That is a mere insult disguised as political analysis. “Liberal” is not a personality trait, and you are showing little evidence you know anything about what a liberal is other than “someone I don’t like”.

It is actually a very common critique in socialist circles. You would recognize it had you ever participated with any principled organization. Heck, Mao wrote a funny little memo that included this critique several times.

As a reminder, liberalism is a political philosophy that arose out of the enlightenment and is characterised by individualism, a devotion to private property, etc etc.

Congratulations on skimming Wikipedia and the like.

Really? You mean this:

Yes except you left out the sentence after. It’s a question.

That’s not a response. That’s an acknowledgement.

It’s both, though again you missed the next sentence. The only other sentence after it. I did actually explicitly repeat myself, you have no reason to be this confused except that you didn’t read my comment before starting replying.

Which, oddly enough, was, in the words of someone, was “like pulling teeth” to get.

Not at all. I have consistently offered acknowledgement the moment a seemingly clear answer has been given. I took “emphatic no” and you complained when I ran with it immediately, remember? And now I’ve said, “Okay so you’re giving a yes” and have proceeded to return to the point I was making in trying to get you to answer.

Like I said earlier in this comment, what I’m looking for is an actual response. It’s nice to know “we agree”, but it’s clear to me there’s something else you want to say but are waiting for me to say the right words or something, but I’m not playing that game.

The last 30 or so comments have not had much more going for them in my mind than, “I wonder if this person can just answer a yes or no question” and “wow that sure is a lot of bullshitting to correct”. Having acknowledged the “yes”, I did already try to go in a direction to drive home my point but unfortunately you decided to ignore my question. If you want more than that, or expected more than that, you are mistaken. If there’s something more you’d like to talk about than the point I’m trying to emphasize, you’ll have to ask me. Like a reasonable person.

I am currently not waiting for you to say any particular words. You have, apparently, provided a “yes” answer to my question. Right now we are spending most of our time on your false statements about what you had previously said to me and how you have been oh-so-clear despite the obvious reality of confusion and not even knowing what question I had asked.

What part of “I don’t care” didn’t you get? I wasn’t trying to hide anything.

The pattern is that you ignore and skip over my specific explanations and evidenced callouts of your confusion. You’re welcome for my patience on this topic.

Nope, not taking that bait.

You think it is bait for me to tell you that I have given you opportunities to stop digging holes? Huh? The mind boggles.

I did ask: “Are you ready yet to actually respond to my answer?”

Your answer: “yes”. Who knows what kind of further response you expected to get, but I did respond in asking you a question. I think I need to remind you of exactly how petty this conversation has had to be. There is not a grand lecture I’ve been hiding in my back pocket, trying to prevent you from seeing. I’ve been trying to get you to answer a straightforward yes or no question and you’ve been playing games. Now that your games are (maybe?) winding down, it seems like you thought there would be more to it than that. The only “more” there is: why did you fight so hard against answering a simple yes or no? I have, of course, already answered this question: it is because dissembling on this topic prevents cognitive dissonance for liberals. I am trying to get you to actually confront it. That is my response. Funny that I need to not only explain it but bring your attention to it, I have in no way been unclear as to my point.

Your “criticisms” are just your hurt feelings that I wouldn’t play your game. No, I will not apologise for not following your script.

I don’t have hurt feelings. As you can see, I am very patient. But you have quite a bit of self-crit to do if you ever want to be useful for a struggle against capitalism.

The fact you keep using “liberal” as a mere insult instead of an actual estimation of someone’s political beliefs says multitudes more than anything else you’ve said, here.

The liberalism here is the elevation of one’s own ego and political journey over emphasizing truth, self-crit, and moving forward for the betterment of a project. We are spending all of our time on things like questions you invented on my behalf and talking about “loaded” questions that are not really loaded and pretenses that you said “no” when you went on long-winded rants saying everything except “yes” or “no” oh but actually your answer to my question was “yes and no” but wait no it’s actually “yes”. This is because you are failing to accept your errors and move on.

For one, it tells me that you’re viewing this as some kind of team sport with a good side and a bad side, which are defined not by morality but by their philosophical proximity to your current beliefs.

You are having trouble understanding my meaning on this topic because you are completely unfamiliar with the social context. Remember, you told me that you are not liberal. And yet when I make references that socialists and anarchists would understand, you start coming to conclusions exclusive to a liberal framing. Such as this one. And when you don’t understand, what is your knee-jerk reaction? You begin making things up and provide bad faith assumptions, then accept them as answers. Guess what political tendency teaches these behaviors? Guess which tendencies recognize them and fight hard against them in their own organizations?

The only way for you to move past this is to self-crit and have a touch of humility. It is obvious that you are extremely new to this topic. Instead of trying to pretend, why not just say, “what do you mean?” Would that kill you?

And combined with the fact that you have yet to say anything even remotely politically relevant to the subject we’re discussing, and are instead focusing on pedantic semantic minutiae

It’s not minutiae to say “I need a yes or no answer to my yes or no question that is the entire point” and then press you to directly answer it while you hem and haw. It is, in fact, the point I was making. At the meta level you have already demonstrated my point, lol. It’s not like I have hidden that point, either. I have stated it outright several times.

If I were being pedantic I would sound very different.

completely ignoring the existence of equivalent statements (such as “I do not” equating to “no”)

“I do not” is something you have only said in response to a question I simply did not ask. The genocide deniers thing.

and nuance (acknowledging that binary morality does not apply here)

I don’t think I could have been any clearer that I had no interest at all in your further rationalizations so long as you could not answer the question directly. That is the entirety of what I have said about this. If you would like to discuss your moral fretting you can ask a question or present something and I can decide whether I will indulge you. You are not entitled to my indulgence, only my honesty, and I have been very clear about this.

tells me you’re either just a stubborn troll or are deluded about your own beliefs.

Regarding this conversation, I am simply patient, honest, correct, and focused. I don’t think that’s a very high bar to clear, to be honest.

Of the two of us here, the one who seems most philosophically liberal is you. You are the only one out of the two of us that actually has faith in liberal democracy.

Who said I had faith in liberal democracy? I am simply agitating liberals.

And if I’m wrong on that, you’ve given me no reason to believe otherwise - your dogged insistence on this question, and the weight you’ve put on it, tells me you think “voting correctly” to be a very powerful act, capable of actually stopping the genocide.

Liberals believe that politics is electoralism. To agitate among them, you must sometimes frame challenges in their language. None of them are going to become principled socialists with a single sentence. They must be knocked off balance where they are.

I already answered this - it wasn’t hard to say. I already said it ages ago. Look:

“I do not support genocide, or support genocide deniers.”

A true cherry on top to repeat the answer to a question I didn’t ask, lmao.

So anyways, why did it take you so long to answer my question, liberal? Why not just answer it right away? Why say the question was loaded? Why say it was “not so simple” instead of answering despite you apparently being able to just say “yes” the entire time? Why provide 3 distinct answers? Why answer questions I didn’t ask and then present them as if I had?

These questions are all rhetorical, of course. They only have one point and it’s related to my original one: liberals with dissemble rather than deal with the harsh truths of what they support because it helps them avoid cognitive dissonance. They will imply a “no” through their attempts to justify voting for genocidal candidates, but are too afraid to just say “no” because they would have to see a harsh truth about themselves and their political obligations. They use the same rationalizations you provided rather than give a “yes” or “no”. Now, of course, having answered “yes”, you will believe yourself to be in a different position than them. I’m sure you will think, “but that doesn’t describe me! I don’t vote for genocidal candidates!” But there you were, avoiding the question and using the same form of cognitive escape hatch (“complexity” lmao). What was the impetus?

I have made my opinion on the subject quite clear from the outset. Please don’t gaslight me into thinking I’ve somehow been hiding anything. I have not.

You have been entirely unclear and have been consistently evasive. I have noted several examples of this and you are avoiding them, too. Don’t think I don’t notice what you conveniently skip over when you respond. I am giving you the opportunity to save a little face but instead you keep trying to return focus to topics where you behaved shamefully. You have the options of moving on or getting into it, and when you get into it you have the disadvantage of having behaved very dishonestly in this exchange and being seemingly unable to acknowledge objective errors.

The entire time, I’ve told you what my position is. You’re simply refused to acknowledge it because you wanted a simple “yes” or “no” answer regarding a subject that is anything but binary.

I have not asked for a yes or no answer regarding “a subject”. I asked a direct yes or no question and you hemmed and hawed for 5-6 comments and have now more or less fallen apart having provided an answer that was an “emphatic no”, then a “yes and no” and now a “yes”. At some point you will have to either accept that saying “no”, “yes and no”, and “yes” to a yes or no question is inconsistent or you will have to keep dealing with this congitive dissonance, as I am not going to validate your nonsense.

PS a yes or no question is indeed binary. That is the only property it has aside from being a question.

Okay I’m starting to wonder if maybe you have an overly literal way of thinking.

No, you just present a confused mess, don’t respond directly to what is said, and dance around blaming me for your garbled mess of thoughts and deflections. I am not being “overly literal” in expecting a yes or no answer to my question, I stated my question as a direct yes or no precisely because liberal genocide apologists always try to dissemble, leaving their complicit answer implicit. And what did you do in response? You immediately tried to do their exact same dance. A near-complete incapacity to just answer the direct question.

It seems clear that what I was talking about was not you interpretation of my answer, but your opinion on it.

As in - do you agree? Disagree?

I have already stated, twice, that I’m glad we’re in agreement given a “yes” answer. This is now a third time.

At the same time, I would not be surprised if you later contradicted yourself, as you have been anything but forthright and have already said every possible (explicitly incompatible!) answer to my question.

Do you think my answer is insufficient?

I think it is a very low bar to have cleared, but it is an actual “yes” answer to my simple yes or no question, so it is not insufficient for answering the question. 30 comments in, lmao. I did actually directly announce my acceptance of the “yes” twice and then move on to my point about it, but… alas.

Do you think I’m lying?

It is not a question that you have lied in this exchange. You have lied about basic facts of what has been said, objectively disprovable. You have also contradicted yourself repeatedly. I think you are about 80% confused and 20% willing to be dishonest to protect your ego, but that combination means you are acting shamefully.

Because you have literally given me an “emphatic no”, “yes and no”, and now a “yes” answer to my one question, I would be pretty stupid to think you are going to stick with the “yes” answer. But I am willing to be generous and move forward under the assumption that it is your actual, honest answer. I wonder how that generosity will be treated.

What is your actual follow up to “learning” (even though you already knew) that I am against genocide, and against voting for genocidal candidates? What happens next? Are you going to ask me something else, are you going to make a statement regarding this position?

I already provided a short follow-up. Presumably you did not read my whole comment before beginning your response. Remember, you have cleared an incredibly low bar. The conversation has to more or less start over at this point, we have returned to my very first point and your very first point. All of these intervening comments? They are just me trying to get you to answer a simple yes or no question, and now you have said “yes”.

So you are overly literal. My answer was an emphatic no regarding supporting genocide and genocide deniers.

It is not overly literal to read you say you gave an “emphatic no” to my question, then I go read my question and say, “oh they are saying “no” to it” and work from there. It is a basic baseline of communication. It’s not my fault that you are answering questions I never asked and then presenting them to me as if they were answers to questions I did ask. That is also not being overly literal.

When asked if I support them, I denied this emphatically.

You were never asked whether you “support genocide or genocide deniers”. Throw this lie on the pile.

Two days ago I led with a question regarding support: “So then you agree that you should not support genocide nor vote for genocidal candidates?”. You deflected like liberals do on this topic: “I disagree that the situation is that simple.” I pressed you to answer, you dissembled and tried to talk about a bunch of things re: false choices and then told me it was a loaded question, though you lacked the terminology to just say that. This continued for some time, and I repeated my question. You then said your answer had already been stated as “no”, though of course you had never said that, you were dissembling and rationalizing and saying the question was loaded. The whole point of a loaded question is that you cannot answer it without saying something false. So many self-contradictions, lol. I again repeated that I was looking for a yes or a no and you then provided a lengthy response that I ignored and continue to ignore. Haven’t read it. Not going to. I set my condition and you blew right past it, confirming the dishonest behavior I was originally criticizing.

Then I asked my question again, albeit rephrased: “Are you against genocide and voting for genocidal candidates?” And then, and only then, did anything about “genocide” deniers pop up, out of the blue, and it was all from your own head. I ask you about voting for genocidal candidates and you act like saying “I don’t support genocide deniers” is an answer to it. And you’ve just done it again! Do you see how confused you are? Of course not, that must be my fault. “Too literal”, lmao.

Here’s a question - are you honestly unable to take anything other than the singular word “no” as a negative? Does “absolutely not” count? How about an explanation why, such as “I would never, because that is wrong!”? Now, before you say “but you never said these things”, these are what’s known as examples.

A key part of my original point, which you apparently still don’t get, is that liberals are extremely averse to answering this direct yes or no question. Getting a direct yes or no is the point. And you flailed and flailed and confused yourself instead.

Now, before you say “but you never said these things”, these are what’s known as examples.

Certainly not examples of anything you or I have said. They are hypotheticals, poorly-framed. As you are trying to dispute what was or was not said, you might want to communicate what is something you’re making up vs. something you’re saying you did in the past. You have used both implicitly.

When I said “I do not support genocide of genocide deniers”, that is me emphatically denying support for genocide and genocide deniers. An emphatic “no”. When asked “do you” and I say “I do not”, that is a “no” in other words; a negative response; a denial.

Yeah again I never asked that question.

Here’s some honesty for you - it actually boils my blood to be told I’m lying when I know I’m actually speaking my mind. It angers me a great deal to be misinterpreted to such a degree. I am not lying.

You claimed you answered my question days ago when you obviously did not. Your reattempts at explanation, ones that ignore everything I’ve said to you about this, demonstrate that well enough. You are still presenting your answers to questions I didn’t ask as if you had answered my one question! Still! This isn’t complicated! It’s a yes or no question!

If you took a few minutes to self-crit and actually read what was said, actually read what I said about this exact thing, you would recognize your error. Unfortunately you are not doing any self-crit at all, and are just trying to lash out irrationally, like a liberal, and are repeating these falsehoods. Sorry buddy, that’s what lying looks like.

Do self-crit. I am going to skip responses that are just rehashing this one point because they are redundant.

Oh, please. Obviously I cared at least a little bit what you thought or else I never would have said anything. Don’t be so facetious.

I said “cared much”, not “cared at all”. You are still confused because you don’t really read and understand what I say to you. If you took a few moments to think about it, you would also realize that your logic here would contradict what you had just said re: not caring anymore. You’re still replying, aren’t you? You should have a conversation with yourself from a few comments ago.

My response will have to be split in two as it is too long.