#i'm an enlightened centrist

[earththeplanet]

I swear to fuck if it turns out that Trump wins because some of y'all are so obsessed with moral purity that y'all let a racist, queerphobic, sex offender aspiring dictator who literally incited a riot at the capital and openly said that if he is given power, he will make life hell for anyone who is not a rich white cishet man become president rather than vote for Harris, then we're about to throw some hands, because we do NOT have any wiggle room to play around that. And y'all BETTER not act surprised if the fascist gets elected into office and starts doing fascist shit, especially with how vocal he has been about wanting to do fascist stuff.

[tropylium]

I Will Refrain From Posting Discourse (note to self) but it is still a consistently annoying feature of the tumblr userbase ecology to keep running all the time into the dumb unreflective "everything I don't like is capitalism" "leftism just means like, being a good person" "the System intends all the bad things" folk memeplex, or gogforbid, attempts to turn this into an elaborated ideology without changing any of the conclusions

for comparison I keep hearing about the boogieman of Unhinged Twitter Leftists but if anything, my experience is that they're extremely easy to avoid and the place is instead pretty good for 1. existing mainly in circles of vaguely-realist non-shit-starting liberal centrists and 2. ideological immune system variety from exposure at will to dumb unreflective folk-rightists for a change too. Could be recent from UTLs emigrating elsewhere because rocket man bad, or a problem that only ever existed for people aiming to be leftists, but either way I'll take it

[sirfrogsworth]

I'm going to rewrite these Tweets without the super hidden, impossible-to-detect subtext.

Katherine: Hello, echo chamber! Please validate my opinion. Let's all say Hitler was left wing so people will stop comparing my views to the Nazis. It makes me feel bad when they do it and I've decided revising history is much easier than becoming a better person.

Elon: Gotta maintain this ruse that I am an enlightened centrist. I know, I will say he was both even though that doesn't make sense.

But how?

Umm... okay, this is just dumb enough to work...

Hitler was right wing about flags and shit but left wing about all of the evil mass murder stuff.

Nice job, me. I am so smart. Now, I just have to turn off Community Notes for all my Tweets and I'm golden.

[chelledoggo]

i'm no longer an "enlightened centrist," but i still do hold some views that could be considered "centrist" depending on who you're asking.

for example:

i believe that access to guns and poor mental health both play a part in the gun violence epidemic. we need common sense gun control AND better access to mental health resources.

i believe that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. i would like to see contraceptives and plan B pills more accessible to reduce the necessity of abortions, but i don't want abortions to be illegal or overly controlled by the government.

we need to be more mindful of mens' mental health. however, men should NOT be receiving role models in the form of your Andrew Tates and your Jordan Petersons. we need to allow men to be vulnerable and give them encouragement, without nurturing an unwarranted sense of male entitlement in them. the patriarchy is what hurt men, we need to be healing them.

we should not be taxing churches that operate as genuine places of worship and charity. but we should ABSOLUTELY be taxing megachurches and corporate chain churches that openly promote regressive political agendas and engage in "prosperity gospel" activity such as asking their congregants to "plant a seed."

if you disagree with me on any of these, i only ask that you please be civil. if you're going to just hurl insults at me, i'll block you on the spot.

[transparentkittenheart]

Wyll and Astarion were talking about justice and what it means to them. Wyll was being an enlightened centrist about "needing balance in all things." Then Astarion goes off saying how "You really need to make an example of them. All crime must be punished to the fullest extent!!"

I'm just like.... my guy.... YOU'RE THE CRIMINAL??

[nervoustragedyluminary]

'afabmisogyny' is probably the most mask off terf BS I've read like ecspecially when it comes with shit like "trans women could never understand what cis women and afabs experience" like fuck right off that's some jk Rowling level 'oh I'd march with you if you actually were opressed' BS and calling trans people 'trans activists' that's such an old dogwhistle for not seeing trans liberation as legit and treating radfems terfs and the rights violence against trans people as a 'two sides ' issue... Like calling it a 'war between radfems and trans activists' is just mask off

Just fyi beware of or block detransraichu as she seems to be trying to peddle this 'uwu both sides I'm an enlightened centrist in the war against the radfems and transadvocates' BS while reblogging literal terfs talking about 'the penis is not a neutral organ because it rapes and impregnates women' and excusing that as 'its research for my book'

[whumpster-fire]

Concession Speech

My Fellow Americans,

What the fuck.

To the dumb accelerationist sacks of shit on this website: congratulations. Y'all got what you wanted. A fascist in the white house. I hope you're fucking happy. Have fun with that. I hope that as you watch this country burn to the ground and probably take several others with it, you feel a sense of pride and accomplishment that you successfully refrained from sullying your conscience by supporting someone who wasn't Revolutionary enough for you.

To the "enlightened centrists" and "leftists" who did nothing but repost memes from blogs with Pepe profile pictures about Kamala being the antichrist, conspiracy theories about what the World Economic Forum was plotting, or other right wing crap all year: I'm expecting you to go mask off in the next few weeks, but don't worry, you weren't fooling anyone anyway.

To the open Trump supporters: I don't know what any of you are even doing on this blog other than looking for "delicious libtard tears" so: congratulations. I truly wish you the best as you enjoy the success of your sadistic ideology. Good job. I know nothing's going to change your minds at this point. Don't let the cork on your champagne bottle hit you in the eye. Also get off my fucking blog.

To the Non-Americans: this is your one apology, and your one preemptive warning that I'm not going to tolerate victim blaming on here. Most of us didn't fucking want him. Also if you're in a country that's been flirting with right wing lunatics itself e.g. the UK, Hungary, Poland, climb down off your high horse.

To everyone else: Oh my god I am so fucking tired. Can we catch even ONE break?

[spurgie-cousin]

Have you heard about this horrible anti-Mormon bigot here on Tumblr called "lemuel-apologist"? She is so two-faced! She says that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were "clearly pedophiles" while reaping popularity on Tumblr by claiming to be an anti-capitalist asexual nonbinary queer woman of color. But at the same time she does this, she also brags about being the best alto in her ward choir and graduating top of her class at BYU. So either her wokery is performative or her church attendance is. I'm not sure which is worse.

But what is probably worse is the way she has teamed up with a "Tumblr famous" (his words) influencer named r4cs0. This guy is some kind of enlightened centrist who thinks it's okay to bash Trump and conservatives as long as he also says he hates "Kamaleon" and "Tampon Tim" as well. r4cs0 and lemuel-apologist have apparently agreed that it would be funny to mock Mormons, so they have been telling people that they are going to organize a queer jump humping orgy to protest capitalism by breaking into a furniture store in Salt Lake and doing SICK things in there!

And I'm just over here like, how are you gonna participate in an orgy when you claim to be asexual??? Like I said, this nonsense these people are spreading is clearly performative. If them mocking our faith wasn't bad enough, it just adds insult to injury to know they are only doing it because they enjoy being edgy on the internet!

[0w0tsuki]

The TME Transmisoginy Discourse Playbook:

"Your emotions are valid. It sucks that you had to go through that. But the thing is there's just ONE or TWO points I think I can disprove to show that you actually have no fucking clue what your talking about and shouldn't be speaking to begin with. Anyways here's my 10+ paragraph take down analysis response"

"Hey could you not talk about your own oppression like ever? Your LITERALLY just infighting and are the sole responsibility for the divide in the queer community. So now I'm going to exclude you for being an exclusionist "

"DUDE what's the transfem crusade about THIS WEEK?! Y'all are just overreactive hysterical cunts just LOOKING for anthills to blow out of proportions into mountains. Calm down. It's not that deep. Log off. Touch grass"

*Constructs a Beaddel strawman to argue against that's actually just a transmisoginistic caricature and shove words into the mouth of anyone who points out that your strawmanning*

*Look through OP's blog to find anything that you can screenshot to use to write them off out of hand without genuinely having to engage with them*

(Enlightened Centrist Voice) "Worry not fellow discoursers. For I am a neutral third party who's uninvolved in this discourse so I am the perfect one to provide a LEVEL HEADED opinion on this discourse that I have absolutely zero stake in" *Proceeds to spout the most biased and transmisoginistic garbage you've ever heard*

"Don't you know that cis butches sometimes get mistaken for trans women and harassed by TERFs? Don't you know that cis dudes are sometimes punished by their peers for being a little effeminate? SEE?! Transmisoginy affects EVERYONE! So that TME/TMA distinction your using has no rhetorical value and is actually and indication of how divisive your being "

"Hey I am a part of the identity group that you're claiming to have experienced transmisoginy from a subset of and instead of taking this as a call to work to make my community better by discouraging that subset as a member of their community, I'm going to interpret this post as a wide sweeping attack on my community and me personally."

"Hey you're literally taking this out of context and trying to construct your own narrative. This discourse is CLEARLY referencing (separate post that all the transfems in the discourse already knew about that doesn't debunk the transmisoginy being discussed/change the narrative and sometimes even make the transmisoginy even worse)

[horizon-verizon]

Remember all those finger-wagging lectures about how the French left/minorities needed to “be realistic, hold its nose, and vote Macron to bloc the fascist Le Pen” ?

Now, Macron’s party is in third place and the far right is on the brink of power, but let’s watch Macron and the “Enlightened and Humanists Centrists” utterly refuse to return the favour.

Liberals and centrists are the ones who went out of their way to completely normalize, mainstream, and de-demonize far right ideas.

...anon, i'm not French. how did you get the idea that I was one of those who anyone said anything like this to?

Still, yes, I agree. Liberals and centrists, esp politicians, have the power they have or interests in maintaining the status quo already built on racial, class, gender, etc. inequalities.

[sirenium]

I just want everyone to be careful. There seems to be an increase of right-wingers on Tumblr lately (at least I'm getting them put on my radar more often), including the ""enlightened centrist"" types. it may be tempting to call them out, but you're better off just blocking those people. no meaningful conversation will result from interaction with them.

[skaruresonic]

The idw discourse is so bad, I feel caught in the middle because each time I express how bad the storytelling is, in a new issue or how off model the characters are drawn, idw fans gang up on me. But on the other hand I don't want to be associated with the people who think think it's funny to tweet how Flynn should die or make weird assumptions about Stanley being a bad person ? Like that's weird and cruel. Hate their work not them as people.

I just decided to pretend the comic doesn't exist and it helps lol.

I'm sorry that happened to you. Idk if anyone else will tell you that, but I will, because I know how much it sucks.

One time, I saw a guy on Twitter blame us for his inability to criticize the book in what he believed was a much more "balanced" manner without getting harassed by people.

Digest that for a moment. It's our fault for other people's reaction to us. And instead of rubbing his brain cells together for a moment and questioning the reasons why this knee-jerk reaction occurs, or even reflecting on the fact that it occurs at all and perhaps realizing that the call is coming from inside the house, he fell back on old biases and decided it was the haters who were wrong.

The mental gymnastics on display here are unreal.

In this case, I think people are stumbling into the usual fallacious trap of assuming both sides carry equal weight, and thus believe that defaulting to a position of "neutrality" makes them morally superior somehow.

That's kind of what I hate about this fandom - the utter superciliousness. The rotten shit we as a fandom get up to (and no, being a little snarky in a reblog does not count as harassment) while proclaiming love and light uwu. Be nice to everyone, except those freaks over there.

"Neutrality" is in scare quotes here because it's not true neutrality, but a way of posturing to the in-group that you're not Like Us. As demonstrated by my Twitter-user anecdote, people around here don't want to say anything hater-flavored because it risks intense ostracization. That's why you have people jumping down your throat for presenting even mild criticisms. It'd be pathetic if it weren't so annoying.

I'm not talking about people who let well enough alone. I'm talking about centrists who sneer "both sides are bad," as if by distancing themselves from the situation in a smug manner, they're declaring themselves more enlightened than the rest of us.

Honestly, the other side should be just as insulted, but they're not, because this attitude only helps them in the long run.

In reality, this is more like the fishhook situation centrists have with antis vs. proshippers. Saying "this whole thing is stupid" really only benefits antis because they now have grounds to reply, "Yes, this IS stupid, don't you think proshippers are crazy for being upset at something so trivial?" while conveniently omitting the part where antis routinely send proshippers death threats and other heinous material.

Look at it from this angle: the most concrete harm I have seen their side say they've suffered is a deep discomfort and estrangement from the book. Which, yeah. That sucks. But it's also kinda on you to just click away if it makes you uncomfortable.

On the other hand, I have had legitimate crying fits because of horrible messages I received and have told people multiple times about the anon who mocked my recently-deceased mom. Which, unlike clicking away from a blog, I had no choice but to see sometimes because I was still naive enough to believe people would behave themselves in my inbox. In fact, a mutual were recently discussing our anxieties over retaliation should IDW be cancelled. There's stuff about this that you just don't want to think about because dwelling on it will freak you out.

"Both sides are bad" stings, especially in light of knowing the measures I have taken to walk on eggshells and draw proper boundaries. I literally cannot know if someone in this fandom will consider my explanations harassment and dogpiling, so I try not to reblog with commentary. On the reblogging site.

Reflect on how fucked-up that is, to feel uncomfortable adding a tag to someone's fanart because you're worried they might realize you're One of Them(tm) and shun you on that basis alone.

I won't sit here and say I've always been perfect in my conduct, but at the same time, it's just the infuriating experience of double standards all the way down. Somehow it never occurs to them that if I held them to the same standard they hold me, I could call them all out on intellectual dishonesty for refusing to engage with any of our points no matter how calmly or clearly stated because "lol ur just a hater," and tar them with the same brush as those who sent me death threats.

But ofc, things don't work out like that in the calculus of Le Sonic Discourse. It's just a rotten experience to the core.

[pahorans-letter]

Have you heard about this horrible anti-Mormon bigot here on Tumblr called "lemuel-apologist"? She is so two-faced! She says that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were "clearly pedophiles" while reaping popularity on Tumblr by claiming to be an anti-capitalist asexual nonbinary queer woman of color. But at the same time she does this, she also brags about being the best alto in her ward choir and graduating top of her class at BYU. So either her wokery is performative or her church attendance is. I'm not sure which is worse.

But what is probably worse is the way she has teamed up with a "Tumblr famous" (his words) influencer named r4cs0. This guy is some kind of enlightened centrist who thinks it's okay to bash Trump and conservatives as long as he also says he hates "Kamaleon" and "Tampon Tim" as well. r4cs0 and lemuel-apologist have apparently agreed that it would be funny to mock Mormons, so they have been telling people that they are going to organize a queer jump humping orgy to protest capitalism by breaking into a furniture store in Salt Lake and doing SICK things in there!

And I'm just over here like, how are you gonna participate in an orgy when you claim to be asexual??? Like I said, this nonsense these people are spreading is clearly performative. If them mocking our faith wasn't bad enough, it just adds insult to injury to know they are only doing it because they enjoy being edgy on the internet!

THIS IS SO FUNNY. SICK WHY DIDN'T I GET INVITED TO THE FURNITURE STORE ORGY

[sirfrogsworth]

I thought YouTube was safe!

It wasn't my fault!

And now I need to get this out of my brain so I can go back to rest and relaxation.

So... I mostly follow makers and musicians and tech channels. My YouTube subscriptions are a pretty safe space without triggers.

A while ago I followed what I thought was a fun science lady.

But then she turned out to be an "enlightened centrist" and professional contrarian. Her video on gender affirming care was so bad.

She has that Neil deGrasse Tyson Syndrome where she thinks she knows everything about everything because she has a big science brain. But in reality she is just doing surface level google searches on topics outside her understanding and pretending to be an expert regardless.

The googling is fine. Researching things you don't understand is good. And sharing what you've learned is also good. That is how we all navigate complicated topics as a community.

But she uses her authority as a Ph.D. Science Lady to make it seem like she has the 100% factual and objective take. Even though many of these issues go beyond an objective understanding. Social sciences, philosophy, psychology, etc. cannot be parsed through a hard science lens.

In any case, I meant to unsubscribe, but I guess I forgot.

And as I was going through my very safe and fun feed, suddenly...

And I watched it!

Why did I watch it?

And why did she do a stroke around her hair without cleaning up the selection for that thumbnail? There are so many better ways to do that.

LEARN PHOTOSHOP, SCIENCE LADY.

In any case, I am going to sit this video aside in a tab so I can rant about it when I'm better. It's a shit show. And it will be fun to write about. But not right now.

Sometimes unplugging is a process. Or that is what I am telling myself.

I haven't looked at Twitter. So there is that.

And I did watch some very cool YouTube videos that helped me get out of my head for a while. So going there wasn't a bad idea, per se. I just should have remembered to unsubscribe to ridiculous science lady.

Here is Allen Pan (ridiculous science man, but in a good way) making a scary laser death trap for mosquitos that almost set his bits on fire.

Good stuff.

[britts-galaxy-brain]

People: "You have no evidence!" You: "Here are archives showing exactly what she said and did." People, louder: "No evidence!" *Trump impression starts* "There's good people on both sides! Both sides are equal! *generic I'm-an-enlightened-centrist nonsense*"

It's wild how every single person Lily has ever been friends with or dated all describe abusive behaviors, everything she's ever said including shit that's still up on her blog is awful and abusive even to people she herself describes as victims of abusers, her videos are full of unhinged content ranging from screaming that staff on The Legend Of Korra got sexual gratification from animating Korra fighting to calling a NB Jewish person pro-Nazi, and every archived page from the Wayback Machine shows someone who is manipulative, violent and sexually predatory, but somehow, someway, this is a thing where the enlightened thing is to be neutral towards Lily.

Lily literally said - and this was a lie, so she said this thinking it made her look good - that her sister, who she told us was groomed by a pedophile, was psycho for having been groomed and fucked by an adult as a child. That's the kind of thing she says to make herself look better. That's the kind of person she is, she says "this person was fucked by an adult as a child so they're garbage" and the fact that it was a lie makes that statement more unhinged, not less. Most people when lying don't go, 'How do I make people doubt my sister's statements that I abused her? I know, I'll say she slept with someone as a kid and is therefore untrustworthy, and I'll use ableist language to imply that you shouldn't believe CSA victims because CSA makes you crazy.' Most people, when lying, wouldn't go with 'haha she got raped haha' because that's just not how the mind of a good person works.

And this is the person who we're supposed to be all "well people who like AND dislike her get harassed so who's to say what the truth is?" about? Uh, Lily has told all of us who she is, in her own words. That's what the truth is. The truth is that she thinks CSA makes you crazy, that she will lie to others and slutshame her sister as if being sexually abused as a child would make her a slut, and that's the kind of thing she'll say because she genuinely thought everyone reading it would agree with those takes. She said that to make herself look better.

People are really out here going, "Other than her word, the word of all her victims, the archived pages, the screenshots, her writing, her videos which are currently still up where she says in her own voice some of the most deranged things you've ever heard and shows an image of a game called RapeLay where you rape women and a literal 13 year old child - other than all that, what proof do we have she isn't a great person?"

By that logic, we don't have any proof that anyone who isn't in prison isn't a great person. If her own words still up on her tumblr and in her videos read in her own voice don't count, does anything?

I wish people would say with their whole chest, "I know she's awful, and I like it." instead of going "uhhh both sides idk"

THANK YOU!

Wait....she dug up RapeLay...? The only reason I even know about that game's existence is because it popped up on a Most Offensive Games list video back in the 2010s. That game is OLD and LONG FORGOTTEN...Which means she specifically sought it out. I WONDER WHY.

[dissociative-disaster]

Hi, I'm back! I thought I'd finally make a pinned post because the formatting for blog descriptions is weird and bad.

I'm Alex, which is a name so generic it's safe to use online. Pronouns are They/Them.

It's been a few months since I've really used tumblr so I've kind of forgotten who I follow and what I typically post and reblog, but I HAVE read a lot of Lenin in the interim so expect communism.

I don't really have any DNIs except like the obvious; racists, fascists, TERFs, etc. That venn diagram is almost a circle actually but there we are. Also if you're an Enlightened Centrist or the kind of person who really likes Keir Starmer PLEASE just leave. A conversation will be deeply frustrating for the both of us.

Right, that's done. If you read something communist I say and come at me with "UUHH iPhone Vuvuzela 400 bajillion stalin ate babies" please note that I will only engage with such criticisms if they're delivered via homing pidgeon. Thank you.

Also my new avatar image is by the awesome @found-disaster ! Check them out they've got really good art!