Catsnakes_
6d ago
You're right, of course. I think the difference relevant to this situation is that the Bundys were banking on the feds playing by the rules, but the protestors in MN appear to have it as a starting premise that they aren't.
Catsnakes_
6d ago
I am also very confused by this. I don't know how to characterize this mindset without resorting to the word "unserious".
The starting premise for the protestors, as stated, seems to be that a swarm of evil, poorly trained stormtroopers are invading the city and snatching up and killing anyone they please. So why aren't they acting like it? Their behavior doesn't seem to follow from the premise. If they were getting into shootouts with the cops I would not be confused, because it would indicate to me they were taking the premise seriously.
Pretti got into a tangle with federal agents while armed. I don't think I can construct a coherent reason to carry while protesting that takes the premises seriously that doesn't involve an active intent to use it aggressively. Good seemed to be acting out of a misplaced sense of white liberal plot armor which is sort of understandable but still didn't take the "evil stormtroopers killing with impunity" premise seriously. Mark Russell and his wife went on vacation to a city they seem to think is under siege, and then proceed to treat the protest like a social function to kill time until the bowling alley opens.
Do they think this is for real or not? Did the constant crying wolf about Nazis for the last 10 years cause the reference to become so unmoored from the referent that they can't actually bring themselves to really mean it even while they're getting shot?
Catsnakes_
7d ago
It's a sexual metaphor, but the point is the concise metaphor and not the sexual aspect: the person being insulted is meant to understand that they are willingly handing over or choosing not to protect something that belongs to them in a craven way. On the other hand it seems like the sexual aspect of "it gives them a hard-on" is the intended reading.
Catsnakes_
7d ago
Sure. If we assume for the sake of argument that would fall under their "aftercare" label, then I would still assert that language choice is informed by squishy-leftish-queerish-sex-playacting-without-the-sex and that unconscious choice communicates unseriousness.
Catsnakes_
7d ago
This isn’t spontaneous outrage. This is C2 (command and control) with redundancy, OPSEC hygiene, and task organization that would make a SF team sergeant nod in recognition.
This entire wall of text is from ChatGPT. Is there any signal in this noise at all?
Catsnakes_
7d ago
Personally I doubt that the amount of healthcare people protesting overwhelms the number of merely heavily-online-leftish people enough to drive language choices. Further, I don't think the medical sense of it applies at all. I very much doubt that they're planning for long term injury aftercare vs emotional "I had a hard day playacting danger and now I need to be cuddled and validated" aftercare in a more BDSM sense of the term.
Catsnakes_
7d ago
I thought "aftercare" had to be a joke, but no, they've really got a role in that signal chat called "aftercare provider". Although that term has been around for a very long time in the context of care for convalescing patients, in the current cultural consciousness I think it most commonly comes up as a very leftish-inflected BDSM/kink scene term-of-art that has leaked into leftish spaces more generally. Choice of language may not be conscious but it's not coincidental, and I find it very interesting that the term they've chosen is from a conceptual realm in which participants playact pain and danger but no one is really going to be hurt and it can stop at any time. I think this is another element communicating the unseriousness of this movement, and by "unseriousness" I mean the failure to act like the things they claim to believe about the world are actually true.
I do believe that the protestors "mean it" when they talk about Trump's gestapo going through the street killing anyone they please and kidnapping people and acting with total impunity, that there's no accountability, that they are evil and can get away with anything and something must be done. I believe that they believe these premises. What I don't understand is the "unseriousness", the failure to follow from premises to conclusion. Why be surprised that the jackbooted thugs with guns have real bullets, not rubber? Why tell the SS agent to go take a lunch break? Don't you know they are murderous and won't be held accountable?
I think some protest movements (left or right) in the United States have a touch of "video game logic" to them, where if they do the right thing a victory screen will display and they get what they want. I don't think that is the problem here. Part of it might be the extension of adolescence that all millennials seem to suffer from and its concomitant black-and-white thinking and sense of invulnerability. Part of it might be that people have been calling everything Nazis and brownshirts for so long that the reference became unmoored from the referent and the conclusion no longer follows from the stated premises. I don't know and I don't know how to know.
But that choice of language sure is weird.
Catsnakes_
28d ago
People don't live in amorphous clouds of statistics. They live in particular locations and can watch those places actively get worse year over year even if national stats show otherwise (because other places are actually improving or because the stats are gamed). You couldn't pay me to raise kids in the town I grew up in even though for most of its history (including the first half of my own life) it was a fine place to live.
+1, I think your interpretation is a more accurate one in terms of true beliefs. The protestors in MN definitely didn't think that they were going to get shot, but the disconnect between thinking that these are evil nazi thugs killing anyone they want but that they won't shoot you is the confusing thing for me. Saying one thing, acting on another.
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