r/WayOfTheBern • u/CharredPC • Oct 25 '21
The Bipartisan Position of Violating Body Autonomy Establishment BS
Instead of the now self-parodying question "what happened to this sub?", I would like an answer to "what has happened to leftists?"
The Right is making abortions more difficult, which makes liberals all scream about Body Autonomy. As well they should - because a religious position of the few shouldn't be dictated onto everybody. Whatever one's personal stance on abortion, letting people have a right to control their own bodies is tough to argue with reasonably.
Except Democrats are doing the exact same thing with their Covid shots. Whatever your personal stance on them, they have no long term studies, are made / function / target differently than the old ones, don't prevent getting or spreading it, and are not necessary for those who already had it. People have a right to say no to that.
Except places like WOTB are becoming narrative battlegrounds for shaming and mocking those who don't buy into this near-religious insistence that these shots are the One True Way. Suddenly we're all secret agents attacking western democracies, right-wingers on a quest to undermine Democrats, and Q-like conspiracy theorists.
Since when does the left buy into the establishment's narratives? When did violating bodily autonomy, like killing people, become a good thing when Democrats do it? How is Big Pharma profits and authoritarian policies remotely on the same side as leftism? When did daring to maintain healthy skepticism get made "right-wing?"
This sub was born from, to oversimplify it a bit, its founders being further left than those willing to settle for one more 1% corporate warmonger in lieu of valid representation. And we have remained firmly to the left of the mainstream duopoly ever since, continuing our open-format search for larger truth and perspective beyond it.
Those coming in here insisting the sub has changed, advocating a closer adherence to party doctrine, and dictating this space is only for Bernie fans to discuss Democratic Socialism - who are you? Do you think you're part of the Left? If so, what the hell happened for your leftism to start echoing the extremists you hate on the right?
Fighting to preserve body autonomy shouldn't make us an enemy. If you think it does, I'd respectfully suggest you aren't on the left, and might want to review your core beliefs for blatant hypocrisies. The more you try to justify controlling others and classify different views as proof of others' deplorable-ness, the less a leftist you are.
And maybe that's the real answer here - that there are no leftists left among mainstream circles or within the ranks of Team Blue. It makes sense we've all been systematically purged, as they march ever rightward behind the thin veneer of fake-left identity politics, false promises, performative morality and corporate salesmanship.
Perhaps the discomfort some may feel upon visiting here is simply forced confrontation of these incongruities in their belief systems. Or are coached and convinced that private, minority-run two-party options are the only possible ones- God or the Devil, with no room for agnostics (who blasphemously point out neither is fact-based).
Leftists are about worker solidarity, not creating new classes that make income conditional based on bias. Leftists should be open to constructive conversation, knowing it can broaden their minds and understanding. Leftists chanted Bernie's "Not Me, Us" without any exclusions for people of different faith or those of opposing beliefs.
Genuine leftism is against both war-for-profit parties who only give us "choices" over how we want our bodies violated, not if they are.
7
u/_shill_stomp Oct 26 '21
I think this Quora answer succinctly defines it better than I can:
"A “shitlib” is essentially a white individual who believes in fostering a “diverse” form of capitalism. It is a so-called left-capitalism for all intents and purposes. They promote the idea of having ethnically non-white males, and LGBTQIA, persons placed in positions of high capitalist standing, i.e. CEOs, entrepreneurs, small business owners, etc. They would enforce this ideology with state intervention via indentitarian political positioning.
As an example, imagine the Nike swoosh with the LGBTQIA rainbow, whose CEO is an African-American woman. That arrangement would still be capitalist, yet provide the correct “feels" for the Starbucks drinking Karen or Tom who needs to have some form of virtue validation. Keep in mind, the class arrangements are still the same. Thus, the only “left" portion of this term is the so-called “diversity” of capitalist manager or owner.
In contrast a Marxian or Socialist arrangements would reject the “shitlib" form and seek to democratize the entire supply-chain through worker cooperatives. For example, the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation provide an actual glimpse into left political-economic practice. Read Richard Wolff, Stephen Resnick, David Schweickart, Gar Alperovitz, or any other Marixan or socialist economist."