| > ‘caring’ (what does that mean exactly?) caring: (adjective) displaying kindness and concern for others. If you look at this definition of caring and find a way to turn it into a politics issue that's your problem, not mine. If you scale a problem up, then yes, you get into politics. If you scale it all the way down, politics disappear. If you see your next-door neighbor struggling with something and you can help, you should. That's not politics. That's called being a decent human being. > Hand wavy general statements are easy to have I agree. In fact "everything is politics" is a stupid, hand wavy statement. > You’ll also find lots of shaming among the group and against ‘outsiders’ trying to enforce idealogy. And if you think that part doesn’t happen, just read your own comment - it’s a mild form of that! Disagreement != enforcing ideology, at least in my world. And if you don't see it that way, then I guess you're guilty of doing the precise thing you're commenting on. |
With that struggling neighbor, are you talking about helping them take out their trash at night when they’re tired - or paying unemployment benefits for years?
Notably, in my experience, the ones who talk the most usually just keep talking - and aren’t the ones on the hook for actually doing the hard caregiving when things are really tough. But hey, maybe you’re different?
One big difference we have here is you’re again talking hand waving generalities, and I’m talking concrete economic behaviors and policy. It’s easy to say ‘if you can help you should’, it’s harder when it’s ’where is the line for “can” and “should” exactly when we’re talking millions of people and trillions of dollars’, and people you’ll likely never meet in your life - and taxes that definitely come out of your paycheck each month.
Move the line too much one way, and it incentivizes being a victim. Move it too much the other way, and it crushes people with legitimate problems. Both are real issues.