I agree but the goal should be not to win a debate, but use their debate platform to slip some woke mind virus into their drink. I always liked to ask very simple questions that they thought they knew the answer to already and make them defend their inevitably irrational answers. For example I used to ask what race is Mariah Carey, because it’s a question everyone seems to have a different strong opinion on that can’t withstand much questioning. The goal being to make them realize on their own that race is a social construct. Whether that ever worked with anyone I don’t know.

Up to you? I used to hang out on a WN part of reddit back when that was allowed and debate people but that’s not a thing anymore. The problem is you have utterly no idea if you’re getting through to anyone. I do feel like people had to back off their angry racial ideas and adopt a softer “racial zoo” argument that made it seem like all they wanted was to preserve racial diversity rather than eliminate any particular race. I mean at times I wonder if they were looking in the mirror going “is that really why I have this swastika tattoo?” but I have no idea.

I do think the far right cannot survive much scrutiny of its ideas because they are very irrational, but to be honest the left has done a terrible job pointing this out. I know many people even on the moderate right feel like there’s a grain of truth to racism that they’ll admit in private with other white people, but then once you confront racism and question common assumptions about race* all that falls apart. Many attack racism as a moral failing and that doesn’t work because it makes it sound like the truth is being suppressed for moral reasons.

*The most pernicious being the idea that a person can have a single race on a fundamental level that isn’t up for debate

A house with a yard in a city with good subway access

Reddit had its advantages but when they forced everyone to have r/all as a default sub I feel like the content really started going downhill and all the subs started becoming the same. Then when the API thing happened I realized it wasn’t going to get better, they were determined to become Facebook.

Because the status quo throughout history is an extremely small number of people getting the most benefits by far and everyone else getting screwed, and everyone seeing this as normal. People are used to it, while having everyone on relatively equal footing is new and therefore scary.

Well that’s what I mean by doing more harm than good. People notice, and then say “I hate whatever those people stand for”.

Protests do more harm than good to a cause, especially annoying protests.

There’s plenty of evidence that he actually is very stupid, and that he may even have a learning disability. To be honest, once you accept the thought that he may be mildly retarded, you can’t unsee it. For example in the recent talk about rare earth minerals, it seems to me that Trump thinks rare earth is actually soil in the way he talks about it and it drives me nuts that the media doesn’t point this out:

“We’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earth and other things…They have great rare earth. And I want security of the rare earth, and they’re willing to do it."

But he makes up for it politically with great skill in appealing to people’s base emotions.

Leftism is unpopular by definition, especially to the privileged classes. Leftism seeks to upend the status quo, and loss aversion is a problem.

Not that efforts can’t be made.

Perhaps before the 2022 invasion. You can see for example the first round of the last presidential election results here - the light blue supported the pro-Russia candidate Yuriy Boyko, who didn’t advocate being part of Russia but instead wanted better relations with Russia. After the invasion, Boyko himself apparently became part of a new party of ex-pro-russian candidates who now support Ukraine against Russia.

Generally it’s hard to say how many fit into the category of “wanted an independent Ukraine but that is still close to Russia”, but my sense is that it was a pretty large part of the blue group. Consider for example the average American liberal who wants the US to be more like Canada - probably there are some who would rather have their part of the country become part of Canada, but it’s probably not most and certainly nowhere near all. Additionally, it’s likely that many who actually did want to live in Russia changed their mind after the atrocities of the invasion.