r/PoliticalOpinions

The original liberalism (classical liberalism, think Adam Smith and John Locke) meant free markets, pro‑business, and democracy.

Today, that's exactly what modern conservatives claim to believe. IT IS *liberalism.*

The word "conservative" originally meant a royalist (someone who wanted a king.) When monarchies fell to democracies, "conservatives" wanted to preserve aristocrats and royals.

Then in the 1960s, wealthy elites needed a way to stop working people from uniting on economic issues.

So they resurrected the old label "conservative" and set it against "liberal."

They invented the modern culture wars: abortion, guns, race, immigration. (anything except wages, healthcare, housing, and labor.)

Liberalism suddenly meant pro‑minority, pro‑integration, progressive.

Conservative meant the opposite, pro‑segregation, etc.

One economic ideology split into two names. People fight over culture wars. That's why neither party fights over wages, benefits, or working‑class issues.

A guy works 40 hours at a dead‑end job. He can't afford college, can't afford healthcare and rent, and will never own a house. His options are the military or the crypto lottery.

Neither party gives a damn. Both serve the rich. They got people fighting over flags and pronouns while rent goes up.

That's how far US politics has fallen. Nobody runs on economic platforms anymore. And the people who need it most are too distracted to notice. In fact it's gotten worse.

MAGA has turned "conservative" into a cult of personality around Trump. Gas hits $6 a gallon, sex‑offender billionaires walk free, your kid may die fighting for Israel… but hey as long as he's "owning the libs," it's all okay.

Most liberals just run on "stop Trump" and nothing else.

When will people finally wake up and see that both parties are two wings of the same BS bird?

In the United States, and in the western world more broadly, we are facing a time marked by increasing polarization. This polarization is tearing at the very foundations of latter-day democracy, and has led to a renaissance is radical ideologies, both on the left and right. Although there are many factors leading to this renewed polarization, the one factor I hold unique contempt for is individual party affiliation.

Personal political affiliation leads to people identifying with their political party in the same manner as which one would identify with their local town or sports team. This adds a tribalistic spin on politics, which has only been exacerbated by populists and social media. Such affiliations have also led to people toeing the line of their political party both in a political sense, but also in a social sense as the question of "what party do you belong to?" has divided couples, families, and whole communities.

For me, the best solution to this issue is the outright ban on personal political affiliation. Though it should be expected that a politician should be exempt from such a ban, any individual not running or in office beyond the municipal level should not have any political affiliation. Though the question of one's political identity will always be on the table, such a ban would make it harder and possibly more socially stigmatizing to probe one for their political affiliation. Such a ban would also safeguard local politics from state and national politics, wherein the elected officer does not have to toe any political line given a lack of a political line to toe in the first place. In short, though it does not end all the issues caused it, there should be a ban on personal party affiliation to help heal democracy.

Hear me out! I was watching Tucker Carlson interview with Yulia Medel and i had been thinking about how shady the Russia- Uk war it is. She was working for his presidency cabinet. I came to this questions after she is stating that he was frequently in Russia before coming to presidency. In his election he pointed about peace with Russia because this is what he knew people wanted. Coming to power was a sudden shift. I know the majority of politicians shifts after getting elected.

I have this questions i put to myself and i am addressing this questions to you as well.

What if Zelenskyy is a Trojan horse? What if he’s secretly working with Putin to bankrupt Europe? What if some of the money sent to Ukraine ends up benefiting Russia? Maybe that’s why the war keeps going and peaceful discussions are avoided.
Weaker Europe means stronger Russia.

Btw- in this thread I don’t discuss who started the war or not. I don’t discuss who is the bad guy or who is the good guy. So please refrain from posting about this. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

What do you think?

#dontjudge

Don't trust me. Below are the prompts, try for yourself. I didn't pay for these searches, though I did have to register and login. I used Grok, ChatGPT, Claude AI, and Deepseek:

Be clear, straightforward, unbiased, call things as they are, no sugarcoating, no fluff, no links, just your honest opinion. Keep it conversational, don't hold back. I want you to asses the damage Trump has done to the US since he returned to office in January 2025 up to now. We'll do this step by step. I'll give you a topic and for each one give me:

An interactive scoreboard (updated each round)

An honest score from -10 to +10 (net impact)

A one-sentence justification

Your personal take, ignore media framing.

Limit your answer to 100 words or less.

Economy.

Foreign Policy

Democracy and the Rule of Law

Immigration *

Healthcare

Trade

National Security *

The judiciary and supreme court

Aggregate your category scores into an overall presidential impact score from -100 to +100. Show your math. Add your personal take on the whole situation, how you see it overall (around 150 words).

#semi_wild_cat

To start, I am a liberal leaning American. I oppose Trump’s anti NATO foreign policy, climate change policy, and economic policy. I think Trump was guilty of inciting the Jan 6 insurrection, and that he poorly handled COVID and made the situation worse.

When Bill Cassidy voted to impeach Trump in 2021, I gained respect for him. I also respect his past work as a doctor, vaccinating many low-income and uninsured people. I believed he was one of the greatest GOP senators, and respected him for being a pragmatic conservative (who was willing to support laws such as Gun Control and the infrastructure bill). In 2024, Cassidy stood strong to his principles, telling Trump to drop out due to the convictions. He also called out Jeff Landry for abolishing the jungle primary, stating it would increase spending (I recall something like that). That being said, I think he could’ve endorsed someone else like Desantis or Haley.

Since 2025, Bill Cassidy has tried improving relations with Trump. I understand if he wants to work with Trump to pass policies they both agree with. However, he refuses to stand up to Trump in his insane moments, and I lost all my respect for Cassidy when he voted to advance RFK Jr (after grilling him). Nonetheless, Trump still endorsed a challenger, Julia Letlow, who won. Bill Cassidy tried falling back in favor with Trump and he still lost. He now leaves hated by liberals and hated by MAGA, only liked by the GOP establishment (such as Thune). He deserved his loss.

I also want to wish the best to future senator Julia Letlow (less extreme than John Fleming), who has gone through a terrible tragedy and is doing her best to move forward. She ran a compassionate campaign.

If a parent doesn't care what happens to their kids, they have way too little incentive to raise them right.

If a parent is in denial that they are raising their kids wrong, they have way too little incentive to raise them right.

If a parent knows that they are raising their kids wrong, and think their kids will magically turn their lives around at the age of 18, they have way too little incentive to raise them right.

If a parent knows that they are raising their kids wrong, but think they can magically shield their kids from the consequences of their actions forever, they have way too little incentive to raise them right.

We need to stop merely condemning parents who raise criminals from bad parenting and start prosecuting them. Give them an incentive to raise them right.

I know that politics is subjective so in that sense it's going to be biased but shouldn't we try harder to be sure the underlying info we are discussing or forming our opinions on, is relatively unbiased?

Consider reading a post or article that otherwise seems fairly balanced and then they say "or is this just corporate greed" as if "corporate greed" is a widespread thing.

What would that even mean? A corporation is organized to maximize profits (legally). Competition is generally trying to push profits toward zero but the concept of "corporate greedy" doesn't even make sense.

Yet people repeat it all the time without even thinking about it.

It's the same with deciding that a CEO makes too much? Their pay is determined by the market, just like everyone else. You may feel (for some reason) that it's "too much" but that's not unbiased, logical or factual.

But it's rarely discussed in that vain. Or consider the common thought that someone with a large family can't support themselves by working at Walmart and that somehow Walmart should pay them more?

That's not logical, makes no sense if you think about it at all and it's not how our system has ever worked.

Yet people talk about it was if maybe we should just hope and try to make the wage go up to some level we just came up with.

This just belies any knowledge of how the system works or could work in any sustainable way.

Yet, these ideas are commonly passed along as if "sure, that sounds good".

This is why, in large part, IMO, we get such divided discussions. Today more topics aren't based on reality so anything someone says is seen as reasonable.

This just leads to division and unrealistic outcomes.

There still would be room for subjective differences in how to deal with reality but when you don't even start with reality, of course everyone is divided.

What do you think?

I’m 28M I’m not some hardcore right wing capitalist. I actually voted for Bernie sanders in 2016 In the primaries. I’m actually very left leaning I support universal healthcare, and debt free college, and I believe all workers should be allowed to Join a Union if they want to. I support raising taxes on the rich up to like 63% Back in the 1940s and in the 50s and 60s it was about 90%. That was the golden age of prosperity for the middle class. But it’s not just democratic socialism which pretty much countries in Europe have. Which I wouldn’t even really call socialism I’d say it’s Socal democracy, or certain services like education, housing and healthcare, are provided. But you still have private businesses and private property rights. But people get benefits for their work like paid family leave and six week paid vacations. That’s the system I think is beneficial a mixed economy, capitalism, and Socialism combined.

But it seems like there’s a lot of hard lefties that are wokists. That seem to be rewriting history about what life was like under communism. Let me give you this example, A couple weeks ago. I was coming home from work and this girl who is driving me. She was in her late 20s same age as me. And whatever we were talking about. I started talking about the Soviet Union, and how people have very limited freedom, of movement people couldn’t travel to wherever they wanted to go unless they got a permit and even then they could only travel to countries in the eastern bloc. And how people waited in the cold snow for hours just to buy food and many times things like meat and milk will be in short supply and people just had to take whatever they could get. And then she interrupted, and then she said well look, it was a needs based system she said that was the goal. She said things like travel, high-quality consumer goods she says those are luxuries. She said the Soviets weren’t trying to focus on that. She said they were trying to focus and make sure everybody had the basics that they needed. This is what she said “ Yeah, people might not have had everything but they had a roof over their head. They had free healthcare. They had guaranteed employment that they couldn’t get fired from.” And then I made it clear you couldn’t pick your job. They would give kids tests when they were only seven years old. And whatever their skill sets were, at the time. You get like 5 to 6 jobs that they would approve you for. It didn’t matter whether you liked it or not that was it. Didn’t matter whether someone wanted to be a scientist or an engineer. Based on a test that you took as a young child, they’d send you to go work in a diamond mind, or work on a farm or be a bus driver. And her response was when I told her that was “ I don’t know I kind of feel it would be better to have jobs given to you that were actually things you could do. Then literally have to work my ass of for 5 to 12 years trying to make my way into a corporate position when there 70 others that are trying to get that job. She said, “ I think it’s more realistic to have someone get a job that fits their skill set but they can be guaranteed benefits. Then, if somebody is terrible at things like math, and then they’re trying to make their way into being a computer scientist.” Well, here’s the thing that’s how our system works. You have the right to succeed, and to fail on your own terms. it’s not the government’s job or societies job to decide what’s best for you and what your needs are that’s on us.

And also in the Soviet Russia under communism people would be living in an apartment with three other families. And they be forced to take care of the elderly grandparents who lived with them, even if they didn’t even know them. Plus people who think communism was a better system, I’ll tell you this Joseph Stalin caused the worst man-made famine in human history. And he murdered so many people through his purges. And all the people that were tortured and killed in the gulags. And in China under Mao Zedong another person who I’ve heard some leftists say, was a great philosopher. Well, he launched the great leap forward. Which he thought, was an effort to make the Chinese people better off by leading China into a modern world economy. But he said it would create equality for the Chinese people. It did create equality everybody became equally poor because of it. Everybody starved to death. And then with his cultural revolution many more people were killed. Cuba under Fidel Castro people literally swam to Miami risking their own lives. Somewhere even eaten by sharks because they were trying to flee Castro’s tyranny. And an East Germany, people were literally murdered by the Stazi which was east Germany‘s version of the KGB. They would shoot people for trying to climb over the wall. Look at countries like North Korea, where if you speak out against the government not just that person can be thrown into prison camp. Their entire family’s parents grandparents, even their friends can all be rounded up. Thrown in prison camps and forced to do hard labor, and then we starve to death. In North Korea, the vast majority of their population does not even have enough food to survive.

So I really wanna know what the hell is going on the systems that we were taught for decades were the wrong systems, That’s not just my opinion it’s backed up by data and statistics. Even to this day, nobody is trying to move to Russia China or North Korea. People are trying to come here to America. To live in freedom to raise their kids so that they could have a better life than they did. And it’s always been that way.

I’m 28M I graduated high school in 2015. I grew up in San Diego, California. And the town I grew up in near the coast Encinitas beautiful place loved living there had had a great time. My family was not rich. We were just middle-class. we moved Encinitas in 1999 and it was a time where back in the late 1990s homes were much cheaper in SoCal. But I’d say the neighborhood we moved to was just a regular middle-class neighborhood. However, the school I went to high school at La Costa Canyon. In a very affluent neighborhood, the people who live there I wouldn’t say were like super rich like there weren’t mansions everywhere. But they were definitely affluent upper middle class. Most people live here had white collar jobs, high-level business professionals, lawyers, Scientists, The type of people who probably hung out at the country club. I’d say they were upper middle-class to wealthy but not like millionaires. Not like millionaires.

So I was diagnosed being on the spectrum when I was six back in July 2003. So I since I was in first grade. I had an IEP, but during elementary school, I felt pretty included. I was in general Ed classes with the regular kids. I made a lot of good friends. The special ed services I did get was this place called the learning resource center, which was a place I would go. get help from aids and tutors, and it worked a lot. And the teachers, I had both in special ed and in general Ed we’re both very supportive of me. They believed in me a lot. Things were going really good until I finished elementary school and entered middle school.

Then once I started middle school, I was still getting the same thing thing I was still in general lead classes among the mainstream kids. I would go to the learning center or in middle school. They called an academic support. To get tutoring and help with the work from other classes. And I guess the problem I had was mostly like I started struggling with math when I was in fourth grade and we started doing fractions. Although I always struggled with math, I started struggling as early as like second grade. But I was able to keep going forward but then third grade when I got to division is when it got hard.

But once I entered high school, in august 2011 that’s when things totally started hitting the fan. And things got completely off the rails my first year of high school. I was putting in this program, called the transitional alternative program a total joke. It was like for kids with very severe disabilities. And they were making me start over like I was getting work that was like additions and subtraction. multiplication. And goals my manager, saying that I would learn to do my cursive or sign my signature. They were giving me words puzzles in 9th grade. There were two general ed classes I did have. One was a science class the other was an English class. beginning of my freshman year and I really liked it I felt I learned a lot in the class. And I thought I was doing pretty well from like the first few tests. I did pretty good on. But then two months in to my freshman year. I found it I was flunking the class and then my case manager started telling me that the class was too hard for me and that she was going to take me out. And put me in remedial courses that were taught. And I didn’t wanna do that. I thought it was offensive. And I told her I really like the class I’m in. this woman was just not a nice person. She always wanted to think she was right. She was never willing to listen to anyone’s descent. If you disagreed with her, she get really hostile. And my question is why why asking that you want to take these classes make her lose her shit.

So after that, my father went to one of the IEP meetings with her and he said well if my son wants to be in these mainstream classes, let them be in there. She never listened because she said that the whole team couldn’t agree, but I don’t know. I’m pretty sure that if the parents say no, then that should be it. And then afterwards. Like my mom and I literally asked for assistance and I was working my tail off to stay in these two classes. They didn’t do anything. They didn’t give me an aid, a note taker, any assistance. To help to pass, and then eventually they took me out of those 2 classes that I enjoyed, I was devastated.

My entire freshman year, I was miserable because I felt like I was being used as a useful idiot. And I was getting work that was early elementary level. I went home practically once a week crying. I had trouble sleeping at night, because I was so angry that they didn’t want to listen to me. And it wasn’t like I was some lazy kid, who felt entitled. No, I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to do the harder work that was grade level. They were the ones putting in all the roadblocks. Anytime, I tell him I want to take this class they’d say no. It was totally demoralizing.

So after that, they put me in these remedial classes where they were giving me like work that was like at grade level, but it was done in a slower pace. And eventually, I got out of that program the transitional alternative program. In the middle of my sophomore year.

And I got a change in case manager and I was put back into the program that was similar what I had in elementary school program for students with normal learning disabilities. Things get better. I eventually got to take General Ed classes. My junior and senior year. But it was not easy. I had to fight like crazy like work, my ass off to prove them wrong that I was capable of being in there. My junior, I had a general lead history class and I took biology General Ed. But I was in remedial English and a remedial algebra class. And then my senior year when I said that I wanted to be in chemistry and I wanted to take Spanish they both all like voted it down. it just seems unfair. Like, can’t they look at the fact that they care like that they’re passionate about wanting to be in there and they’re interested and if they’re willing to work hard and put in the effort. Doesn’t that matter the most? it’s like they kept using my math struggles as a weapon against me. My whole idea is, I think a better system is exposure and learning things which is the goal of education who cares about the stupid tests. Like it’s like trying to make it like living in North Korea.

It wasn’t as restrictive when I got out. I got a lot more freedom to be in mainstream classes. Then I did when I was in the previous program. It was a great improvement but still. There were still obstacles and limitations on what courses allowed to me is offensive. You can’t do that to kids. That’s the whole reason you take classes in the first place is to learn things. You shouldn’t have a team from above deciding over you. Like in China or The Soviet Union.

But anyway, here’s where I come from on a final note. Sometimes I wonder if would my situation had been different if I went to a school that was maybe in a bad neighborhood. Like maybe instead of the Encinitas district what if I went to school say not in a bad neighborhood but just a middle-class area like Vista or Escondido. or even not just San Diego like if I went to high school in Los Angeles. Would the restrictions maybe had been less. It was a neighborhood that was maybe just more middle-class or modest.

Because to me, it’s like why are the schools so scared of giving the kids a chance so they worried that if they they that if a kid fails, it’ll screw up the whole schools reputation scores and then they’ll lose money. Like what are they doing? Are they literally having to bend over backwards for the neighborhood families? Is it all about competition pretty much. I mean the school I went to was in a very wealthy neighborhood. I don’t know if the money was a big problem. I mean the high school I went to the campus looked like a small college. And the football field looked like an NFL stadium. I’m pretty sure they had enough money to hire extra assistance so that kids like me could be in more mainstream classes.

But overall, I’d say I had a pretty decent high school experience. I was on the wrestling team all four years. I went to the state championships senior year. Also senior year I met this really nice girl who is in my grade I was 17M she was 17F. We started dating and then then we went to prom together. And I met a lot of great friends. I feel like overall yeah a lot of the people I met. A lot of the kids were good role models.

People in Britain who vote for the far-right - hoping that they care about you, that they're fighting the elites, that they're honest, that they promise to kill corruption, and that they have such simple answers to every complex question - do you know that they're not like you at all? They're no different from the elites. They get huge money from them. They often don't pay taxes, finding loopholes in the law. They come from elite schools themselves. They worked at elite banks - for the very elites who paid them and are still paying them to this day. They're just narcissists and populists who don't actually solve problems - they create new ones. The best example is in the Netherlands. Right-wing populists came to power and within just a year fell apart, having solved nothing and only made things worse. Or Italy - the populists there turned into centrists just to stay in power. Wake up and vote for real people from the working class — not for elites who promise the moon. I'm talking about Nigel Farage and his party, of course

Let’s start with my favorite cliche saying- “No one is illegal on stolen land”.

If you follow this to its logical conclusion, the implication is that everyone on earth has the legal right to move wherever they want, because technically every square inch of useable land on the planet has been stolen from someone if you go back far enough.

This logic undermines the whole concept of sovereign nation states with the right to control their own affairs, of which the United States is one, like it or not. Either we have borders and are allowed to enforce our own rules for who crosses them or we aren’t.

The modern leftist argument for mass immigration is basically that, because most of our ancestors were immigrants, we have no moral basis for being opposed to immigration now. That’s just nonsensical.

It goes along with the line “We are all immigrants unless you’re Native American”

Most of our ancestors may have been immigrants , but the vast majority of Americans have been here at least three generations back at this point. This is our home now for better or for worse. But the left is essentially saying we have no basis to exercise the same sovereign right as any other country.

“Because your ancestors did a thing, you’re morally obligated to allow something similar now” is a terrible argument to justify mass migration.

Arguing about the economics of it or something is one thing, but the idea that we’re just obligated to allow mass immigration no matter what is crazy.

By the way, believe it or not, we have the highest immigrant population in American history. Remember learning about Ellis Island in school? We have more than that now, even when you look at percentages rather than raw numbers.

This is not commonly taught in schools any more, but last time we had immigration numbers even close to this, the border was closed almost entirely for thirty years. We survived.

Despite this, mainstream conservatives *still* favor legal immigration. We *only* want the ones who broke our duly established laws to get in to be removed. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

That is not “far right” or “fascism” at all. The left is so far left on this issue that I guess it seems like facism from your point of view. I won’t deny that we have some elements who are calling for things such as denaturalizing people already here legally. Those people I would actually call “far right”.

But it’s not “facism” to expel people who have no legal right to be here in the first place. Try sneaking into Mexico as an American and see what they do to you. It’ll make what ICE is doing look like a cakewalk by comparison.

Bottom line, you can’t have the highest number of legal immigrants in American history, allow even more to enter illegally by the millions, downplay any criticism as being mere racism, then seriously not expect backlash.

Mid-cycle redistricting was pitched as a clever way to blunt the usual midterm losses presidents face. But the strategy didn’t account for how quickly it would escalate into a tit-for-tat arms race, with blue states countering red-state maps.

In the end, Republicans may only gain a small number of potential seats—while energizing Democratic turnout and creating new vulnerabilities if voter coalitions shift.

I also think some of the most aggressive gerrymanders (especially in Texas and Florida) could become “dummymanders” if the electorate swings even modestly.

Full article here:
https://medium.com/discourse/trumps-strategic-misfires-a-redistricting-plan-unravels-0583d43d3071?sk=10e8583e2e04cec13db4088e8d5301e9

Think about the ROI. This would take a lot of strain off the healthcare system.

Think that it wouldn’t do much? Well there are a few other things that could come into place. While money may be a barrier to providing a routine, it’s the lack of education that is the biggest barrier to most people. Many people don’t know how to use gym equipment, or what good workouts are. This is where there should be better access to trainers for people that need them.

With how much profit insurance companies make, why can’t we get good preventative care? Why can’t we provide more resources for people to better themselves? This would absolutely have a great ROI.

Perhaps I don’t know how this would be done, but I think investing in things that actually benefit our population is not a bad idea.

This is Part 2 of my “Trump’s Strategic Misfires” series.

In this installment, I look at how Trump went from the candidate who claimed he was the only one who could bring peace to the world to a president whose policies helped escalate conflict, raising the risk of economic shockwaves far beyond the battlefield.

​

"It is my firm conviction, based on extensive discussion, that any personal who is merely skilled at dialogue delivery cannot deliver good governance and prosperity to a nation with a population of tens of millions, regardless of their age (be they 20 or 40). While their on-camera presence may be charismatic and emotionally evocative, real-life leadership requires actual political understanding, deep economic knowledge and expertise, administrative skill, and a mature approach, which are developed only through years of experience, continuous study, and a comprehensive understanding of public policy. The provision of freebies is merely a fraudulent technique to secure votes and will not lead to a prosperous and stable future. Real prosperity comes from policies that promote education, economic development, and skilled administration, not short-term giveaways.

We hear daily AI replacing jobs, why not use AI in government?

I am not talking about just llms, but an AI that is somewhat transparent and unbiased in its functionality and thinking, to monitor the Government of country.

having an open source or a platform to track nation like everything (money flow, contracts, deals, decisions, etc) that government does or decides on something, (maybe except military or some come confidential things).

This AI monitors everything and its best at finding anomalies (and i somehow trust ai more than a Politian) especially when its transparent and unbiased, giving every person full view of current state of country.

It can also have a voting for common people of nation in its decision making, like each citizen having a weight in a making a decision depending on his expertise, like people with economic background having more weightage in voting for a financial decision in the country, or a food health expert having more vote in law regarding food safety and place to give their opinions which can also be upvoted.

All this so People can decide for themself and have a say in running a country. not just on empty promises by politicians and blind trust on them to fulfill them.

"A government is of people for people of the country; and every citizen is a part of it"

What are your thoughts on it? if it's possible to bring this to reality, what will it take? or it's not just a good idea?

As a political science student in Berlin, I am basically breathing post-structuralist theory every day, but the deeper I get into it, the more I feel like we are stuck in a very exclusive, Eurocentric view. This hits home for me specifically because I have a Turkish migration background myself, and growing up between these different worlds makes the gap between academic theory and lived reality very obvious. We learn from Judith Butler that gender is a pure performance, a constant repetition of acts, and that biology itself is really just a cultural interpretation. That sounds incredibly liberating in a seminar room, but when I look at the reality of my own community and others with a migration history here in Germany, this whole approach often feels like a Western luxury problem.

I am seriously wondering if we have a massive blind spot when we declare modern lifestyles like open relationships or the total deconstruction of gender roles as the universal standard for empowerment. In the Berlin/academic bubble, it is seen as progressive to break down traditional structures, while those exact structures often serve a vital purpose for people in the diaspora. For many families like mine, the family unit is often the only place of unconditional solidarity in a society that otherwise tends to marginalize you. If we dismiss these traditional roles, like the man as the provider and the woman as the center of the family, as simply being backward, we are actually practicing what Chandra Mohanty calls a kind of discursive colonialism. We are viewing everything through Western eyes and assuming that every woman is just waiting to be saved by our liberal ideals.

This becomes especially clear when we talk about the headscarf. In many feminist debates, it is almost automatically framed as a symbol of oppression because it does not fit the image of fluid, Western liberation. But thinkers like Saba Mahmood have shown that agency can exist within religious traditions too. Wearing a headscarf or consciously choosing to live in a traditional role can be an active, ethical decision that provides stability and identity. It becomes particularly problematic when our feminism is turned into a tool for what Sara Farris calls femonationalism, which happens when we use our modern values like sexual freedom or a lack of social commitment as a border to decide who is integrated and who is not.

Maybe what we often perceive as conservative in migrant circles is actually a form of strategic essentialism according to Gayatri Spivak, meaning a way to hold onto clear identities as a protective space against an individualized, cold, and performance-driven society. When we demand in our studies that everything must be deconstructed, we ignore that for people in precarious or marginalized positions, dissolving structures is not an act of liberation but a security risk. I think we need to ask ourselves honestly if our academic feminism is really for everyone, or if it is ultimately just a self-portrayal of the Western secular elite who think their own life reality is the end of history.

Is the focus on total fluidity and deconstruction in today's theory ultimately just arrogant toward everyone who finds more freedom in tradition and community than in total individualization?