So this is mostly a Twitter rant, because generally even CC is pretty immune to this.

I'm really pretty liberal- socially, financially, no caveats there. And especially these days, I'm pretty much always on the same side as the leftists I know (online and off). But occasionally, yeah, I'm reminded of why there is a difference.

So as much as I'm always seeing leftists on twitter (and occasionally IRL) be all "you can't trust liberals, they'll side with the centrists" I'm kind of starting to think the same way, but in reverse, especially when I see them going on and on about how great Chavez was and how laudable his work in Venezuela was (or the love fests for any number of others. Including Stalin, FFS). 

And that's how I came to realize that their problem with the right wing authoritarians we were allying against isn't the autocracy, the crushing of the opposition, overthrow of the rule of law, or the gutting of the independent press, judiciary, and legislature. It's the "right wing" part. 

Call me a scumbag liberal centrist, but I'm against autocracies of all kinds. 

And I am just astounded that so many bright people that have such good intentions could be such suckers. If they got what they wanted, it'd only be a matter of time before they found themselves up against the wall, same as everyone else. This has literally happened EVERY SINGLE TIME they've succeeded. 

The problem with autocracies isn't their ideology. It's the structure itself. It's like...jeez, would all it take for you to become absolute monarchists is someone proposing the "right" king? It's like the political version of "the problem with shootings is that only the bad guys have guns, give good guys guns and there'd be fewer dead people."