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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29304 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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Sometimes simple comments say broad things for trends. In a group chat for a mixed group someone posted the Biden energy guy who likes stealing bags. I said if the Dems ran on their current platform in 2008 they would get 10% of the vote. I got a reply “truth”.

I can go back in time and pull up Joe Biden being very anti-gay marriage. Would it be fair to say if Joe Biden went in a coma in 2008 and woke up in 2022 he would be one of the most ardent Maga extremists? And a bunch of Republicans just voted for gay marriage.

The question I’m asking is it fair to say the left made a giant leap in roughly 15 years and the extremists today are just normal people not that long ago. I know this is meme. But is this factual?

Would it be fair to say if Joe Biden went in a coma in 2008 and woke up in 2022 he would be one of the most ardent Maga extremists?

2008 Joe Biden would be a touch conservative for a 2022 Democrat, but he wouldn't even be a liberal Republican, never mind a hardcore one.

Because of economics? There are literal communists out there being smeared as far-right reactionaries because they're not on board with the progressive agenda.

literal communists out there being smeared as far-right reactionaries

These are either:

  1. Smeared by other communists, who probably aren't exactly what one thinks about when considering arbiters of what is left and what is right

  2. Are like Jackson Hinkle, ie. genuinely aren't really different from any other MAGA online personage expect for retaining some affectation of portraying themselves as a communist.

I think they were referring to people like Freddie DeBoer, who is calls himself and is quite clearly a socialist/Marxist, but ruffles a lot of progressive (woke) feathers by criticizing by criticising identity politics. Pretty much anyone that's liked by the subreddit stupidpol.

DeBoer ruffles feathers, but I don't remember him being called a far-right reactionary.

Pretty much anyone who ruffles their feathers gets called a reactionary, or some similar term. Including DeBoer.

Pretty much anyone who wades into politics and culture-war issues, and has some level of name recognition, gets called various names online. But by whom? Randos on Twitter? D-list freelancers on Ghost? Daily Beast-level progressive pundits? The NYT?

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