I actually think the intellectually lazy line (it gets used so much) is at worst, a thought-stopping tactic, and at best, intellectually lazy. How is calling out systemic asshatery across the entire spectrum lazy thinking?
Going the "they are both cults" route is easy because you don't have to differentiate, you don't have to actually think and reflect about the magnitude of each side's actions. Just saying both are bad is intellectual surrender because you did not even try to differentiate. The most sad thing about it is that this is incredibly dangerous and makes autocratic power grabs actually possible, without people like you autocrats wouldn't stand a chance. It was always the same in every democratic system that turned autocratic, a large portion of the people saying they don't care who is in power they are all the same anyway. They are not and history showed it often enough that autocrats are worse for the people than moderates. Read about the rise of fascists in Germany and Italy before ww2 or Hugo Chavez power grab around 2000 in Venezuela.
Actually, it requires more thought to reflect about the magnitude of each side's actions and conclude the entire system is broken in a multitude of ways that are as nuanced as they are problematic. Each side asserts the dangers presented by the other while ignoring behaviors of their own. Arguing specific points of policy with a member of either cult is a pointless because the cognitive dissonance is too strong. Democracy was going to end when Trump got elected. Then democracy was going to end when Biden got elected. Now it's going to end again...
The masses are locked in a cycle of intense emotional reactivity, doom, and rage. That's the biggest threat to a free world right now. I talk to people here and on X, on each side of the political spectrum. The responses are almost always the same. Name calling. Lazy thinker. Laundry list of why the other side is bad.
Tell me again why my perspective is lazy, when the responses to this stance are always the same?
I totally get what you are saying and that both sides in the last elections where saying if the other one gets elected it is the end for the country, and as we can see it was not. At least not yet. Trumps current policies and the support he gets from congress is unprecedented, think about banning mail-in voting, saying elections where rigged or trying to steal the election in 2021, pardoning those who stormed the capitol, forcing gerrymandering on another level beginning in Texas (ordered by the President! imagine Obama or Bush doing that). The list goes on.
While i completely agree with the emotional cycle fueled by social media like our conversation now, calling both political parties cults is obviously a highly provocative statement, which I should not have answered that provocative to either. As you can see we are part of the problem when communicating like that.
The thing is, there are no perfect systems and every political system is in a way "broken". But other systems around the world are much more broken, you know that. Or even look to the past, the modern democracies we have now are for from perfect but the best we have so far in terms of universal human rights. And the current administration openly tries to destroy that for its own benefit. They even openly say that. And they can because they have the majority in congress and a radical political base to do so. There is no more respect for the constitution. That is what no other president in the last 250 years could or attempted to do. And that's why while no side may deserve our sympathy, they are far from being the same for the average joe.
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u/Future-Cold1582 6d ago
But it let's the intellectually lazy feel really smart which is much more fun than actually thinking