this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
1220 points (97.7% liked)
Political Memes
5924 readers
3321 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
ahahaha liberals HATED MLK, he is only considered a popularly liked relatively uncontroversial political figure because leftists beat down the doors of liberals who would have rather plugged their ears and let the status quo continue indefinitely while telling black men football isn't the right place to ask for empathy for black lives as that is political and sports aren't....
Imagine if Bernie Sanders was black, even more radical and you lived during a time that being centrist meant at a minimum being pretty damn racist...
And yet.
... Wait for it...
Liberals actually got laws passed.
Now tell me — just for contrast — what did the conservatives of the time do when those same "leftists" beat down their doors...? That's right: laughed at them if they didn't lynch them.
Welcome to your first lesson in Pyrrhic Victories vs. Pragmatic Progress.
(And by the way, since you raised Bernie Sanders... With whom does he caucus with >90% of the time? And which ticket did he run as President under... Twice?)
...and centrists were ok with it until they got scared enough of people like Malcolm X to take MLK's vision seriously and stop laughing as black civil rights leaders got lynched and murdered.
It is white "moderates" i.e. that kept saying now is not the time and that is the wrong tone until leftist, worker movements forced it to be the right time.
It. Does. Not. Matter.
The only thing that matters is that those evil centrists were the ones to actually LISTEN... To change the laws. To move the boulder of progress forward.
If it was that easy, then why didn't the southern conservatives get scared into submission?
At the end of the day, MLK Jr., worked with those evil-doer centrist liberals — NOT the conservative southern lynchers and the KKK. If you don't believe me, just overlap a map of modern red states with the confederacy with the 1964 Voting Rights Act YES and NO Votes.
My point is centrists folded because it became ideologically and politically the path of least resistance because civil rights activists, leftists and radicals created those conditions and made ignoring them no longer possible (which is what centrists almost by definition always want to do).
And my point is — Why didn't Conservatives of the time fold?
I'm not sure what you think I'm arguing about, but the only thing that matters is that Liberals were the gateway through which progressive activism found a voice. After all, there wasn't a single leftist in Congress at the time.
So thank a liberal for at least being capable of being pressured when a conservative at the time could not be.
Lol that is a ridiculous thing to ask me to thank someone for.
Lol then it's a good thing I wasn't asking!