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I spent an extremely long time this past week arguing with a Chomskyite about how this stuff isn't evidence of neofascist white nationalism and could not make a dent. Rittenhouse came up and we couldn't even concur that he was attacked by rioters, not shooting into a protest.
It didn't matter if I cited Wikipedia instead of usual wrongthink sources.
Stories are more important than facts.
I'm pretty blackpilled that outside of quant finance, maybe half of the judiciary, and a few other jobs, absolutely no one has skills or an interest in trying to understand the world.
I know people on the right are also attached to their narratives, but as an urbane white person who mostly talks to other urbane whites, the right's craziness is common ground. But I just take reputational damage if I observe hypocrisy or craziness on the left.
I had to stop posting about this stuff to socials because people were contacting my wife and asking her if she was safe with me. She even got in my face and said "what are you doing posting this shit to Facebook, this isn't Lesswrong. Are you autistic or something?"
She's right, of course. I should know better.
This kills me on the daily. I am so willing, desperate even, to throw the people I talk to a bone, but I'm still looked at like a crazy person when I ask for even the tiniest concessions. It's led me to the point where I am explicitly against the left due to the amount of narrative control they have. If Trumpism becomes the de facto political movement in America (fat chance) I would likely flip the script as I would find myself getting shit on for pointing out dumb policies or excesses in this theoretical world.
More than that, I get very sick of the "oh are you both sides-ing?", as if reducing my own ability to recognize separate but still-true issues to some kind of waffling is a winning argument. The sides are very different, their excesses affect people in much different ways, but they often rhyme because it turns out humans lie, overreact, and punish their opponents in very similar ways! And if I point that out, I'm trying to fence sit.
I am happy that I have fostered real life friendships with left leaning people that will at least politely allow me to voice my concerns, even if I get troubled looks and "I don't agree". I have become very tired of politics in general, and I'd probably have taken the grillpill a while ago, but unfortunately unplugging doesn't fix the problem, so I might as well do a modicum of trying to get a clear picture of things so I can at least push back when I get told about fascism for the umpteenth time in a week.
Unfortunately that's the mad logic of war. We must enforce discipline to force our side to fight together at maximum strength. Anyone who dares to criticize our side, even if it's true (especially if it's true!) is either an idiot who needs reeducation, or a traitor to be eliminated. The neutrals will be seized for their resources. Those who just want to grill will end up on the menu!
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Wait, what is this philosophy of life? Just becoming the "man that's crazy bro, catch the game last night" guy in the meme?
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Yes. It's adjacent to "hiding one's power level", as even if you have some political beliefs, you understand there's nothing positive that can be accomplished by talking about them in social situations. And in many cases, simply choosing to talk about it less actually causes you to care less, and happiness increases as a result.
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So I'm not a Social Media bird, and I've talked about this before, but my experience has been incredibly similar in the sense that my wife sometimes checks in because she's afraid that I might be an in-the-closet Fascist White Supremacist Neo-Nazi (and I'm talking genuine uncertain fear here, not performative) because in the past, I've had the gall to
point out existing precedentsengage in whataboutism sometimes when she wants to conversate in the vein of, "ZOMG Trump/The Republicans did a thing! Outrage!"Sounds familiar, yes.
The irony in all this is my goal in my posts to socials isn't to own the libtards! My goal is to try to help people see that we're not living in a fascist dystopia. Billionaires don't matter! Things are improving! The economy is relatively good! Don't believe the hype about declining longevity and health care! Stop despairing all of the fucking time.
And people get so mad about it.
My wife knows a bit better but I think her deal is that she mostly feels like she lives in a sick society and wants to escape to Europe, where she had fond memories of doing an exchange program as a teenager and a semester of school or two. She knows Europe has problems, but they're not constantly blasted across media. Indeed, the problems her friends in Europe worry about are mostly problems in the US.
I get it. Even though she mostly avoids media (we're the usual no TV in house, no subscriptions, she minimizes screen use herself) she still can't help catch politics contagion from her friends and the few times a week she checks FB to see what her local mom's affinity group is up to.
I agree with your linked post. The correct, healthy response to all of this is (a) almost all of this shit is fake to start with but (b) of the things that are real, you mostly can't do anything about them anyway so you should not disproportionately spend your time worrying about it.
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And then @Amadan will wonder why someone might consider a good chunk of left wingers to be actually evil.
Depends on your definition of "evil". I generally require malice, and a malicious actor probably wouldn't try to confirm the situation with the wife before spreading rumours or making false reports to the police.
Not saying there aren't malicious people on that side of the aisle, of course - I'm not an imbecile - but this behaviour isn't something I'd take as evidence of it. With that said, severe delusion without malice clearly can suffice to produce major problems for others; the meme example is of course the Pyro.
That’s the malice.
There’s no confirmation - there’s a false question of safety.
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These people are successfully suppressing right-wing discourse by harassing family members. Whether they literally have a tail and horns, that's evil.
I'm not disputing that this is a state of affairs that's a major problem in need of solution. The fact that the Pyro thinks he's helping does not remove people's right to avoid being incinerated - in that case, if perhaps not this one, lethal force in self-defence is perfectly acceptable.
But "know thine enemy" is a basic principle, and there's a difference between some loon who thinks you're an evil alien out to eat his brain and a Mary Ann Cotton.
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I don't. There aren't a lot of mustache-twirling villains in real life, and it doesn't take a lot of creativity to come up with a story where you're the good guy, actually.
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