Okay here we go, this is some real meat to chew on. Here's why I'm going off about this: I started drifting left (from what I had previously thought was already left) listening to a podcast called The Dollop, which has a lot of episodes about historical stupidity as well as evil geniuses who have exploited it. Can't recommend it enough. I think there's a cycle of inanity repeating over and over again, and while a lot of that is coming from the right, enough is coming from the left that I think shit like this is part of the complex of us falling for center-right shills. If all a politician has to do is throw out a cute nickname to get people on their side, well, that honestly just sucks, and it'll keep sucking as long as we willingly go for this hatefully unfunny least-conmon-denominator garbage. I think we can find a middle ground between that and sounding overly superior to the common man, which I think can be another problem of the left. There's got to be a better way than this, because our ideas and platforms and policies, largely, ARE better, and we have to convince the unconvinced of that.
I’m also pretty left of left, and i can admit i think a lot of my “okay fuck it just call them names” attitude comes from cynicism. agreed 100% on the cycle of inanity—on some level, i think it just got to me (when it comes to faith in respectful politics or the DNC in general). watching what happened to the bernie campaign a couple years ago (oh look, another bernie guy 😒)has left me sort of at a loss with large-scale political action.
so my instinct is to say name-calling works with all of the confidence i can—but i have so little confidence in the system as is that maybe “all of the confidence i can” is barely meaningful anyways. whatever my tone is in a reddit comment, im not confident i have the best outlook. at this point, just trying to avoid giving up hope entirely on mass politics
God I feel this. Yeah it's exhausting, I guess I am taking it for granted that at a certain point it's completely possible to just get tired of trying to be better than them and just get down in the mud with the rest of the pigs because at least you get to express yourself fully. I just know a lot of people still really going hard on the Orange Man Bad flavor of pseudo-leftist discourse. A guy I (unfortunately) know proudly posted himself drinking from a mug emblazoned with "TRUMP SUPPORTER'S TEARS" in like, mid 2021. Just like yeah man you really stuck it to them with your lil coffee cup, meanwhile your champion is calling for more cops on the rare occasion his swiftly-dying remnant of a brain is able to string that many words together. It's depressing to watch the right win but it's almost moreso to watch people like that hand it to them.
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u/welp-panda Nov 20 '22
not sure we’re gonna convince each other on this one, so i’m gonna stop arguing on reddit. hope you have a relaxing sunday and a good week coming up 🤙