5 ms·

> I was a die-hard liberal progressive two years ago, before I had savage children on drugs waging running melees with rocks and trying to rape each other's gir

> I was a die-hard liberal progressive two years ago, before I had savage children on drugs waging running melees with rocks and trying to rape each other's girlfriends in front of my house all night. I don’t understand this. It would make me more progressive if I saw that. What are the economic, political, social forces that are causing that? Is it that we are a fair country that treats people with dignity? Or is it that we are Country with a huge separation of wealth that doesn’t mind letting people suffer in homelessness. It sounds like it’s not that scene, but your wealth, that made you less progressive, and wanted to protect it that caused you to become less progressive. Where do you think the people causing all the crime come from? Why do people commit crime? I’m pretty sure people don’t commit crime when their lives are going great. And I’m sure it’s the same thing with drug addiction. And the people that run Portland? They’re not progressive, not in the least. Threatening a man who is beating a dog in your front yard with a gun does not make you conservative, it makes you caring. Don’t buy into the paradigm that if you own a gun you are suddenly conservative. That’s just propaganda both sides want to live inside of you.

refurb 5y ago
When politicians run on a progressive platform, institute progressive policies on crime (no bail, avoid prison, no punishment for QOL crime) and then crime goes nuts, I'd think twice about voting for progressive policies too. But I think your point is "no true progressive" - if the policy didn't work, then it's not progressive because progressive policies always work.
- noduerme 5y ago
  ::eye roll:: I think my view now on progressive policies is: They sound super when you're rich and white and don't think whatsoever about the consequences. Then when those consequences come back around to bite you, you probably become a nazi and don't think too hard about that either. Here's the dirty secret of progressive politics: No one who actually came here as an immigrant is at all interested in being fetishized for their racial background or their "noble" poverty. That's not what progressivism was 15 years ago, but that's what it is today. A white power fetishization of nonwhite people that forcefully slots us into categories we're supposed to sympathize with.
- SpodGaju 5y ago
  Portland is socially progressive but they are not economically progressive. In the word, they’re neo liberal. And I hate to use that term because people don’t truly understand its meaning.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    No - they're pseudo-progressive on both fronts. It's not really that. They're passive aggressive. The phrase that always goes through my mind in this city is ineffectual asshole.
    - SpodGaju 5y ago
      Yes, passive aggressive: "Passive-aggressive people regularly exhibit resistance to requests or demands from family and other individuals often by procrastinating, expressing sullenness, or acting stubborn." "What do we want!?" "Ending homelessness!" "When do we want it?" "It's impossible!"
      - noduerme 5y ago
        Oh, ending homelessness is a stupid priority. Giving people the education to take care of themselves if they choose to is important, but what they do with it is only my problem if they make it my problem. I can't spend my life taking care of people who refuse to take care of themselves.
        SpodGaju 5y ago
        > I can't spend my life taking care of people who refuse to take care of themselves. This is how a society collapses, when people think they know who "refuses" to take care of themselves and who simply cannot.
- nkozyra 5y ago
  It strikes me that none* of these are "liberal policies" but rather realities that arose in a few West Coast liberal cities that simply couldn't handle the influx of people who came to SF, Portland, Seattle. * Perhaps no bail, although I think in isolation that's unlikely to be an issue These areas are always unique because transient and the homeless can live with some degree of year round comfort, so they will be naturally appealing to people who have uncertain housing prospects.
  - refurb 5y ago
    These are all liberal/progressive policies enacted across the West Coast - Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angelas. Progressives believe in restorative justice not prison or punishment. They believe that justice is actually righting the wrong that caused people to behave this way in the first place. "The infinite perfectability of man". That's a core progressive belief. Thus they "catch and release" for non-violent (and sometimes violent) crimes. Reduce property crimes to misdemeanors, and generally tell law abiding citizens - "just put up with quality of life issues". Suffice to say the experiment has failed entirely. Lawlessness begets more lawlessness. Giving people a place to shoot drugs (without treatment options) just helps addict get their fix. Not prosecuting property crimes just encourages ever more bold property crimes. And the funny part is, it's not poverty driving much of this. It's organized crime - easy pickings, low hanging fruit. It's not the single mom trying to feed her newborn milk that is stealing catalytic converters. I keep saying this, but history repeats itself. Major urban cities saw mass out migrations in the 60-70s for this exact reason. Crime, lawlessness, rioting, general degradation of QOL. The "Death Wish" movie series about a vigilante taking on a lawless city wasn't popular because people enjoyed the genre. I could easily see it happening again, especially with WFH. Then the "law and order" types will get elected and we'll start the whole thing over again.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      What you're saying is right. I still fail to understand whether "restorative justice" actually comes from love or from some desire to watch the world burn. But you're describing what I've seen with my own eyes in the past few years in PDX. A slow self-immolation. What's sort of nuts to me is: I'm an extremist for personal freedom and individual rights, I loathe authority but I believe in collaborative action, and I'm a leftist in terms of helping people get off the bottom and on their feet. I guess that's what "liberal" used to mean. But I'm morally offended by what progressivism stands for now. I can't see the reason in justifying terrorism against working people by people who refuse to work, and worse, clothing it in some kind of bullshit moral superiority. Because that's what it's become.
noduerme 5y ago
>> It would make me more progressive if I saw that. What are the economic, political, social forces that are causing that? [EDIT] TLDR: I never committed crimes or hurt people when I was poor as fuck. When I was 20 I would've maybe thought this. I was a left anarchist, and my leanings are still in that direction. It's not wealth that made me less progressive. I wrote a novel when I was 24 that brought the world down on me; it was a satire that involved a rock band murdering Bush and Cheney at a gala at Bohemian grove. It got thousands of hits from .mil sites and I got police going through my trash cans, my apartment raided. I left the country for 15 years. And railed against the military/industrial complex. It's progressives who made me less progressive. During my exile I worked, I created things. It was hard. But I never lost my dignity. I never acted like a savage. I did lots of drugs and drinking but I never blamed anyone else; I worked out what it was that I needed to do. I've worked every day since I was 15. I wasn't handed anything. My parents were born in complete poverty. So when I see a 20 year old beating his dog and literally taking a shit on the sidewalk, and then screaming at me that "how dare you tell a homeless person he can't shit here unless you want me to use your bathroom", when the City of Portland and me put a porta-potty on the corner thirty paces from where he's shitting for him, what I see is an able-bodied guy with a facebook and instagram account who's LARPing as an anarchist and needs to go through some form of hardship which he's obviously not experiencing yet. I don't blame anyone for anything I could reasonably - or unreasonably - see someone doing. Slapping someone for making fun of your wife's hair is bad but it's not incomprehensible. Beating a dog is outside the sphere of what I can understand, though. So is shitting on someone's porch. I've started to think the main thing is that people in their early 20s are being told this is an acceptable form of rebellion. It's not the peaceful Drop out, tune out of old times. It's an aggressive attempt to assert rights to dominate everyone around them - to terrorize peaceable people - without any kind of understanding of what terror people like me went through to be here. The one thing you won't find among these Portland youth is any kind of understanding of the immigrant experience. Just (mostly white) entitlement, wrapped in a thin veneer of "woke" speech. With no thought behind it. Social forces that drive it? Poor education, stupid parents, I don't know. They're a threat to the working order of society. I would say that even more if I were homeless; I say it as a homeowner. [Edit] Two side thoughts: 1. Just announcing you're a homeowner in Portland is cause for being attacked these days. As if no one deserves to reap any reward for anything they've done. 2. Someone on Nextdoor here last week complained that she was sleeping on her kitchen floor because the same guy had broken into her apartment three times in a week and once started a fire in the bathroom; other people asked why she didn't call the police, and she had, but they didn't respond. Someone asked why she didn't have a baseball bat at least. She recoiled and said she didn't want to hurt anyone. Is that a way to live your life?

refurb 5y ago

When politicians run on a progressive platform, institute progressive policies on crime (no bail, avoid prison, no punishment for QOL crime) and then crime goes nuts, I'd think twice about voting for progressive policies too. But I think your point is "no true progressive" - if the policy didn't work, then it's not progressive because progressive policies always work.

noduerme 5y ago
::eye roll:: I think my view now on progressive policies is: They sound super when you're rich and white and don't think whatsoever about the consequences. Then when those consequences come back around to bite you, you probably become a nazi and don't think too hard about that either. Here's the dirty secret of progressive politics: No one who actually came here as an immigrant is at all interested in being fetishized for their racial background or their "noble" poverty. That's not what progressivism was 15 years ago, but that's what it is today. A white power fetishization of nonwhite people that forcefully slots us into categories we're supposed to sympathize with.
SpodGaju 5y ago
Portland is socially progressive but they are not economically progressive. In the word, they’re neo liberal. And I hate to use that term because people don’t truly understand its meaning.
- noduerme 5y ago
  No - they're pseudo-progressive on both fronts. It's not really that. They're passive aggressive. The phrase that always goes through my mind in this city is ineffectual asshole.
  - SpodGaju 5y ago
    Yes, passive aggressive: "Passive-aggressive people regularly exhibit resistance to requests or demands from family and other individuals often by procrastinating, expressing sullenness, or acting stubborn." "What do we want!?" "Ending homelessness!" "When do we want it?" "It's impossible!"
    - noduerme 5y ago
      Oh, ending homelessness is a stupid priority. Giving people the education to take care of themselves if they choose to is important, but what they do with it is only my problem if they make it my problem. I can't spend my life taking care of people who refuse to take care of themselves.
      - SpodGaju 5y ago
        > I can't spend my life taking care of people who refuse to take care of themselves. This is how a society collapses, when people think they know who "refuses" to take care of themselves and who simply cannot.
nkozyra 5y ago
It strikes me that none* of these are "liberal policies" but rather realities that arose in a few West Coast liberal cities that simply couldn't handle the influx of people who came to SF, Portland, Seattle. * Perhaps no bail, although I think in isolation that's unlikely to be an issue These areas are always unique because transient and the homeless can live with some degree of year round comfort, so they will be naturally appealing to people who have uncertain housing prospects.
- refurb 5y ago
  These are all liberal/progressive policies enacted across the West Coast - Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angelas. Progressives believe in restorative justice not prison or punishment. They believe that justice is actually righting the wrong that caused people to behave this way in the first place. "The infinite perfectability of man". That's a core progressive belief. Thus they "catch and release" for non-violent (and sometimes violent) crimes. Reduce property crimes to misdemeanors, and generally tell law abiding citizens - "just put up with quality of life issues". Suffice to say the experiment has failed entirely. Lawlessness begets more lawlessness. Giving people a place to shoot drugs (without treatment options) just helps addict get their fix. Not prosecuting property crimes just encourages ever more bold property crimes. And the funny part is, it's not poverty driving much of this. It's organized crime - easy pickings, low hanging fruit. It's not the single mom trying to feed her newborn milk that is stealing catalytic converters. I keep saying this, but history repeats itself. Major urban cities saw mass out migrations in the 60-70s for this exact reason. Crime, lawlessness, rioting, general degradation of QOL. The "Death Wish" movie series about a vigilante taking on a lawless city wasn't popular because people enjoyed the genre. I could easily see it happening again, especially with WFH. Then the "law and order" types will get elected and we'll start the whole thing over again.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    What you're saying is right. I still fail to understand whether "restorative justice" actually comes from love or from some desire to watch the world burn. But you're describing what I've seen with my own eyes in the past few years in PDX. A slow self-immolation. What's sort of nuts to me is: I'm an extremist for personal freedom and individual rights, I loathe authority but I believe in collaborative action, and I'm a leftist in terms of helping people get off the bottom and on their feet. I guess that's what "liberal" used to mean. But I'm morally offended by what progressivism stands for now. I can't see the reason in justifying terrorism against working people by people who refuse to work, and worse, clothing it in some kind of bullshit moral superiority. Because that's what it's become.

noduerme 5y ago

>> It would make me more progressive if I saw that. What are the economic, political, social forces that are causing that? [EDIT] TLDR: I never committed crimes or hurt people when I was poor as fuck. When I was 20 I would've maybe thought this. I was a left anarchist, and my leanings are still in that direction. It's not wealth that made me less progressive. I wrote a novel when I was 24 that brought the world down on me; it was a satire that involved a rock band murdering Bush and Cheney at a gala at Bohemian grove. It got thousands of hits from .mil sites and I got police going through my trash cans, my apartment raided. I left the country for 15 years. And railed against the military/industrial complex. It's progressives who made me less progressive. During my exile I worked, I created things. It was hard. But I never lost my dignity. I never acted like a savage. I did lots of drugs and drinking but I never blamed anyone else; I worked out what it was that I needed to do. I've worked every day since I was 15. I wasn't handed anything. My parents were born in complete poverty. So when I see a 20 year old beating his dog and literally taking a shit on the sidewalk, and then screaming at me that "how dare you tell a homeless person he can't shit here unless you want me to use your bathroom", when the City of Portland and me put a porta-potty on the corner thirty paces from where he's shitting for him, what I see is an able-bodied guy with a facebook and instagram account who's LARPing as an anarchist and needs to go through some form of hardship which he's obviously not experiencing yet. I don't blame anyone for anything I could reasonably - or unreasonably - see someone doing. Slapping someone for making fun of your wife's hair is bad but it's not incomprehensible. Beating a dog is outside the sphere of what I can understand, though. So is shitting on someone's porch. I've started to think the main thing is that people in their early 20s are being told this is an acceptable form of rebellion. It's not the peaceful Drop out, tune out of old times. It's an aggressive attempt to assert rights to dominate everyone around them - to terrorize peaceable people - without any kind of understanding of what terror people like me went through to be here. The one thing you won't find among these Portland youth is any kind of understanding of the immigrant experience. Just (mostly white) entitlement, wrapped in a thin veneer of "woke" speech. With no thought behind it. Social forces that drive it? Poor education, stupid parents, I don't know. They're a threat to the working order of society. I would say that even more if I were homeless; I say it as a homeowner. [Edit] Two side thoughts: 1. Just announcing you're a homeowner in Portland is cause for being attacked these days. As if no one deserves to reap any reward for anything they've done. 2. Someone on Nextdoor here last week complained that she was sleeping on her kitchen floor because the same guy had broken into her apartment three times in a week and once started a fire in the bathroom; other people asked why she didn't call the police, and she had, but they didn't respond. Someone asked why she didn't have a baseball bat at least. She recoiled and said she didn't want to hurt anyone. Is that a way to live your life?