Political Memes

I'm not saying he was perfect. I'm not saying that we shouldn't criticize past political leaders. I'm not saying he did nothing wrong. I'm not saying Democrats are great. I'm not saying Democrats are the entirely of the left, and yes, I've heard that the Democrats aren't the left because they are capitalists, for the context of this comment I'm using "the left" as a more colloquial definition, on relation to the Overton window and so on, basically meaning "not conservatives".

So if you're going to respond to the following, please refer to the above first.

People say "the left needs to be more united", and it does. But the problem we have is a constant purity battle. Everyone is silently judging each other, and more harshly, themselves, for who's got the better morals.

We then fall into this trap where, when someone from "the left" fails to meet our moral standards, to sometimes literally any degree, we have to point it out. After all we like accountability, transparency, and we would hate to be hypocrites, right? This can range from "X did war crimes" to "yeah but X said a slur once in the 90s and even though it wasn't considered a slur then by a lot of people it is now"

The end conclusion is "No one is good enough. Everyone has failed you. Our side is weak. Our side is hypocritical. I, the commenter, am morally better for pointing out this flaw. I'm in the know. I know what's right and wrong and I speak truth to power."

Conservatives... Don't do this. They either clap or jeer. They don't care for nuance, thing is good or thing bad.

So when conservatives see the "bad" people admitting they are bad, there's a bit of confusion then a sense of validation. It verifies what they think deep down, that everyone is secretly conservatives and so called "libruls" are just playing pretend to get votes or look better, and that real conservatives are just more honest. They think that, by criticizing our own side, we're admitting that everyone is just as bad as Trump.

They think, and maybe for over are right, that we can never be happy.

I'm not saying we should lower our standards.

What I am saying is that we have certainly learned how to jeer, but maybe we should learn how, and when, to clap.