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Just a reminder... no matter how much you listen or try to genuinely understand them.. this is almost always the outcome when you discuss things with a leftist... Either you agree with them, or they get offended, make personal attacks, and walk.
Every interaction I have with the left leaves me wanting to have less to do with them than the time before, and this is sad since I associate more with left ideals in many cases than right ones.
QT: https://mastodon.social/@libramoon/112124166185113057
@freemo What do you consider to be the qualifying factors for a "leftist"? It could be that your observed outcome is a result of your definition.
@LouisIngenthron Largely based on their own self-view. To be clear since i am left of center I'd be a leftist (assuming we are counting anyone on the left side of center).
But in general most americans seem to be on the extreme ends of the spectrum with little in the middle. So leftists like me are a bit of an edge case, a minority.
That said there are clear exceptions, myself, you, a few other people on this server for sure. Its largly the general population and leftists since so many lean to the extreme end in both behavior and opinion.
@freemo Ah, okay. I tend to define 'leftists' as "Bernie supporters" lol
@LouisIngenthron A suprisingly large percentage of people whoa re simply left of center do tend to concentrate at the extreme "bernie supporter" end of that spectrum. So the distinction is less than it could be.
But yea its usually the 95% of the left that is on the extreme end that is the problem. The 5% or so closer to the middle not so much.
@freemo I strongly disagree with your distribution percentages.
That *might* be accurate if you're only talking about the subset of the left that uses microblogging websites, though.
But I think you're falling prey to the vocal minority. If the far-left extreme folks were really in the majority, then Bernie or Liz Warren would have won the primary in 2020. But even in a Dem party primary, which should already have a pretty strong leftward lean, they chose Biden, who is much more of a centrist (or "flip-flopper", or "opportunist", or whatever, but he's definitely put a rightward distance between himself and the straight-up-socialists in the party).
@LouisIngenthron While the numbers are probably biased they would be biased to include my city and the people around me as well. To be fair being in a city, and a particularly liberal one im sure that is a legitimate skew on my perception. But it is certainly not limited to microblogging. I've seen this issue in most group settings in my city.
Inb4: in case someone says "maybe its me" oddly enough the problem is virtually non existent in the time i spend outside of the USA, which is why i try to rarely if ever be in the USA.
@freemo @LouisIngenthron how can numbers be biased? Numbers should be the result of a measure.
Either you performed a measure, and you end up with unbiased numbers, or please don’t mention numbers as a synonym of “many”, “most of”.
@LouisIngenthron @arialdo @freemo my argument was, one should refrain from using from numbers and percentages of there was no measure behind.
It’s like for the expressions “99%” and “exponential growth”: they are constantly misused to the point they lost their meaning.