“For now, the big fight is Democratic anger vs. Trump accomplishment” says the Washington Examiner headline. One of the things under discussion within the linked article is the “Democrats’ 33-63 rating — the worst for the party since 1990.” This is discussed in greater detail over here. It’s a good time to pay attention.
Sympathizers to the democrat party — self-identifying leftists and “liberals” — are behaving a bit differently. They’ve gone hyper on detecting and calling out various sins, like the supposed white supremacist “dog whistling” of Sydney Sweeney’s jeans ads.
Just a couple quick observations here.
“This means that”…as in, the jeans ad means Nazi stuff…is delivered with the same tone as “wet paint,” “thin ice,” “you have to wear a COVID mask,” etc. One person is calling it out to another. It’s the establishment of a relationship: I’m yanking you in, from the edge of the cliff, where the railing is less reliable than you think. I’m saving you. There’s a relationship being established here: Now you owe me. So really, less a relationship than a debt. Good thing I happened along here and kept you from doing something self destructive.
You had no idea the jeans ad had these racist undertones, so I saved you from making a pariah of yourself.
But really, if this was all on the up-and-up, there would be a moral differential between someone blindly tooting on the “dog whistle,” versus someone huffing and puffing away out of pure malice. Things the way they are, it’s all the same: Everyone who likes the ad, appreciates the ad, admires the ad, fails to call out what’s wrong with the ad, is a Nazi. It doesn’t matter if it’s out of ignorance or intent.
So that’s a little odd.
Also, there’s no difference between someone possessing this keen insight, figuring out “good jeans” is a Nazi slogan, versus someone who heard it from someone else and is passing the word along. If you’re merely passing the word along, you get to strut and swagger as if you figured it out yourself. That’s a little odd too.
I think what we’re looking at here is a phobia against co-existing with others — as peers. That’s odd too, since these are the people driving around with “coexist” bumper stickers on their cars, right? But the reality is that being around others is an intolerable ordeal for them, unless they have some device available they can use to establish their supremacy. This is what makes them the way they are, everlastingly warning, horn-blowing, tooting, scolding. “That’s a racist ad.” “Where’s your mask?”
What an awful way to live. Even to friends, family and lovers they have to constantly signal how worthy they are. “Good thing I’m here, to warn you away from visibly liking the blah blah blah.”
I think you’re going to find overall, this generalization holds as well as any other generalization — not perfectly, but often. Conservatives have given up on the whole thing. “If you think I’m a bigot, and the Lord grants us both another hundred years on the planet, at the end of it you’ll still think I’m a bigot no matter what I do.” So…heck with it, all of it. Trans women are men, and I’m going to think of Caitlyn Jenner as a dude because why not?
Liberalism is a religion without redemption. The condition is laid at your feet, and you meet it; “Oh yes, we have twelve years left to save the planet” or “Oh yes, trans women are women” or “Oh yes, choose the bear over the man.” You don’t get saved. You’re still damned until the next condition arrives and then you’re supposed to lunge for that too. It’s all about the lunging. You might compare it to an unarmed man in a cowboy movie being made to dance by the bad-guy psycho cowboy firing rounds at his feet; kind of a lot like that.
Whereas, since it’s a transaction, conservatives demonstrate superior intelligence evaluating transactions as transactions. You don’t get anything for this one. So, they say: F00k it. If you cram your absurdity down my throat and I let you, and repeat it back to you, I don’t get anything for it so why bother to go down that road? So they end up keeping the gas powered car. And, in the spirit of rebellion, maybe even revving it over 5000 rpm a couple times.
It’s funny. This late in the game, the “rebels” have moved to the other side of the political spectrum, because the political spectrum has ceased to be political. It’s become religious; fake-religious. A false, all-damnation no-salvation religion.
Where there is effect, there must be a cause. My current operating theory is that the liberals are breaking out with these social-warnings, like mad, in overdrive. They’re doing a lot more of it because it’s become futile. They’re losing their grip. It’s linked to this downslide of their popularity. Whether it’s permanent, or temporary — I hope it’s permanent — doesn’t matter, because it’s stirring up these feelings of apprehension in them, calling on them to cohabit with the rest of us as equals, which they don’t know how to do, never learned how to do.
So they’re going full tilt on this “Good thing I’m here to warn you not to like that thing” stuff. Pedal to the metal, to compensate for the slippage under the tires.
I’m struggling to remember where I saw this, but somewhere the “woke” kids were ‘fessing up to the real agenda: They want to problematize things. There’s a priority behind making more things problematic and it’s more important than the problematization of each individual thing. They want more problematizing. More conflict, fighting amongst ourselves, more squabbling, more back-and-forth.