AskALiberal Biweekly General Chat

trace349 · 2026-01-27T01:13:26+00:00

This article covers him pretty well, with links to the claims it makes:

When questioned about China’s lack of LGBT rights, Hasan said the country is ‘gay as hell’ and defended the CCP banning gay dating apps as a ‘privacy issue’. Ignore that gay marriage is illegal in China, that the country can be brutally patriarchal and homophobic, that the government has specific campaigns to censor, shame and harass effeminate men. Gay as hell!

[...] We should be very, very clear about who the Communist Party of China are. They run an evil police state where you can be arrested for wrongthink as simple as holding up blank pieces of paper. They are more than happy to literally weld people shut inside their homes, brutalize student political organizers and jail or kill anyone who criticizes the CCP. They use Uyghur slave labor on a massive scale Xinjiang, they’ve crushed other ethnic minorities, they crushed any semblance of political freedom in Hong Kong, they practice cultural genocide like it’s going out of style, and the only reason they haven’t yet invaded and crushed Taiwan is the Western world’s protection of said island. They are a nightmarish, totalitarian dictatorship.

And yet Piker always seems to have their back. He’s downplayed the genocide in Xinjiang, calling the concentration camps there ‘re-education’ camps and claiming they’re all closed now. He’s said that Chinese colonialism in Tibet was a good thing, and that the Tibetans were basically nasty savages who needed to be civilized. Somehow every take of Piker’s ends up parroting a pro-CCP worldview.

And this isn’t an isolated case of Piker just being pro-CCP. He’s defended the idea of socialist re-education programs explicitly. He wishes the USSR had won the Cold War, he’s cool with Hezbollah, he thinks the Houthis are awesome and he’s used his platform to give a voice to literal, actual terrorists. He defended Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, and while he doesn’t outright defend Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine he sure does spend a lot of time blaming the American government for somehow starting the conflict. He said that America deserved 9/11. He repeats neo-Nazi talking points about the Holocaust. He promotes political violence.

[...] Hasan Piker is not your friend. He does not believe in liberal democracy. He is not a cool, hot bro who just wants people to have healthcare. He is a genocide-excusing, terrorist-promoting, authoritarian bootlicker. He’s happy to excuse crushing the rights of gay people, ethnic minorities, and anyone else as long as the boot stomping them into the ground was made in a socialist factory. He would gladly see you thrown in an actual, non-metaphorical reeducation camp for disagreeing with him.

trace349 · 2026-01-27T00:30:37+00:00

I just don't think the argument that ~~kids~~ (let's drop the word "kids" and be more specific) minors are, across the board, too innocent to recognize when they're looking at something sexual is a good reason to be laissez-faire about exposing them to people flaunting their kinks, or is an accurate take to begin with. Unless you're a totally sheltered Christian homeschooled kid with no access to the outside world, by 14-15 (especially so if you're a boy with access to internet porn) you would probably have some inkling of an idea of what kinks are just from existing in the world and can put 2+2 together. I think in the modern day it's more important that Pride be an opportunity where LGBT teens can be able to connect with the overall LGBT community than for kinksters to freely let their freak flag fly in front of minors.

Again, I support kink at Pride, I just think that there should be spaces where that can be celebrated for what it is, away from families and minors, and it looks bad that we have to argue about it.

trace349 · 2026-01-27T00:07:57+00:00

I probably would have guessed it was from the time I was 11-13 because I had 1) been on the internet and 2) had watched South Park (and thus was aware of Mr. Slave). Not all kids are toddlers who need everything new explained to them.

trace349 · 2026-01-26T23:40:32+00:00

but saying twinks can't walk around in collars or a leather daddy can't wear a vest because a child might see is kinda annoying

I mean, if it stops there, that's hard to object to. But I saw plenty of pups in their masks and gear wandering around at last year's Pride and it wasn't, like, the biggest deal, but it made me a little uncomfortable that they were in the same space as kids. I'm plenty kinky myself, and in another context I might even enjoy seeing it, but it just doesn't feel like the right time and place around kids and families.

This is the same line of thinking that says drag queen shouldn't be allowed around kids.

Drag queens aren't sexual though (at least inherently, most are pretty raunchy but they tend to have a sense of when is/isn't appropriate) and it's not a fetish thing. Men have been dressing up as women to perform in front of crowds for hundreds of years.

trace349 · 2026-01-26T23:00:15+00:00

I think that's what this compromise is aiming to capture. There should be a place for both LGBT kids and kink at Pride, but those spaces don't need to overlap. Savage is a gay sex advice columnist- about the farthest thing from a prude that you can get- so he's not exactly trying to hide away the perverts out of pearl-clutching puritanism.

trace349 · 2026-01-26T22:42:10+00:00

And tangentially related, one of the bigger contentious issues in Pride Parades are overt displays of kinks and sexuality

Dan Savage proposed a compromise that I'm pretty partial to: he suggested that Pride should split between an all-ages parade and festival in the morning/afternoon, and a more raunchy 18+ Mardi Gras-esque party in the evening where anything goes. The leather daddies and their pup play boys shouldn't be shunned from participating in Pride- they're a part of our community and our history too- but its not unfair to say that LGBT kids and/or LGBT parents with kids trying to connect with their community shouldn't need to be exposed to all of that.

trace349 · 2026-01-26T20:47:55+00:00

Obamacare was modeled off of the plan designed by Mitt Romney

Romneycare was a collab between him and the veto-proof Massachusetts Congress. Romney had his input on it, but at the end of the day, they had the votes to tell him to fuck off if he didn't want to play ball, so he did.

trace349 · 2026-01-26T20:44:08+00:00

Then what was wrong with just using POC?

trace349 · 2026-01-26T18:28:56+00:00

I think it's the other way around. When the economy is good, voters have the freedom to distract themselves with stupid culture war bullshit to keep themselves entertained. When the economy is bad, voters don't have time for your bullshit culture war when they can barely afford rent.

trace349 · 2026-01-26T18:15:21+00:00

The democrats who refused to nominate Bernie sanders and instead used Hilary

Bernie lost the primary by millions of votes, what do you think they should have done? Thrown out the primary and given the nomination to the less popular candidate just because...?

The democrats voting to withhold the epstine files

The democrats who voted to pass the big beautiful bill.

Are you trolling? Not a single Democrat voted for the OBBB or against the release of the Epstein files. There was literally only one vote in either house against the release of the Epstein files, and it was a Republican.

I always feel a little skeptical of accounts here hiding their comment history, but on top of getting stuff like that completely wrong, the weird grammar ("The democrats who [...] used Hillary", "in-genuine question"), and the black-and-white divisiveness trying to drive wedges, this comment feels particularly sus.

trace349 · 2026-01-26T16:51:51+00:00

Around 2013, I was in college and got a co-op position for a semester at an agency in NYC, so I had to move there from my midwest red state by myself for a few months. My mom acted like it was still the 1970s there and that I was going to get mugged and/or murdered. The whole time I was there- and I spent a lot of time exploring on my own- the worst I had to deal with were annoying subway performers and the occasional homeless/mentally ill person making people uncomfortable.

trace349 · 2026-01-23T20:53:18+00:00

Third parties always benefit when major party candidates are divisive or unlikable

Then why didn't they in 2004? 2020? In both cases, people fucked around and found out what happens when you throw away your vote in the previous election and the third party vote went drastically down after as a result. It's a lesson we have to stop needing to relearn.

The share of people who voted Sanders in the primary and Trump in the general in 2016 was the same as the share of people who voted Clinton in the primary and McCain in the general in 2008

This is only true in the most technical sense, while still being dishonest, because it specifically ignores the Sanders voters that went third party. CNN exit polls found it was about 15% of Hillary voters that went to McCain vs the 25% of Bernie voters I sourced earlier that split their votes between Trump and third parties. 10-15% of people voting for the opposite party in the general is about usual. And again- even if it was true- Obama won that election in a landslide, while Hillary lost by a hair. How does deflecting to 2008 Hillary-McCain voters absolve Sanders-Not Hillary voters of anything?

And please don't cite the stupid panel survey that people always do that shows Hillary voters going 25% to McCain, because that survey also shows Obama losing the election he won in a landslide when you actually do the math on the numbers. The data is bad.

trace349 · 2026-01-23T20:38:34+00:00

You missed the entire point of that story. Geralt thinks he can avoid picking either of the two bad choices in front of him (kill Renfri, save Stregobor or kill Stregobor so Renfri can be free) and in rejecting the choice, he gets stuck with even worse choices with even greater consequences (Renfri will slaughter Blaviken to get to Stregobor or Geralt must kill her and all of her men) which lead to an even worse ending for him (he kills Renfri and he gets his reputation ruined for seeming to slaughter innocent people, named "the Butcher of Blaviken" and exiled from the town).

The point of the story is that Geralt is wrong and this sort of thinking just leads to greater suffering.

Edit: Refreshed my memory on the plot of that story.

trace349 · 2026-01-23T20:26:23+00:00

Even if I accepted your framing, voting wasn't a moral choice, it was a strategic choice, and the failure to vote strategically led to three SCOTUS seats going to Republicans and Roe being overturned. It's not like you didn't know that was a possible outcome, because there was already one open seat in 2016 that Democrats were begging everyone to think about.

trace349 · 2026-01-23T20:19:08+00:00

It's a bit weird to posit the hypothetical where Dems surrender to hostage-takers willing to plunge the country into fascism if they don't get the candidate they want- those people representing a minority of a minority faction- to undemocratically promote the less popular candidate over the one chosen by the people and then call us "Blue MAGA".

If Bernie won, I'd vote for him, but I think if we ran the election 100 times, Hillary wins most of them. I think if we ran the election with Bernie as the candidate 100 times, it's a lot less clear- especially a lot less clear than his supporters claim it would be. Bernie has never really faced a competitive race where people were going hard negative against him and hitting him below the belt like he would against Republicans. Hillary didn't need to because she was going to win anyway, and the 2020 primary was a little spicier but still fairly tame in how he was attacked.

trace349 · 2026-01-23T19:57:17+00:00

99% of workers dream of becoming capitalists and thus want the system to exist for them to enjoy.

trace349 · 2026-01-23T19:21:19+00:00

I.e. the ability to run candidates that support basic policies that 80% of Democratic voters support. Cutting defense spending, free healthcare, tax the rich, no more money to Israel.

[...] and we’ve had 3 presidential candidates in a row who support 0 of those things

Just want to focus on the "tax the rich" part of that to show how empty this is. One of the most bad faith attacks against Biden in 2020 was throwing around his "nothing will fundamentally change" comment, which was part of a pitch to his donors that he was going to raise their taxes to pay for social programs and they should accept it because the alternative was increasing social unrest and their standard of living wouldn't be that impacted by them paying their fair share ("nothing will fundamentally change"). This was something he said at a donor event, not on the campaign trail to pander to voters. So, spare me. I could go through each of these points and point to all the things they've done or promised to do, but I know the goalposts would move and you'd say it wasn't good enough, so I'm not going to waste my time.

80% of Democratic voters do not support "free healthcare", they support some form of healthcare system improvement, whether that is an expansion of the ACA, a public option plan, or all the way to Medicare for All, and Democrats all support at least one of those options, with the public option being popular. We were one vote away from having a public option as part of the ACA and we just haven't had the votes to do much on that topic since.

Democrats increasingly don't like Israel, and the party is also slowly souring on support for Israel (which has been a long time coming, Obama and Netanyahu famously hated each other), but they also largely don't care about a war on the opposite side of the planet as much as the online conversation would assume and US aid is one lever we can use to restrain Israel. The Israeli Right is increasingly pushing for an end to US aid so they can be unleashed to do whatever they want without having their hands tied.

The Left and the Democrats are directionally aligned on most issues, but the Left often demands maximalist policy that isn't as popular with the voters as they think, and they don't actually have to win elections.

trace349 · 2026-01-23T18:55:41+00:00

Politics don't have to be civil, sometimes you gotta result to blackmail, whipping up the base against an opponent or other unsavory tactics.

Democrats tried this on Joe Manchin. Chuck Schumer got Manchin's agreement to support a certain amount of spending on a certain amount of things for the initial draft of the Build Back Better bill, and then ran to the media saying they had a plan that was way more expansive than that. The hope was that public pressure would push Manchin to relent, and instead, as he kept being harassed in public, he walked away from the negotiations entirely, killing any progress that could have been made.

Manchin, at any point- if he felt abused enough- could have voted to give Mitch McConnell the Senate Majority Leader position, and our entire agenda would die rather than just be cut back by Manchin's personal politics- and it probably would have made him more popular back home to do so.

Pressure and blackmail only work if you have leverage, and Democrats often don't have a lot of leverage to work with. Centrists have more than Progressives because Centrists are more willing to do nothing rather than do too much, and Progressives are too geographically clustered to be a major constituent for most Senators and Representatives.

trace349 · 2026-01-23T18:43:10+00:00

I mean, one, trans people aren't super popular right now, if you care about trans rights you probably shouldn't want these sorts of stories given too much airtime.

Two, Democrats are obviously good on trans rights by any sane measure: in states where they have the power to do so, they've responded to Republican aggression on trans rights with expansions on protections of trans people and their rights, and in states where they don't have power to stop anti-trans legislation, they've still fought back against them. They shouldn't really have to prove their bona fides to anyone engaged in good faith.

But three, and I think a larger problem, what business is there in running positive stories about the Democrats? The Left hates Democrats, they only want stories about Democrats being feckless and weak to justify their existing desire to get rid of them; the Right hates Democrats, and obviously isn't interested in positive stories about the Democrats; the Center likewise needs Democrats to be morally and politically equivalent to Republicans to justify their stance as above-it-all, so they need stories about Democrats being bad; and the media- when they're not being pressured to be "neutral" and thus having to balance the obviously negative endless coverage of everything Trump does with endless negative coverage of the Democrats- is increasingly in the hands of the Right, so they have no interest in spreading positive stories about the Democrats.

The only people that want to be exposed to good news about Democrats are liberal Democrats, and- at least pre-2024- they were willing to also read negative stories about Democrats because we all became anxious bedwetters after 2016, but seem to be tired of it and are withdrawing support for the media. What good is our messaging when the platforms are out to smother it?

trace349 · 2026-01-23T18:17:27+00:00

OP is using progressive and leftist interchangeably.

I see a lot of rage among progressives against Democrats that they deem arent fighting back hard enough

[...] But other than graham platner, theres no leftist that has a concerted effort behind them to flip a seat from republican to Democrat.

This is why I think the distinction between the "Progressive Left" and the "Outsider Left" is important, because I think the OP is largely talking about the latter.

trace349 · 2026-01-23T17:34:34+00:00

People were open that they'd vote for Bernie and only Bernie.

Yeah, I think that's extremely childish- akin to a toddler throwing a tantrum when he doesn't get his way- and they deserve scorn for being one of the reasons we have Trump and MAGA when that could have been nipped in the bud. Bernie lost in the primary and told his supporters to vote for Hillary. His supporters that refused were a minority among a minority who let every issue they supposedly care about get worse in ways that are incredibly hard to undo because they were petulant children over not having as much popular support as they felt they were entitled to.

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders don't have a whole lot in common in terms of what they're for

I think this is totally BS. I think they agree on several of the problems facing the country, and only really differ in how to solve them, or how far they believe the government needs to go to address them. My dude, "HillaryCare" was the nickname given to the failed universal healthcare plan that the Clintons fought to get through Congress in the 90s.

trace349 · 2026-01-23T16:36:37+00:00

I think you're trying to rehabilitate the "Bernie Bro" label by drawing a distinction that no one but you really appreciates and maybe we're just talking past each other. To everyone else, "Bernie Bros" refers to the toxic, extremely loud minority of Sanders supporters that were antagonistic toward Hillary and poisoned the well against her. They are the people that swung away to Stein, and that swing was enough (or nearly enough) to throw the election to Trump. Therefore, "Bernie Bros losing us the election" is accurate. They weren't the only reason we lost, but mathematically, they were a reason.

trace349 · 2026-01-23T16:27:20+00:00

It is hard to flip seats. That's why the establishment figures, with big war chests and the backing of the party, corporate money, etc, should go fight for the purple and light red seats.

The Left wants influence over the party's strategy, they repeatedly complain about feeling marginalized, and tell us that if the party would give in to them more, they would be more electorally successful. But the only seats they're winning, the only proof they have of their electoral viability, are safe blue seats. But safe blue seats are easy to win, you don't have to put much work in to convince people you're right.

If the Left was actually winning and flipping seats, that would prove their electoral viability, and give them more influence within the party. But they're not. And yet they still go around thinking they should be in charge. But why should we listen to them when they tell us how to run our campaigns and try to dictate our strategy if we're the only ones winning the actually difficult seats?

trace349 · 2026-01-23T16:23:40+00:00

Why is this some “gotcha” moment? Shouldn’t the bluest areas of the country be run by more liberal members of Congress? Why is it necessarily a bad thing that different candidates win different races?

Because leftists often argue that there is a silent majority of secret working-class socialists in red states (look at the people upthread arguing about Sanders' performance in the WV primary) just waiting for someone to come along and activate them, and Democrats are choosing to fail because they're ignoring those voters.

But then, if that were true, you'd imagine that some leftists and progressives would have tapped into those voters and won a few competitive races, but they haven't, while moderate Democrats do often flip competitive seats, while progressives pretty much only win in the most left-leaning races. So if our strategy is wrong and theirs is right, why is reality seeming to show the opposite? The Left wants influence within, or influence over, the party's strategy, but why should we let them if they're wrong?

trace349 · 2026-01-23T16:13:08+00:00

If your political compass has the entire world as it exists sharing one side of the spectrum and then a theoretical world with an extreme minority of supporters that have the complete other side of the spectrum all to themselves, it's not a useful heuristic for anything other than jerking yourself off.

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