in which all political distinctions collapse
2016-03-03
I just read this guardian article that compiled emails from trump supporters. It’s a deeply fascinating read. The biggest take away I get from it is that, by and large, the political spectrum has lost all meaning. There is no more ‘right’ and no more ‘left’. Liberal, conservative, progressive, etc. all of this is meaningless.
Here’s my fav example from the article:
I’m a liberal-left college professor in the social sciences. I’m going to vote for Trump but I won’t tell hardly anybody.
I’m angry at forced diversity and constant, frequently unjustified complaints about racism/sexism/homophobia/lack of trans rights. I’m particularly angry at social justice warriors and my main reason to vote Trump is to see the looks on your faces when he wins.
It’s not that I like Trump. It’s that I hate those who can’t stand him. I want them to suffer the shock of knowing all their torrents of blog posts and Tumblr bitch-fests and “I just can’t …” and accusations of mansplaining didn’t actually matter. That they’re still losing. And that things are not getting better for them. They’re getting worse.
Sure, sure. We could get into a discussion about whether or not this man is a ~real left liberal~ but that isn’t the point. For me, the point is that there is has been little substantive difference between the two poles this entire time. Yes, historically, there have been some important differences but… not enough and not in the ways that matter.
I like to constantly point out how people on the left and people on the right have a pretty unified stance of transmisogyny and general willingness to ‘morally mandate’ trans women out of existence. Feminists join up with the conservatives who oppose reproductive justice just to ensure that trans women have nowhere to pee.
This is only an example, though. As the marginalized and disenfranchised of any given white supremacist settler state know, very little changes regardless of their being a ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ government. Given that both positions fundamentally shore up an institution fundamentally grounded in violence and genocide.
(Note: this is also why a lot of the oppressed americans I know see no real difference between Bernie, Hillary, and Trump. They are all the same. People like to discuss this as a matter of ‘degrees of evil’ but that’s pretty disingenuous. If all three candidates want you and everyone like you dead, I’m unclear as to how the method of killing makes for a difference of ‘evil’. I mean… I guess I could see someone saying being tortured to death is worse than being quickly killed but… depending on your perspective you could frame any of the candidates as either.)
Anyway, I’m laughing at the reactionary and paternalistic response by this ‘left-liberal professor’. He really thinks he needs to teach us all a lesson about how things aren’t getting better? How they are getting worse? lmao.
Anyone who’s been paying attention can see how the US (like much of europe) has been sliding towards facism. This has been going on for many, many years. At least a decade (since I really started paying attention). I’m well aware that things are getting worse. It might actually be, shockingly, one of the reasons why I’m trying to resist this. Idk. I wonder if the rise of us ~social justice warriors~ has any correlation to the slide towards facism???????
The fact that this br0 thinks that by taking on a pro-injustice stance means that we’ll all learn a valuable lesson about complying with the white supremacist settler state he loves…. I mean. It already isn’t working. So like… wat?
But reading through that article… Like. I’m laughing at the yoga instructor, who is most likely white, saying stuff about drone strikes when he is actively involved in the appropriation and colonization of yoga… Lol. The cognitive dissonance.
Its all a great example for how and why these political labels people slap on themselves hold no meaning. From the view at the bottom, all these assholes look alike.