Yeah, I agree with you and I’ve been involved with enough conversations to know precisely what you mean. I was talking about the specific AWM phenomenon that even had Chomsky commenting on it. He said something to the effect of: “yeah, they have a right to be angry, and should be angry, but they are angry at the wrong things” (steered there by the MSM).
But back to what often almost seems like a concerted effort to peel off white men and make them Republicans…yeah, it’s immensely frustrating. I suspect at least some of it is a psyops being done by conservatives and enemies of this country, TBH.
However, there does seem to be a certain kind of person that actually seems to believe that they can lecture and cow and browbeat and name-call others into “doing the work”, etc. To be perfectly frank, there are a lot of people that don’t have the time to run through this fabricated gauntlet of perfect liberal checklists. People are run ragged, worried about losing their job if they even have one, or working multiple “gigs” to try to pay the bills.
And even if they did have some level of comfort and leisure, that’s not how you build rapport with others. Giving people a big stack of homework you expect them to do and tell them to run along and come back once they are then properly enlightened at Purity Pony University is going to work on probably single digits numbers of people…
Believe me, I’ve seen absurd levels of this. As a more recent example: I was told I really could not talk about fiction in any meaningful way - specifically, sci-fi/fantasy, unless I had already read a specific checklist of queer/trans authors. I mean…what even the fuck? Other than just scoring points among possibly dozens of people, what is this going to achieve? It’s certainly not a way to build a coalition.
The truly sad thing is that when some people experience this, may think all liberals are actually like this (including the politicians, which absolutely are not like this), figure that liberals have zero interest in their support, tell them all to fuck off, and just flounce off to either not vote, or worse, vote for Trump.
Chomsky wasn’t wrong in that quote (even though he’s a deceptive, hypocritical snake; and I say that as someone who used to look up to him). Arguably most, or at least many “Angry White Men” are angry at the wrong things (because they’ve been manipulated to be). But that’s no reason to lump every white man who happens to be angry into that category. It’s a thought-stopper.
Some of us are angry at the right things. But it’s impossible to have class solidarity when everyone just trivializes you as a “fragile, angry white man” and assumes you’re only upset because you’re a racist piece of shit and not because you have a righteous indignation against an unjust system while you’re also being unfairly blamed for that unjust system solely due to the race and sex that you were born.
I totally agree about the psyop, although there are enough people it’s worked so thoroughly on that they seem to be carrying the baton all on their own at this point.
But yeah, most of us don’t have the time or energy to jump through those hoops anymore. Millions of us tried back in 2020, but it seems we were only punished for it by the same people we were trying to show solidarity with, uplift, and make space for. Like, I’m not going to be used as a punching bag just because I make myself an easy target by being vulnerable, expressing empathy, and demonstrating goodwill. The world is collapsing too rapidly for that shit. I need to fend for myself like everyone else now.
They finally got their wish though. The middle class is losing its “privilege” at an alarming rate. I’m not sure how that helps anyone in poverty. Although I’ve been calling that out for years anyway. The focus should be on uplifting the disenfranchised and extending privilege to the marginalized; not tearing down the (relatively) privileged out of envy or spite. That only helps the oligarchs, and it’s clearly working as intended.
Believe me, I’ve seen absurd levels of this.
Yeah, just scroll down in this thread to witness the absurdity.
And don’t even get me started on literary analysis! That’s a field I would find interesting if it wasn’t so saturated with worn-out clichés, self-fellating manufactured outrage, mixed messaging, double-standards, hypocritical exceptionalism, virtue signaling, and thought-stopping pandering by people in desperate need to justify a master’s thesis. My god, it gets my blood pressure elevated
At some point I tried to care, but eventually it got exhausting and I stopped caring. Aside from the fact that I’ll never be able to publish a novel because it would get torn apart for no reason other than the fact that I’m a white man (seriously, no possible depiction of anyone but other white men will slide through the “purity filter”: they’re either too perfect or too flawed, too idealized or too realistic, etc.; but if I only depict white men to avoid the issue then clearly it’s just racist and sexist fodder, so I guess I just wrote write anything then!); aside from that, I’ll just read books quietly and not talk about them so I don’t have to listen to an insufferable lecture on fantasy tropes and how they’re ostensibly embedded with fascist values (I’m sorry, but fuck Mordor, they’re fucking evil, and Aragorn was not a jingo-nationalist, he had a duty to save the civilized world from the imperial warmachine next door).
It’s certainly not a way to build a coalition.
Yeah, I keep telling people this. They always hit me with “why would I want to build a coalition with them” implying I’m trying to defend actual racists, sexists, and fascists, rather than arguing that misapplying those labels just to flame people for quick internet points is precisely what forces those people eventually into extremist camps. It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy; it’s not some fringe theory.
They compare that to an abuser saying “look what you made me do,” but it’s more like an outsider observer saying “you badgered this person into hysterics, and now you’re accusing them of needless aggression because they finally reached their breaking point.”
And honestly it’s more about the large-scale trend of corralling people into echo chambers to be poached and radicalized by extremist groups. I’ve done counter-insurgency/stability ops in the past, and a major part of that is reducing the recruitment pool by learning the unmet needs of the population and building goodwill to prevent them from being radicalized in the first place.
The truly sad thing is that when some people experience this, may think all liberals are actually like this (…) figure that liberals have zero interest in their support, tell them all to fuck off, and just flounce off to either not vote, or worse, vote for Trump.
Yeah, exactly. Sympathy burnout is a thing. And also, it really doesn’t help to dispel the right-wing caricature of “Angry radical communist socialist liberal leftist extremists.” Obviously that’s a self-contradictory, oxymoronic, and hyperbolized statement conflating multiple groups and lacking any context or nuance. But behaving like the caricature they depict does not help to prove them wrong.
Yeah, I agree with you and I’ve been involved with enough conversations to know precisely what you mean. I was talking about the specific AWM phenomenon that even had Chomsky commenting on it. He said something to the effect of: “yeah, they have a right to be angry, and should be angry, but they are angry at the wrong things” (steered there by the MSM).
But back to what often almost seems like a concerted effort to peel off white men and make them Republicans…yeah, it’s immensely frustrating. I suspect at least some of it is a psyops being done by conservatives and enemies of this country, TBH.
However, there does seem to be a certain kind of person that actually seems to believe that they can lecture and cow and browbeat and name-call others into “doing the work”, etc. To be perfectly frank, there are a lot of people that don’t have the time to run through this fabricated gauntlet of perfect liberal checklists. People are run ragged, worried about losing their job if they even have one, or working multiple “gigs” to try to pay the bills.
And even if they did have some level of comfort and leisure, that’s not how you build rapport with others. Giving people a big stack of homework you expect them to do and tell them to run along and come back once they are then properly enlightened at Purity Pony University is going to work on probably single digits numbers of people…
Believe me, I’ve seen absurd levels of this. As a more recent example: I was told I really could not talk about fiction in any meaningful way - specifically, sci-fi/fantasy, unless I had already read a specific checklist of queer/trans authors. I mean…what even the fuck? Other than just scoring points among possibly dozens of people, what is this going to achieve? It’s certainly not a way to build a coalition.
The truly sad thing is that when some people experience this, may think all liberals are actually like this (including the politicians, which absolutely are not like this), figure that liberals have zero interest in their support, tell them all to fuck off, and just flounce off to either not vote, or worse, vote for Trump.
Yeah, I agree with you.
Chomsky wasn’t wrong in that quote (even though he’s a deceptive, hypocritical snake; and I say that as someone who used to look up to him). Arguably most, or at least many “Angry White Men” are angry at the wrong things (because they’ve been manipulated to be). But that’s no reason to lump every white man who happens to be angry into that category. It’s a thought-stopper.
Some of us are angry at the right things. But it’s impossible to have class solidarity when everyone just trivializes you as a “fragile, angry white man” and assumes you’re only upset because you’re a racist piece of shit and not because you have a righteous indignation against an unjust system while you’re also being unfairly blamed for that unjust system solely due to the race and sex that you were born.
I totally agree about the psyop, although there are enough people it’s worked so thoroughly on that they seem to be carrying the baton all on their own at this point.
But yeah, most of us don’t have the time or energy to jump through those hoops anymore. Millions of us tried back in 2020, but it seems we were only punished for it by the same people we were trying to show solidarity with, uplift, and make space for. Like, I’m not going to be used as a punching bag just because I make myself an easy target by being vulnerable, expressing empathy, and demonstrating goodwill. The world is collapsing too rapidly for that shit. I need to fend for myself like everyone else now.
They finally got their wish though. The middle class is losing its “privilege” at an alarming rate. I’m not sure how that helps anyone in poverty. Although I’ve been calling that out for years anyway. The focus should be on uplifting the disenfranchised and extending privilege to the marginalized; not tearing down the (relatively) privileged out of envy or spite. That only helps the oligarchs, and it’s clearly working as intended.
Yeah, just scroll down in this thread to witness the absurdity.
And don’t even get me started on literary analysis! That’s a field I would find interesting if it wasn’t so saturated with worn-out clichés, self-fellating manufactured outrage, mixed messaging, double-standards, hypocritical exceptionalism, virtue signaling, and thought-stopping pandering by people in desperate need to justify a master’s thesis. My god, it gets my blood pressure elevated
At some point I tried to care, but eventually it got exhausting and I stopped caring. Aside from the fact that I’ll never be able to publish a novel because it would get torn apart for no reason other than the fact that I’m a white man (seriously, no possible depiction of anyone but other white men will slide through the “purity filter”: they’re either too perfect or too flawed, too idealized or too realistic, etc.; but if I only depict white men to avoid the issue then clearly it’s just racist and sexist fodder, so I guess I just wrote write anything then!); aside from that, I’ll just read books quietly and not talk about them so I don’t have to listen to an insufferable lecture on fantasy tropes and how they’re ostensibly embedded with fascist values (I’m sorry, but fuck Mordor, they’re fucking evil, and Aragorn was not a jingo-nationalist, he had a duty to save the civilized world from the imperial warmachine next door).
Yeah, I keep telling people this. They always hit me with “why would I want to build a coalition with them” implying I’m trying to defend actual racists, sexists, and fascists, rather than arguing that misapplying those labels just to flame people for quick internet points is precisely what forces those people eventually into extremist camps. It’s called a self-fulfilling prophecy; it’s not some fringe theory.
They compare that to an abuser saying “look what you made me do,” but it’s more like an outsider observer saying “you badgered this person into hysterics, and now you’re accusing them of needless aggression because they finally reached their breaking point.”
And honestly it’s more about the large-scale trend of corralling people into echo chambers to be poached and radicalized by extremist groups. I’ve done counter-insurgency/stability ops in the past, and a major part of that is reducing the recruitment pool by learning the unmet needs of the population and building goodwill to prevent them from being radicalized in the first place.
Yeah, exactly. Sympathy burnout is a thing. And also, it really doesn’t help to dispel the right-wing caricature of “Angry radical communist socialist liberal leftist extremists.” Obviously that’s a self-contradictory, oxymoronic, and hyperbolized statement conflating multiple groups and lacking any context or nuance. But behaving like the caricature they depict does not help to prove them wrong.