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this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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There's a reason why the feminist saying "the personal is political" is so threatening. Because it denies precisely the reasoning seen above and elsewhere in this thread.
Conservatives often complain about progressives ending relationships and friendships over "politics". Because they want to draw a hard line between the two, where as long as they behave civilly to people's faces, it doesn't matter when they vote to make the same people's lives materially worse. Because "politics" is something... I don't know, abstract?
My experience living in a couple of countries in Europe is that people's tendencies for how they relate at an interpersonal and also towards society are cultural and that further, interpersonal and societal forms of relation are in fact separate.
For example, in The Netherlands there is more a tendency to consider the broader impact of one's actions (and being called "asocial" is actually considered insulting), whilst in Portugal if you don't take advantage of "The System" when you can get away with it you're considered a sucker (the dutch tend to think of "The System" as "everybody else", whilst the portuguese do not) but in both countries screwing people (not in a good, sex, way) is considered a bad thing and I would even say the portuguese tend to at least express more their concern with other people on a personal level, quit likely even be more ~~emphatic~~ empatetic.
Meanwhile in the UK taking advantage of others, personally, whilst being very polite about it, is the essence the upper class upbringing (the "gentleman" is certainly no such thing).
I expect that you get the same thing in US were culture is not broken along language barrier lines but none the less seems to be siloed by other factors.
That’s an interesting take. Conservatives tend to have an image of hypocrisy - ie, maybe treat a woman well, yet seek to restrict her legal rights or prevent women from protections, and they seem to think that this hypocrisy cannot be questioned. They never like being called out or questioned on it.
The problem is that many personal decisions have systemic consequences. Things like weight gain, smoking or even poor resource utilization cause serious societal and environmental harm, and yet terminating relationships over them is generally criticised. (Many of the biggest issues {climate change, healthcare, drug abuse etc} faced are directly caused by poor personal habits, not voting).
So the question is out of all personal decisions, why are political views being carved out as an exception that is worthy of terminating a relationship?
"is so threatening"
Sometimes when you are criticised it's because you are a complete moron, not because your ideas are so brilliant they send people running.
This is just such utter nonsense. Many places around the world have made massive inroads into solving these problems and every single time, the solution has come from systemic policy decisions.
Healthcare has been addressed by various universal healthcare systems, drug abuse has been addressed through decriminalisation, offering of rehabilitation, and making sure people aren't living under crushingly miserable economic conditions.
And climate change is not caused by individual decisions, but by the fact that our economic system only values profit, and thus incentivises the destruction of the environment to increase profit.
Because politics affects people's lives. I could not care less if you're a nice person to my face if you are voting for policies that make it impossible for me to live my life.
You talk about personal choices as if someone being overweight is going to measurably affect your life, when it just isn't, no not even through increases in health insurance costs. And then downplay the actual effect of conservatives criminalising my healthcare.
One of those actions clearly has orders of magnitude more impact than the other. Yet strangely, you are concerned about the one with negligible impact, and want to ignore the one with considerable impact.
You are below my contempt. Your ideas are simplistic and have been addressed decades ago. You are painfully boring.
"This is such utter nonsense" So you don't think that people choose to be wasteful?
Laws and personal decisions both cause systemic changes. And guess what, laws do not pass if people do not already engage in personal habits that the laws encourage. The tobacco restrictions would never have passed if it weren't for personal decisions that lowered the rate of tobacco use.
"You strangely are more concerned about the one with negligible impact"
No, they both have consequences. I'm pointing out that the distinction being made that somehow political views have special considerations over all the other personal actions is worthless. (Remember what the actual topic was?)
Additionally do you realise how completely insane your argument is? A single voter does not determine laws, groups of voters do. Just like how a single smoker does not burden the healthcare system, millions of them do.
"Someone being overweight isn't going to on measurably affect your life"
It is. Here's the hard facts, overweight people are less happy, they have worse socialisation, they are unattractive ( which as much as people want to pretend like attractiveness doesn't matter, it absolutely does when it comes to casual interaction), they have shorter, less productive lives, they increase health care costs. All of these effect society as a whole and the individual.
"And downplaying the actual effect of conservatives criminalising my healthcare"
I have no idea what you are talking about, I never downplayed any laws, you're just fabricating that so you can justify your whining.
Look, I'm not a conservative but more importantly I'm not someone who conjures nonsensical arguments to justify some vague gut feeling I developed while eating poisonous mushrooms.
That's not what I said. Read again.
Of course they do. Behaviour can follow legislation. Furthermore most of the legislation would need to target corporations, not individuals. In which case behaviour definitely follows legislation.
Because one primarily affects the person making the decision, with smaller secondary effects on other people. And the other primarily affects other people, doing significantly more harm.
People being overweight does not affect you nearly as much as people voting to ban gay marriage or trans healthcare affects LGBT+ people.
Oh please.
Which is none of your business.
You are deeply unpleasant yourself, take the log out of your own eye.
Nobody owes you attractiveness you little freak.
None of your business, how other people spend their lives.
Old people increase healthcare costs. If unhealthy people die earlier as you say, then they probably save the system money.
Not even remotely to the degree that political action does. Voting outweighs all of that by many orders of magnitude.
It's called an "example" sweetheart.
Progressives aren't ending relationships based on political stances around taxes. They're ending relationships because of bigotry against marginalised groups.
"Further most of the regulations need to target corporations"
Guess what is also a way of targeting corporations? Market forces. If people aren't buying your products/services, do you keep selling those products? The reason why boycotts generally fail is because people are spineless, not because the actual action wouldn't cripple a business.
You so desperately want to prove the point that the only personal choice that matters is voting, that you are willing to deny reality.
"Then they probably save money"
Probably? Is that the strongest statement you can make? People who die younger don't have lower healthcare costs (unless it's an accident or homicide), because they are sicker throughout their end of life.
"Doesn't effect you as much as people wanting to ban gay marriage"
Pretty, sure that more of my taxes go towards paying for emphysema treatment than are effected by the tiny amount of same-sex married couples (which incur costs how?).
"None of your business how other people spend there lives"
It's everybody's business. If this was true, then things like tobacco restrictions wouldn't matter because healthcare costs are nobody's business.
What happened to the good old socialists that recognised that if society has a responsibility to support you, you conversely have a responsibility to not be an unnecessary burden? Nowadays we just have libertarian-poisoned socialists who think that nothing you do matters.
"Nobody owes you attractiveness" They owe themselves attractiveness. It is an objective fact that obese people suffer socially, and that translates to societal problems.
"Not even to the degree as voting"
How many companies do you think have dedicated blocks of consumers amounting to 50 million people? A boycott of 50 million people would destroy most companies (if they even have that many customers). You are confusing the fact that most people don't engage in personal action (because they are just like you), with asserting that personal action does nothing. The reason why political action works is simply because people do it in coordinated groups.
"Progressives are ending relationships based on taxes ..."
Motte and Bailey argumentation. The topic was whether or not it is appropriate to end relationships solely on voting (but not personal habits), you explicitly argued that it was (because only voting actually matters) and are now narrowing it down to only "bigotry against marginalised groups". When that was never the topic.
"You are deeply unpleasant yourself" Are you sure about that? Would you prefer a dishonest liar, who said "Oh my gawd. So true, sweetie." to every nonsensical claim you made? (Obviously, yes you would, because posters like you are accustomed to sycophantic behaviour).