3d ago

it was a rethorical question

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We would have taken all of this a lot more seriously if we broadly understood that this group doesn't seek outcomes.
I know it seems loaded, but it solves so much of our bafflement. They don't care about outcomes, they don't want solutions or leadership or policies or better futures for themselves or anyone else.
They're just mad and stupid and the left did nothing to manage and redirect this toddlerish rage and incompetence, instead we pretended the system was fair and the idiots wouldn't have power because how could they. Naive and foolish on both sides.
If we worked harder to give these people better stories and targets to hate (hint: the rich really don't want a class war) then maybe they would have made better choices.
- Yeah argue with one long enough and they basically just admit they don't care what happens what they love is "owning the libs" the more facts you show them that they can not respond to the more they think they are pissing you off and the more they get their rocks off. 100% they could not care less about any of the things they claim to revere, like the Constitution. Literally the only thing that makes them change their mind is when they realize the policies they voted for apply to them too.
  One of my friends adult daughter is fully disabled mentally and physically and my friend can not even work the state pays her to be a caregiver for her child. They100% lives on state support programs. She voted for Trump, I told her before hand she is shooting everyone in the foot and shooting herself in the face with that vote,. She said she disagreed and things will get better for her that she is tired of liberals and "their immigrants" (???) taking part of the tax money that should be going to her and others like her. I was completely dumbfounded. I told her that is completely fabricated BS from Trump and it does not work that way but she told me I did not know what I was talking about, Trump wouldn't just lie about this stuff... yeah. She said THAT.
  Now she is telling me how she is so scared they are going to cut her benefits after all the targeting of Social Security and that she felt so betrayed and she thought there was no way Trump would betray his voters like this and there was no way she could have known Trump would have done something this terrible.... I had to look at her and ask how she could have NOT known when I fucking told her multiple times. She finally realized after I said that that I was right. So she knows and will admit she was wrong now. None of my other friends have been affected yet but having talked to them none of them will change their minds until it hurts them or their family directly. Most of them are good enough friends they even admit that they don't care (or even pay attention to) what Trump does as long as it is pissing off the liberals they are happy. At least the first friend realized she was dumb about politics. She told me from now on she was just going to ask me who to vote for.... she is getting smarter about it at least.
  
  This story reminds me of another point I want to touch on about this all.
  When you believe in a thing you know isn't real, it's called cognitive dissonance. It's easy to recognize in people who have supernatural or religious beliefs, but we all do this all day long about a thousand different things.
  Cognitive dissonance is not a bug in human cognition, it's a part of our architecture. We are not reasonable, logical beings. We have brains that do one thing and one thing only: write stories to explain our feelings. Nearly every major societal issue comes from this fact, from international wars to your own struggles with anxiety and depression.
  I don't know if it's universal, but it seems a common memory many of us have about arguing with our friend who was convinced that WWF wrestling was real. They know that weapons and necromancy are probably not allowed in a real sport, but they also feel so strongly attached to the storyline that they also believe it's real.
  Our species is very, very good at holding ideas we know are untrue on some level. When you don't have good language skills and can't take complex ideas and make them abstract using language inside your head, you lack the ability to properly analyze an idea and have any critical thought about it. Language is our key to escape cognitive dissonance and we are being deliberately stripped of this power with a million different distractions. Social media that feeds us imagery and sounds with minimal interaction, AI that does your writing and reading for you. As well as of course, games and other electronic entertainment.
  These aren't bad things on their own, but we're also being swamped with agendas and grifters and oligarchs who want split out the people most susceptible to influence in this way, providing them with stories that their brains can latch onto to explain their misery or pain. They may know that say, trans kids aren't the reason that they're broke, overworked and suffering, but it feels good to have a target who can't hurt you. If you're not really paying attention to what you're thinking about what you feel, you can easily believe a hundred contradictory things.
  And once they realize that it's okay, that you CAN in fact believe in things that are objectively untrue, but you will get people supporting you and praising for believing that thing, you won't let it go, your brain will even double-down and strengthen that pathway.
  We have to get better about understanding our vulnerabilities, because there are systems coming online that are going to be even better at twisting our motivations and thinking.
  
  Ok I know it's not what your comment is about, but there is necromancy in WWF? How cool. I need to look into it.
  
  The Undertaker was (for a long time) a literal zombie walking around by the grace of an urn held by his manager (and former real world undertaker) Paul Bearer.
  Wrestling is full of dragons and monsters and people who can fly. It's magical.
  
  She told me from now on she was just going to ask me who to vote for.... she is getting smarter about it at least.
  Really? I couldn't handle that. She's a fucking adult; she should be able to learn critical thinking skills and make her own informed decisions! I'd be down to talk about the issues, but if somebody said "Just tell me how to fill out my ballot", I'd feel sorry for them and I couldn't do it. She's gotta take responsibility for her own actions.
  
  I agree. But at least she knows she's ignorant and isn't Dunning Kruger-ing it like everyone else.
  
  True, in an ideal world everything you say is correct. But too many people would rather die than think about what they do. And they are used by monsters like Krasnov to inflict misery on the rest of us. I'd just skip the discussions- which wouldn't do anything other than waste your time anyway- and tell her how to vote. Someone so irresponsible as this person really needs to be guided.
  
  This fits into my theory that conservatives have an organic brain dysfunction that damages the ability of conservatives to have empathy. Because conservatives only give a shit about bad things happening when those things happen to them or to people they love.
- They're just mad and stupid and the left did nothing to manage and redirect this toddlerish rage and incompetence, instead we pretended the system was fair and the idiots wouldn't have power because how could they. Naive and foolish on both sides.
  Liberals did all that. The actual leftists have been saying for decades that this was exactly where liberal centrism was going to end up as the Democrats did everything they could to keep funneling money up to the top as well.
  
  The actual leftists
  There are dozens of us! Dozens!
  
  100%
  
  Its either the liberals or the billionaires. Pick one
  
  I am speaking from underneath the shattered remains of whatever our overton window has been. I had a good idea of the differences between liberals, progressives, leftists and so on... but more and more I am realizing that in America at least, during this period of our history, that the definitions of who is what have been deliberately smashed and spread across the field like roadkill.
  All that said, I have a lot of criticism against the left as well as liberals broadly, a lot of people have been duped into becoming re- er, mentally handicapped and are out there chasing the wrong problems and spending their energy in the stupidest ways.
  Such as attacking people online who should be your ally but you're too hung up on finding what separates you. This is literally handing victory to your enemies but people seem to delight in attacking their own team because spaces have cordoned themselves off and nobody actually engages with their real opponents anymore.
- The rich already have the class war. They just want to make sure we don't find out they're the ones attacking. I remember some rich lady journalist put out some opinion piece warning the working class against seeking a class war, and to just keep fighting the culture wars.
  Ah, here it is!
  Yeah, Alice Thomson wrote this for The Times back in July of last year, removed about how the candidates in the UK Parliament elections were touting their working class roots.

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