I want to choke these people and shake them, and drill in their heads that trying to outdo one another in declaring how shitty of a candidate they’ll accept Biden being while still voting for him is purely preaching to the choir, and makes Democrats appear in the eyes of casual voters as if they are performing some sort of pain pig sex ritual or death pact.
This is arguably more blind religious fanaticism than demonstrated by the Westboro Baptist Church. There is a more plausible case for acting a certain way to be saved in some unseen afterlife, than to kowtow to these human-made and long corrupted institutions here on Earth as if they are somehow the way and the light.
They are ceding their strongest arguments against Trump by 1) Being as sycophantic as Trump supporters 2) Ramming through a president whom the people do not want.
I really think this isn’t even done so much to protect Biden as to continue the proud liberal tradition of maintaining the “negative peace of the absence of tension.”
Long term, yeah, that is absolutely the solution. But for that to actually wind down immigration to a degree that is undeniable to the populace would take decades, and in the interim a ton of fascists can make their case and rise.
I am going to say something as an immigrant that sounds like I am pulling the ladder up from behind me, but it is something the left needs to hear: it is wrong and harmful to our civil rights and pluralistic cohesion to expect zero assimilation from immigrants and enable them and their kids to exclusively huddle in homogenous enclaves.
My parents moved here from China and took me to many corners of the US to try a bit of everything, they even took me to a pride parade when I was 9 even though they did not personally agree with the “gay lifestyle,” and they had anti-Hispanic and anti-Black prejudices but encouraged me to learn about and appreciate other cultures.
My parents and their immigrant friends came here with the understanding that they were not here to replicate way of life in China and that their kids would not inherit most of their values. Over time as they worked with people of all different backgrounds they grew more tolerant, and upon obtaining their citizenship they took ownership of preserving America as a “melting pot.” One time when my aunt visiting from China said she was scared by black people, my mom cut her off and spoke defensively about how great her black coworkers were.
The Indian friends I grew up with who immigrated at an earlier time also “assimilated” along with their parents; they would be the ones who introduced me to things they discovered like Oaxacan food, and would go on to volunteer as doctors at Planned Parenthood or pro bono lawyers for the marginalized. A Muslim friend of mine who was super conservative and homophobic growing up got way into metal/alt music and its crowd is now an ardent champion of and fundraiser for trans rights.
In growing up in an America that demanded some assimilation, my immigrant friends and I became more liberal and sometimes even outright radical. And when the left talks about “countering anti-immigrant sentiment” the underlying assumption is that it is mainly white people they have to reach, or maybe spoiled and self-hating immigrants.
But check it, it is my Muslim and Indian friends who disdain the Visa mill immigrants coming in who have no expectation of ever going outside the bounds of their enclaves, who carry with them redpill views and behaviors that are not respectful of the common social good like littering and ogling people uncomfortably. It is me who grits my teeth when I see a bunch of Chinese people, some of them my own family, buy up an Ontario neighborhood and vote against allowing the local public schools to teach LGBT history. It is my Vietnamese, Korean, Hispanic, and Persian friends–a few of whom were only able to freely come out because they were immersed in American culture–who view the newer waves of immigrants from their home countries, given little pressure to do any sort of assimilation, as a sort of regression to the backwardness and colorist/racist/sexist/homophobic prejudices of their parents’ generation.
If the left wants to counter anti-immigrant sentiment, we need to honestly confront where all of it comes from and acknowledge that at least some of the pushback is more than just racism, nativism or classicism. The white liberals, and some of the very vocal second gen identitarian outcasts in our groups speak about multiculturalism as if it is almost like segregation, and have very un-nuanced HR-like rules about things like cultural appropriation or respecting others’ cultures.
But in actuality the edges bleeding a bit between the many cultures in America, the occasional misunderstandings resolved through honest if sometimes indelicate questions, being made to engage with cultures and beliefs antithetical to the ones you were raised on, has been a blessing for me and for the march toward progress in America. And I can’t help but feel like the liberals and occasionally leftists of today are fighting tooth and nail to exempt newer waves of immigrants from undergoing this process, while prompting my second gen friends and their first-gen parents to begin souring on more immigration, even if it is from their homelands.
Yeah he’s got Havana Syndrome, at all times he’s mentally “havana” cone of rum raisin at the nickelodeon
Nearly everyone she has named happens to be Jewish so this really reads like that
This reminded me of this one time when a post-left lady was trying to get ahead of some leftists she was arguing with, by saying, “how original, now post the picture of the pig balls with poop on them next,” and someone just replied “Here you go” and posted a photo of her face.
holy crap everybody but three of the Pod Jons on this list happen to be Jewish
Or that you haven’t heard of Cardi B
“You know, I once played Frederick Douglass in a one-woman show that the University of Maryland Diamondback called ‘too confusing to be offensive.” -Liz Lemon
It’s just terrible UX anyway, to link to the general website and not directly to your policy page.
That was actually Pod Damn America’s Jake Flores, the Pod John response was that Biden’s debate performance was a “fucking disaster,” which drew insane ire from their listeners and the staffers who feed them guests.
Some of them do have a larger reach, but many others do not and are just everyday people, and most of those with reach generally built it from nothing. And regardless of what algorithms put in front of them these people are often directly courting the attacks by quote tweeting and replying to the chuds they come across.
I do not believe the odds uniquely overwhelm most people in the way you describe, and the ones that are so overwhelmed of course can totally disengage to preserve their well being. But I hope that most of us are not disengaging permanently, and find some sort of inner resolve that can steel us against inflammatory rhetoric enough to articulate cogent and unyielding responses at least on some days.
Like, I stopped reading Twitter, but I still reply when an Instagram/YouTube comment I come across is hateful or ignorant to lay out what the commenter is overlooking, even at times when that comment already has a ton of likes. And even when I leave a mean response to the ignorant or hateful person, I don’t forget to also leave positive and sincere praise for the person being attacked or a similarly marginalized person. I think that’s something most of us forget to do when we are too focused on countering incoming attacks, not focusing enough on putting more positivity out there.
I am going to say something controversial, which is that while it is totally appropriate for some of us to completely avoid spaces online where there is misogyny, racism, and transphobia to protect our mental well being, we can’t afford to all do this at all times, unless we want to just let the hate toward marginalized groups multiply in this culture.
There are plenty of irredeemably hateful people online but there are also a lot of people who are just suggestible, or have only ever been presented one side of an issue, and if leftists do not actually wade into at least some online discussions veering toward bigotry, in order to unapologetically state a pro case for the humanity of marginalized groups and win over these on-the-fence people, then pretty soon they could find bigotry becoming so ubiquitious that no amount of blocking accounts will make it avoidable.
The only people I regularly see these days actually wading into hateful/reactionary spaces to unyieldingly and pointedly defend things like LGBT rights, polyamory/promiscuity, social justice, etc. are libertarians, Evo Psych people, and fucking Mr. Beast and Will Stancil. They readily face the ratio-ing and barrage of hateful responses to do this. A lot of leftists/liberals, on the other hand, just shy away from directly addressing any prejudicial talking points that they don’t feel they can counter with sufficient resonance, allowing those talking points to grow in popularity and cause new panics unabated. It’s sad that Shane Gillis and Joe Rogan made the point to their chud audience that it’s unfair to smear all gay people by publicizing individual incidents of a gay guy behaving inappropriately with someone, and we are too invested in thinking that that sentiment should be self-explanatory to also try saying it sometime to the politically uninitiated.
The people on the left, who supposedly support the marginalized the most, tend to observe their most prominent defamers from a distance, and tell just tell one another “OMG, can you believe what xyz said about so and so?” That, or they exclusively call out people in their in-group for being problematic. Not saying those things don’t have their place, but until we have people who can stand proud and undaunted in online and real-life environments where we might get triggered by ignorant and hateful people, and make persuasive arguments directly countering the false-but-salient attacks on the humanity of the marginalized, our movement of love will only contract while theirs of hate grows.
And if you can’t withstand the heat of something like defending the people you cherish unvarnished in the face of a ratio by Nazis, you can at least go out of your way to leave some earnest, positive comments on the posts of people who face harassment from bigots. You possibly even leave your comments as replies their harassers. It doesn’t feel like this will do anything, but if a ton of people all do this, the hateful voices will find themselves outgunned and drowned out.
People really underestimate the power of unbridled and sincere positivity toward, and arguments in favor of something, or maybe are too afraid to put themselves out there to demonstrate such. But such might be our most effective tool against this newly burgeoning wave of bigotry, and at least some of us need to stop being afraid to enter proverbial lion’s dens to put it forward.
The fact of the matter is running on anti-trans issues is a proven loser for Republicans, but since the sliver of wealthy older Dems who steer the party don’t really understand, and are even at times weirded out by trans people, they project their discomfort onto the Republicans, and say that being too pro-trans or woke is a stance that will alienate general voters. This is their socially acceptable way of telegraphing that they themselves are swayed by the Republican anti-trans panic, and personally wish to halt Democrats’ pushes for trans rights.
When Turning Point USA tried to troll him by asking how many genders there were, and he replied “At least three.”
Listen Jack, I’ve got the abortion of a four beaked fish, and if you think I’m gonna inconvenience an oriental out here in the fountains, well then you’re more pachydermal than a cobbler’s dictaphone
Just reminded me of that SNL sketch CSI Sarasota with Betty White, where she goes around a retirement home trying to figure out who keeps poisoning all the 80-something residents to make their hearts stop working.