I've been seeing a worrying number of these people on Lemmy lately, sharing enlightened takes including but not limited to "voting for Biden is tantamount to fascism" and "the concept of an assigned gender, or even an assigned name, at birth is transphobic" and none of them seem to be interested in reading more than the first sentence of any of my comments before writing a reply.
More often than not they reply with a concern I addressed in the comment they're replying to, without any explanation of why my argument was invalid. Some of them cannot even state their own position, instead simply repeatedly calling mine oppressive in some way.
It occurred to me just now that these interactions reminded me of nothing so much as an evangelical Christian I got into an argument with on Matrix a while ago, in which I met him 95% of the way, conceded that God might well be real and that being trans was sinful and tried to convince him not to tell that to every trans person he passed, and failed. I am 100% convinced he was trolling -- in retrospect I'm pretty sure I could've built a municipal transport system by letting people ride on top of his goalposts (that's what I get for picking a fight with a Christian at 2AM) -- and the only reason I'm not convinced these leftists on Lemmy are trolls is the sheer fucking number of them.
I made this post and what felt like half the responses fell into this category. Am I going insane?
Let's just skip the part where I provide a researched answer and go straight to you saying "nuh uh! That's not REAL socialism!"
I mean, if you're just talking about an expansion of the welfare state, then you aren't talking about Socialism. We have had this convo before, you just prefer to use established terms in a manner that right-wingers use them, basically, so the convo just becomes arguing over correct use of terms and not an actual discussion of the topic at hand.
The irony here is that you define "right wing" more arbitrarily than I define "socialism".
But yeah, that's fair. However I think it's also fair to point out that even though you've defined the countries I consider socialist as not-socialist, there's still never been an effective socialist/communist revolution.
There have been, is "effective" just a vibe? What on Earth happened in the last hundred or so years?
Additionally, Right Wing just means you support Capitalism as the dominant Mode of Production, which you certainly do.
See? Arbitrary. You're defining the majority of the world as right wing, which is nonsensical.
Name effective revolutions. We could debate Cuba, but I'll give you that one for now. Other than Cuba, what socialist revolution led to a stable socialist country?
It is absolutely not arbitrary, it's entirely clear. Yes, the majority of the world is right wing, why does that make the definition of right wing more arbitrary?
Cuba, Chiapas, USSR, China, Vietnam, Laos, and more have successfully transformed their Mode of Production to Socialism.
One thing I won't let you sneak in: you clearly added "stable" as a pure vibe, moving the goalposts entirely. Again, the original argument is that Socialism has never been achieved electorally, the closest is Bolivia and Chile, Chile was couped and Bolivia isn't Socialist yet. Instead, there have been Revolutions that successfully shifted Mode of Production to Socialism, and now you wish to debate even Cuba about "success" based on nothing but vibe.
Lol nope
And yeah, who gives a fuck about a successful revolution if it falls apart almost immediately. Revolution is not the end goal. A stable, functioning socialist society is the end goal, and with the possible exception of Cuba that just has not happened.
Ah, yes, "lol nope" is about what I expected from you. Every time you're presented with an argument, you duck and run.
Those are all Socialist examples, the USSR is the only one of those examples that is no longer here, and that took a century. You can't actually argue against them being Socialist, so you try to redefine what words mean, or just say "lol nope" and refuse to answer.
Typical right-winger, refusing to actually engage meaningfully.
I don't need to argue against China being socialist, I just need to laugh every time you suggest such a ridiculous thing.
70% of China's top 500 companies are state-owned, they have democratic measures in place in the workplace, and have maintained strong state influence over their Bourgeois class, not the other way around. It cannot be considered pure Socialism just like nothing can be considered pure Capitalism, so trends must be observed and recorded. You claimed Cuba to be Socialist, or at least arguably so, correct? Here is a conversation where Castro argues that China is indeed Socialist.
If all you do is laugh, you'll be left behind, having contributed nothing.
Lol