did so by managing large organisations. Also, blind luck and circumstances.

Single men perpetrate every single act of injustice under the sun. It’s a single person who discriminates in interviews, discriminates, or Beat someone because of their skin color.

They also make every act of kindness, justice, and compassion, so I am not sure what point you are making. We were writing about single-handedly changing history.

> The world is only changed by individual people

At least that's the narrative. People like to rally around a single person pushing a single idea, it's a powerful image of a heroic figure who had nothing but a vision.

Almost always, these "single" people are individuals with considerable clout and influence before they become figureheads. They usually rely on armies of subordinates and lots of other resources to do the actual work.

You're assuming too many things about me. "Left" is a term with centuries of history. I use it because it accurately describes my positions, and the traditions and schools of thought that most influenced my views.

> '"Left" is a term with centuries of history...'

so has "slavery" but that doesn't make it right.

'left' (and 'right') is a term to subvert thinking in ways that advantage the already powerful, and short-circuit the formation of coalitions that can bring about real prosperity and equity to more people.

No one is arguing about right/wrong, he is simply saying the term has an accepted definition (especially in historical context, zooming out past the modern US political media landscape)

the issue is that once you stake your identity on a singular position, you've lost objectivity. that's when it becomes political, not personal.

further, as argued elsewhere, there is no singular correct ("accepted") definition of "left" that isn't a political insistence rather than objective and unyielding fact.

if you believe in "power to the people" or "equal rights" then state that explicitly. don't hide under the highly amorphous tent of "left", which invariably can be contrived into any extant principles that suits the propounder in the moment. spell out what you mean, not your professed identity and (wrongly) assume everyone shares a singular definition of that identity.

Left has a long history, yes. But there is so much diversity within the groups that identify as leftist. And some people you might call leftist (like the folks at raddle.me) reject the term wholeheartedly. They are committed to thorough antiracism, but do not want to be associated with communist or socialist regimes or ideologies.

Absolutely. I probably have more in common with some people who call themselves "right-wing" that certain people who call themselves "left-wing".

Suppose that 80% of the population support something that me and my friends don't like. If we can divide this group into two, by finding things that they strongly disagree over, then we can guarantee that this 80% never gets to express its majority.

So if we can put 50% of these people in a group called "Left" and 50% of these people in a group called "Right", and then prevent direct democracy with something such as elected representatives, then neither the Left nor the Right ever has to vote on the issue, because instead they are fighting over the most important thing, e.g. abortion. When the Left are in power, they are focused on the things that the Right is trying to take away, and vice versa. There is an eternal struggle. As a result, the things that a majority agrees on never get voted on, and even if they did, whoever is not in power would vote against them.

This is not hypothetical. There are several major issues that have the support of the majority (sometimes as much as 80%) of the population, and yet they are never voted on.

Left and Right is a trap.

But I'm not arguing to "divide" or anything ffs, I simply used the word to describe a broad range of political positions, whose people which defend them I think are often making those two mistakes.

This is what happens when “left” and “right” are two massive blocks. Your point is a very good demonstration of why a two-parties system is not much better than a single-party one.

There is an optimum in the middle. Governments lasting for a day like several European countries have had in the past is also harmful and alienating. But if there is nothing forcing people to compromise and collaborate, what you describe is the expected outcome: frequent swings from one side to the other, each time with a slim majority, and nothing good happening over the long term.

The problem is not left and right. The problem is that you cannot represent a full spectrum of ideologies with a binary choice.

> This is not hypothetical. There are several major issues that have the support of the majority (sometimes as much as 80%) of the population, and yet they are never voted on.

maybe there just isn't really much democracy in the united states.

> There are several major issues that have the support of the majority (sometimes as much as 80%) of the population, and yet they are never voted on.

Can you provide examples?

Not GP, but affordable health insurance with pre-existing conditions maybe?

“ In fact, the Data for Progress poll found H.R. 1—also known as the For the People Act—has broad public support. More than two-thirds of likely voters (68 percent) said they would back the proposal. Just 16 percent said they opposed it.

The support also transcended party lines, with 70 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of independent or third-party voters and 57 percent of Republican voters expressing approval for the bill.”

Except all the left voted for it and all the right voted against it. You confuse and underestimate the impact of a minority party’s ability to maintain control via gerrymandering, wealthy election finding, voter suppression and an undemocratic Senate.

Show us the litany major issues 80% of citizens support that the left kneecaps.

Both sides do it is a trap.

https://www.newsweek.com/gop-opposes-hr-1-poll-finds-majorit...

You won't escape 90% of the party lines non-sense until you force bill discipline and kill riders. Until such time as representatives can vote on one issue withou getting blown out stackwise by having to wadethrough 6 distinct pieces of legislation all rolled into one, there will be defensive obstruction along party lines.

GP's point is also working as designed. The Founders envisioned a country with a minimum of lawmaking. The system was intended to only respond to a fairly unambiguous signal, and warned of the dangers of a Government that squandered it's credibility on laws it couldn't enforce, or frequent flip-floppery. It's just sad no one seems to have listened.

Noam Chomsky has a good quote about this.

"Now that … workers are superfluous, what do you do with them? First of all, you have to make sure they don’t notice that society is unfair and try to change that, and the best way to distract them is to get them to hate and fear one another."

The "us vs them"ing that's been happening here for the past several decades is more than concerning, it's shocking. The number of times per year that a Congressperson will side with the opposite party during a vote has been shrinking like a cannonball for decades, and it's so limited now it almost doesn't exist. In the 60s, this wasn't the case; voting with the opposite side on certain things was fairly common. There is no way that is not directed and intentional.

And the issues we are getting wrapped up in emotionally are either 1) focused on fear or 2) 'religious' issues for which we will almost never have common agreement, but which are not of actual vital importance at a national level.

If left is a term that “goes back centuries”, then I don’t know what it means anymore. In the 18th century it was the group that sat on the other side of the room from the royalists.

Read a little deeper into that history, things haven't changed all that much. I can offer a Quora answer I wrote some time ago as a jumping off point: https://www.quora.com/How-did-America-become-a-country-of-tw...

Leftism is, generally speaking, those who want to move the needle especially rapidly towards "power to the people". Those on the right generally want to keep power with the established power base.

This can be contrasted with liberalism, which is the belief in a core platform of liberty, consent of the governed, and equality before the law. Though liberalism is often conflated with leftism, it's not, and neither is it the opposite of conservatism.

Many Americans today have forgotten what these terms mean, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless. They still are relevant, people just aren't really understanding the political philosophy.

such concepts are not static across a population, nor through time. beyond the author(s) and early adherents, the population itself has a separate conception of such ideas that can be markedly different from the initial conception, and that also changes through time. it's certainly useful to understand this sort of history, but trying to stake a definition in time and defy the dynamism of these concepts is inherently political (e.g., originalism). sometimes that can be done deftly and sometimes hamfistedly.

in any case, the concepts can be relevant and meaningful and still not be useful as identity markers in any meaningful and relevant way. identification principally with a single school of thought is simply a mistake of rationality, and how we get unthinking tribalist extremism. it happens with any -ism: libertarianism, socialism, nihilism, capitalism, etc. the world works as a non-linear composition of all of these ideas and much more. not a single one can be considered "correct" in any meaningful sense.

They retain meaning across populations and through time. That's the whole point of philosophy. People's opinions on the matters change, but that doesn't change the matters.

Liberalism didn't change because people are using the term incorrectly and don't understand how to use it properly. Like a market, eventually the political landscape returns to rationality. At the end of the day, Trump is a classic fascist, and his supporters are supporting fascism.

They don't get to rewrite the meanings of the words because they don't like the connotations. Many through history have used his playbook, and it all follows the same general arc.

yah, that's a political (and politicized) assertion. you also don't get to define terms only to your convenience, without consideration for the long arc of history and the breadth of the world's imagination.

> "At the end of the day, Trump is a classic fascist, and his supporters are supporting fascism."

impulsive statements like this reveal the limitations of that kind of rigid thinking. trump isn't a fascist, he's a self-centrist. he's one of the simplest human beings to understand because of this. politicized projections such as yours are overfitted at best, and completely unfitted in most cases, as in this case.

> he's a self-centrist

Those are the very same thing. A fascist does not care about anything other than personal power. All philosophies and ideology are superfluous. Fascists run on the very basic political premise of "you like me, elect me and let me run things because you like me and you'll like what I want to do." That's the core message, anything else is pointless to understanding. That's what fascism is. I'm not misunderstanding Trumpism, I'm giving it the same name everybody else who understands political history and theory gives it.

Everything people like about Trump, are the same things that cause people to put fascists in power. Have a look at this explainer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M6CXhUS-x8

Fascism isn't some long slow slide down to Nazi Germany that Americans seem to think of when they consider the term. The Nazis are the most visible and publicly know version of fascism, but countless others throughout history, in Europe, Latin America, Africa, have managed to subvert the mechanisms of their republics using the tactics of populism to put themselves in power, unaccountable to any sort of checks.

> A fascist does not care about anything other than personal power

This isn't a widely accepted definition of fascism. There are plenty of left-wing dictators who fit this definition and weren't fascists.

> Liberalism didn't change because people are using the term incorrectly and don't understand how to use it properly.

Well...

Actually it has changed. Classical Liberalism[1] is primarily an economic belief system that advocates small, non-interventionist government. It evolved into Right-libertarianism in the 20th and 21st century.

"In the late 19th century, classical liberalism developed into neo-classical liberalism, which argued for government to be as small as possible to allow the exercise of individual freedom. In its most extreme form, neo-classical liberalism advocated social Darwinism. Right-libertarianism is a modern form of neo-classical liberalism."

This odd positioning is most visible in Australia, where the conservative party is called "The Liberal party" after the mid-20th century view on this.

This is a long way from any modern understanding of Liberalism particularly within the US:

"Social liberalism, also known as left liberalism in Germany, modern liberalism in the United States[4] and new liberalism in the United Kingdom, is a political philosophy and variety of liberalism that endorses a regulated market economy and the expansion of civil and political rights....

In the United States, the term social liberalism may sometimes refer to progressive stances on sociocultural issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage as opposed to social conservatism."[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism

Don't you "well actually" me!! :-)

All classical liberals are liberals, but not all liberals are classic liberals. Ditto for social liberals. When I defined liberalism, I outlined a core platform. There are many many many movements within liberalism that all share the same core platform. They have to.

You cannot have classical liberalism in a country that's not committed to the core liberal platform. A free market just doesn't work in a world where there's no equality of the law, no liberty, and no consent of the governed. If even one of these is missing, you really can't have classic liberalism either. A regime will invariably put their fingers on the scales of commerce.

Ditto for every single other political philosophy under the liberal banner. All of these things rest upon a belief in the population of those three bedrock principles.

> All classical liberals are liberals

This goes against any common, modern understanding of the plain unadorned term "liberal". For example, former (Republican) house speaker Paul Ryan has called himself a "classical liberal"[1]

I'd also note:

Core beliefs of classical liberals did not necessarily include democracy nor government by a majority vote by citizens[2]

[1] https://www.badgerinstitute.org/WIInterest/Spring20171/Guest...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism

I'm not sure why you're presenting this as an argument against me. Americans, by and large, are liberals, every last one of them. It's the ones ignorant of political philosophy who have turned it into a pejorative. Paul Ryan calling himself a classical liberal is him calling himself a liberal.

Allow me to restate. Liberalism involves a core belief in consent of the governed, liberty, and equality under the law. Classical liberalism is all of these things. They just believe certain aspects are more important than others.

Some American conservative might decide economic freedom (liberty) is the most important aspect of liberalism. That's fine, that's all well and good, under the banner of liberalism. If you suddenly took away this conservative's consent of the governed, or made someone unequal according to the law, they would object, assuming they're a true liberal, which they are, because these values are steeped into just about every American. Solve problems through the political process, not by subverting it. Very, very core America.

What's dangerous about Trump is he's seducing people away from liberalism and towards royalism. Royals are above the law and get to impose governance on the people regardless of their consent. Not even the British agree that the royal family can govern without the consent of the populace, they had many many civil battles eventually deciding the role of the monarchy. Trumpists imagine these things are true even though they're not. They want a monarchy which is above the rule of law. They decide what is true and nobody can use legal action to decide otherwise.

Liberalism is a core Anglo doctrine, every single citizen of Anglo countries is a liberal, and many Europeans as well. They may campaign on other platforms, but if the core liberal pillars of society are threatened, Americans will revert back to those pillars.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but conservatives were fine with Trump's shenanigans, up to a point. That point is essentially, where Trump started threatening core liberal institutions. Once that started happening, the establishment started backing away. Only once Trump waved his hands again after the insurrection, saying it was all for fun, all a show, "be peaceful", did they start to line up again. Trump understood that he had to thread a needle between his base and core America. He failed, because Americans aren't going to go along with a clear subversion of democracy. He thought they could be convinced to and was wrong. Republicans wanted, and still want, his political vitality, but not his tactics.

Conservatives went along with him until he really threatened to make free and fair elections a thing of the past. I'm not saying that the American right is good people, I'm saying that the core beliefs of liberalism are inherent in all of us. There has long long been a fascination with royalism, like every single other democratic nation, but when push comes to shove, those who have tasted Anglo popular sovereignty will choose to continue popular sovereignty. Royalists will always be the minority.

Yes, but.

How is liberalism not the opposite of conservatism? Conservatives wish to maintain the status quo, true? Liberals wish to change it....

Liberalism has had a horrendous crash lately, many internal contradictions and fallacies have become clear, but the I still adhere to those principals.

You're thinking of progressivism, not liberalism. The American right has turned "liberalism" into a pejorative despite mostly being liberal themselves. (Trump supporters aren't liberal, hard to be liberal when you support fascism)

The only two terms that are really opposites here are 'left' and 'right', because they literally mean which side of the aisle you're sitting on. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the extremes of both sides are going to line up around who belongs in power, the elites, or in publicly accountable institutions.

> Leftism is, generally speaking, those who want to move the needle especially rapidly towards "power to the people". Those on the right generally want to keep power with the established power base.

This is the opposite of the positions taken by those described as "left" and "right" in the US. Republicans are individualist, "power to the people", "states' rights", etc, but would never be described as "left", while it's the Democrats that tend towards centralizing power in the federal government.

> Many Americans today have forgotten what these terms mean, but that doesn't mean they're meaningless.

They are certainly approaching that point if people don't mean remotely the same thing when using them.

> This is the opposite of the positions taken by those described as "left" and "right" in the US. Republicans are individualist, "power to the people", "states' rights", etc, but would never be described as "left", while it's the Democrats that tend towards centralizing power in the federal government.

I wouldn't describe these aspects of Republican messaging as their core platform. They're just conservative standards, all conservatives tend to imagine themselves this way. Rugged individualists, callbacks to tradition, even "states rights", aren't particularly leftist in that they aren't calling for moving power anywhere, but rather keeping it where it is. You vote for Republicans if you like their messaging, it just so happens that how Republicans want to achieve these goals means the old white people are empowered to do things the old white way.

If you pierce through the dreck of the messaging, the platform's the same as any other conservative ideology. Law and order, another pillar of conservative rationale, is the name of an actual political party in Poland, guess what, they're actually the majority party.

There's just not that much special about American politics when you get right down to it. What's dangerous about it is that America has more money than the average European country, but our society is far less well-educated on humanities subjects. If you think that makes us prone to misinformation and propaganda, well, it does.

The left-wing perspective on "power to the people" often means the use of state power on behalf of people to counteract private sources of power (eg commercial power).

The right-wing perspective often means the removal of state power in favor of private (ie, "personal") source of power (often in the form of commercial entities).

It’s been basically “power to the individuals” (one person, one vote, this sort of things), as opposed to “power to the elite” (long live the kings etc) since the beginning. The elite makes do without a king, but the aristocratic class reflex is still there.

This spectrum is limited and one-dimensional, but it still is meaningful. The people who claim it isn’t are usually con men after your vote. “The third way” always turned out to be a scam.

I think you’re overfitting history with your current perspective. It’s so limiting, and mostly a recent phenomenon, to look at the past and politics as just “deciding where the power goes”. Most humans even in the US today don’t care except in how it affects their lives. Peasants likely didn’t care who the king was, or had some deep desire to rule themselves, many were just concerned with crop yields, protecting their family, enjoying life, and so on. Colonists in the US barely cared that they were ruled by a king, at least until they got hit with burdensome taxes.

Politics isn’t about power except secondarily, it’s about determining ones way of life. I don’t think anyone would care if they were ruled by a dictator, as long as that dictator didn’t interfere with how they live their life.

This is important because it seems like you walk away with the idea that conservatives are always about concentrating power and progressives are all about diffusing it. That’s just incorrect. Both have different ways they want to live their life and their policies are a reflection of attempts to change the environment around them to fulfill that vision. If progressive policy didn’t affect conservatives way of life, conservatives wouldn’t care about progressives. The reverse is true.

This framework fits every instance in history and everywhere on Earth for why politics happen: because people want to live their envisioned life.

You pretty much hit on a sore point I have.

Issues up for discussion require rational thinking, discovery of facts, forming a "until new info arises" judgement and then you go with that for now.

Left? Right? These are for hands, car indicators, molecule orientation and other two faceted scenarios.

Complex social topics - and they are always complex - two orientations are not nearly enough to consider the full range of possibilities.

Edit: bit more concise.

There was a study done that asked people on the left and right to try to imagine what the views and feeling of the other side were. People on the right were able to do a reasonable job of identifying the positions of the left. People on the left were almost completely unable to identify the goals and values of those on the right. I think that’s a big part of the problem. The left doesn’t understand what the right wants and until they do, they will not be successful in engaging the other side.

There was a study done that asked people on the right and left to try to imagine what the views and feeling of the other side were. People on the left were able to do a reasonable job of identifying the positions of the right. People on the right were almost completely unable to identify the goals and values of those on the left. I think that’s a big part of the problem. The right doesn’t understand what the left wants and until they do, they will not be successful in engaging the other side.

I agree completely. I fully expect to see an article by an affluent white woman writing from her reclaimed wine cork desk telling me to boycott Nintendo until they change the name of the Master Sword.

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