The libs are cooked and can't be uncooked

We had a lunch lecture where this environmental scientist gave a talk about critical materials and how big of a problem our reliance on these are. He links the whole thing up with politics pretty well, explaining how various political actors are involved and benefit from this or that.

At some point, he even mentions how in the netherlands, policy doesn't get passed without a buy-in from industry. It means quite a lot, cause this guy is government hired in recommending policies.

Then he contradicts himself in the next paragraph by saying that this is the curse of democracy that people make stupid decisions.

I ask this guy about the contradiction. How you simultaneously harp about profits over needs, the evils of consultancy firms, and the inability of the Dutch government to do anything but pursue corporate interests, while also talking about the problems of "democracy"?

He just tells me "we are a democracy that's why the Dutch government listens to industry". Well not exactly that, but at least that's the message I get when he talks about all the corporate controlled parties winning the elections and how that's what the people chose.

Dude is this close to realising that the definition of liberal democracy is "legitimised rule by corporations" .

Of course, the lecture ends with a book recommendation for a book about the collapse of human civilisation. And a recommendation to go vote and participate in political parties.

Unlimited death upon elections.

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Honestly regardless of your opinion on AES countries vis-a-vis sectarian knife fights, the one thing that AES countries like China and Vietnam are doing is proving out that the consequentialist model of people's governance can deliver material gains from a position of weakness under direct threat from global capital compared to deontological VOTE Westoid ones.
Regardless of China's future in respect to communism, it's proved out a better governance model. If liberals had any fucking brains, they'd be creaming themselves over a country that can deliver that level of material gains to the poor and middle class and still have the most billionaires in the world. It's the compromise they've been dreaming of, but they're too stupid to realize that.

I've come to the acceptance that most people already have their opinions and will just use whatever theories are out there to justify them. They are not doing any critical thinking or care about pursuing the truth.
The way to convince them is through their social relations. The more they are surrounded by people who arent libs, the less lib they will become. Its frustrating but youre not going to change someones mind with a well constructed argument

Dutch Progressivism is the same type of scam that German remembrance culture is. Fake bullshit to sell the country as a brand.

Yeah? I studied under a . . . Very clever man, who loved bringing up a case here, where several high school kids sued a government minister to force the minister for the environment to consider future generations in their decisions. They won! And then were overturned in a higher court.
And my incredibly clever professor couldn't shut the fuck up about how that was proof that it's good we live in a "democracy", unlike china.
I was studying environment science.
Dude was also a smarmy shitty teacher but hey, who's asking...

I always find it odd that even after more or less mainstream people have started questioning if the US is still a democracy after Trump nobody ever seems to really notice or care that for Trump 1 the guy got less votes and won with 0 trickery involved, that's just how the system works. And it's not even like one vote and some rounding errors, straight up got 2,1% less votes and won. how is that a democracy, it failed at like the most basic idea possible
- ...[T]he guy got less votes and won with 0 trickery involved...
  What are you talking about? The dastardly Ruzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzins tricked our wholesome keanu chungus white American patriots into vooting for Cheeto Benito!
  
  weirdly despite all that nobody even bothered to accuse the ruSSians of falsifying election boxes at that level. I assume this was too stupid to do for anyone to do because this is the 5th time this has happened in the short US history

Um achkstully it's only democracy if corporations are never told what, who, or when to do anything. Otherwise it's authoritarian. Oh put the people in said authoritarian country generally like what their government does and approve of it? That's just populist authoritarianism. The most evil of all. Now let Exxon in
- He literally called industry control of the country "populism". So the lib non-understanding has evolved beyond what we expected.
  
  Corporations are people so rule by companies is just populism. Truth nuke
  
  I don't understand why "populism" is such a dirty word to these people. Maybe there's a part of the definition I'm missing, but the alternative to populism brought us trump, soooo...
  
  They're advancing so quickly I can't keep up yet they're not going anywhere

In anglophone media now, I almost exclusively see “democracy” used to mean “liberal democracy”, i.e. “bad country’s government provides a service to their population instead of privatizing it, this means they’re not a democracy.” Increasingly it’s even to the level of “who cares if bad country’s people have a greater and more direct say in choosing their leadership, that’s not democratic. Bad country’s critical assets aren’t available for ownership by US investors which makes bad country an authoritarian dictatorship.”
I expect the wholesale redefinition of this word to keep getting more explicit just like “antisemitism” today has been almost totally redefined away from having anything to do with West Asian language families or even Judaism as a religious practice to basically just mean “the condition of being opposed by the IOF”.
- "Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners."

Technically nothing can be "uncooked" i dont think... lol
However, yes you are right. I don't think the political ideology of your average liberal can be redeemed at this point.
- The only way liberals change is by being personally effected by the negative aspects of capitalism. It doesn't necessarily have to be the person. It could be someone they care about.
  There's another avenue that I think a lot of us on hexbear took. It was being worn down by online comments chipping away at the contradictions of our preprogrammed views. However, I think that avenue is only for people capable of self reflection.
  I'm often surprised to hear how some hexbear came here from the CHUD side. But I'm older than a lot of people here. I didn't grow up with 4chan and spaces like that. The internet wasn't as consolidated when I was more impressionable so it was harder to find fringe views if you were like me and mainly used the internet for music purposes. That being said, I was like 13 when 9/11 happened and everyone including me were heavy into revenge, the military and islamophobia. I don't really remember being heavy into the islamophobia though. I did grow up using gay as an insult but me and my friend group quickly outgrew it. Oddly enough I credit our boy scout group with curbing those behaviors. While there was a lot of "boys will be boys" mentality in the scouts, our leaders who were just our dads were very good at teaching us right from wrong in that area. It was pretty progressive for the time even if the parents didn't believe what they taught us.
  I feel like I was always a leftist at heart, but I got sheepdogged by Obama (my first election). I grew up hating bush and the Iraq war. I always liked "hippie music" and it's messages. I read Abbie Hoffman at 14. There just wasn't much of a movement outside of lib protests in the early 2000's. I fell in with the hippie kids at school more as a social thing, but I went vegetarian because of a friend making the argument.
  The beginning of my radicalization came from Calvin and Hobbes and being interested in the Woodstock era.
  
  I was like 13 when 9/11 happened
  i will just continue to quietly
  in the corner over here
  
  that avenue is only for people capable of self reflection.
  100% agree. Most people wont look at how their position fits in with the larger picture. They are haplessly self-absorbed in their own story-line, which I can only fault them for so much, I am a miserable sad-sack because of my inability to do this.
  I was like 13 when 9/11 happened and everyone including me were heavy into revenge, the military and islamophobia.
  Sounds like we are around the same age and I can say that I had a very similar shortsighted worldview at the time. Especially because I grew up in a very privileged bubble with a conservative family. It wasn't really until I went to college in a major city that I started to see and experience what the world was really like, both good and bad. I became way more progressive and had my Obama arc as well. Then I had my Bernie arc, which started to really push me away from the centrist liberal ideations. My full radicalization came in 2020, COVID and the piss poor reactions/response to it is what got me to the point I'm at today. Watching as the world around me did everything it could to fake normalcy for the sake of "the economy" was extremely eye-opening and made me extremely resentful of the establishment and everyone's unfeathered support of the capitalist machine.
  All that said, back to the initial response, I think at this point its very hard for the adult liberals of our generation to make the turn anymore. They have established themselves, started families, are in the middle of their careers, all within the confines of the current system. I think we are seeing them slowly become part of the "fuck you, got mine" demographic that for a long time has been reserved for boomers and genX. Not to say that's everyone, I am definitely making a few broad strokes with some of this, but by and large its what I have seen from people in my life.

This is like when I see libs online say things like "We need to get money out of politics!!" but it begs a question no one ever asks, which is "How?". How do you get money out of a political system so deeply entrenched with lobbying at its core? Naturally, when pressed on the question, they fall back to "we just need to support progressive candidates, we have to be more 'politically active' and we have to educate people on the issues". Yet,
that what constituents want, and what results from our political system, never actually align at all.
I wonder what it is that keeps even the most politically engaged, and highly educated libs, like the one you are referring to, on the treadmill for so long?
- I think it goes back to the Western Chauvinism problem. Progressive libs, even if they earnestly want a future with a more empowered working class, have too much emotional attachment to the assumption that the tools necessary for such a future are in the liberal democracy toolkit. The ideology is that the solution must always be within this particular precept, and if it isn’t working right now it just means we haven’t plumped its depths enough to find it.
  
  The chauvinism is so deeply entrenched, even some close friends of mine that call themselves socialist have a hard time believing that China and Russia aren't trying to destroy all civilized society. Even with the horrors we are well aware of, they still believe the US is trying to be good if we could just get rid of those dang fascists and racists.
- I wonder what it is that keeps even the most politically engaged, and highly educated libs, like the one you are referring to, on the treadmill for so long?
  If the existing political system is untenable, then that means that they are morally required to overthrow it, an endeavor that involves a lot of hard work, personal risk, and sacrifice. As Nechayev said:
  The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed in the single thought and the single passion for revolution.
  The revolutionary knows that in the very depths of his being, not only in words but also in deeds, he has broken all the bonds which tie him to the social order and the civilized world with all its laws, moralities, and customs, and with all its generally accepted conventions. He is their implacable enemy, and if he continues to live with them it is only in order to destroy them more speedily.
  The revolutionary is a dedicated man, merciless toward the State and toward the educated classes; and he can expect no mercy from them. Between him and them there exists, declared or concealed, a relentless and irreconcilable war to the death. He must accustom himself to torture.
- We just have to
  for people who won't take the money but not now because we need to run the safe old guy because this is the most important election of our lifetime™
- I wonder what it is that keeps even the most politically engaged, and highly educated libs, like the one you are referring to, on the treadmill for so long?
  Ideology
- I wonder what it is that keeps even the most politically engaged, and highly educated libs, like the one you are referring to, on the treadmill for so long?
  Not being aware of alternatives.
  
  This was me as a teenager. I collected little bits of 60's leftism but had no outlet in my bougie ass town I grew up in. The nearest city with any youth movement is like 4 hours away

le public-private partnerships (backstopping industries you frequently privatized yourself) is the essence of neoliberalism, <40 year old people have not seen anything else

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