If merely asking a question and letting the subject talk counts as making fun of people, then maybe that says more about the people being asked the questions than the people asking the questions.
That said, there’s nothing fun about this mass divorce from reality. It isn’t amusing, it’s appalling - the answers, not the questions. A lot of people tried ignoring them. It didn’t work.
I am fluent in idiot, dumbass, and three dialects of nonsense, and I cannot parse this.
“OH help, I’m in a Transformer. Let me out!”
I believe it went down something like this: She was told to be angry at someone… for reasons. What reasons escaped her and she’s doing her best at the part about being being angry at someone. Understanding the reasons isn’t her part so she hasn’t bothered to do that part. Her part is the being angry part.
You had me… and then you lost me. Has any one of these people complained about this fact? Or automation? Or the fact that they’re the de facto front line for corporate profits at every level?
Or is this just you projecting? When someone tells you who they are, etc, etc.
In other words, I don’t think anyone here has an empathy deficit. It’s just that empathy doesn’t apply to this issue. If they were clearly able to elucidate their grievances, we’d have something, but instead we have “argle, bargle, robot, digitile, blah blah blah”. That, my friend is worthy of ridicule because there is simply nothing to examine.
I’m able to listen to morons. My time is too valuable to use that ability for anything more than entertainment.
To listen to people who can actually demonstrate with words that they know what the heck they’re talking about. Especially when they’re going out of their way to make others miserable as part of a public demonstration, which is what members of this convoy are doing.
If they want to discuss serious issues they should appoint serious people to speak for them. But therein lies their problem.
If she was actually there to protest ELDs she had every opportunity to say so.
What she DID claim to be protesting was complete and utter nonsense. So yeah, I’m not going to go out of my way to pretend I have respect for her batshit conspiracy theories when she clearly doesn’t have respect for people who prefer an evidence-based approach to reality.
That’s the thing. She had the opportunity to explain what she meant, and I expected something about automating jobs, but she went full “controlling us with what they put in our bodies.”
It is sad, to be sure.
Anyone who’s been part of a well-organized movement should recognize how these poor misguided souls are being riled up but then hung out to dry.
But also, she showed up to a public protest. Asking her what she’s protesting is not being a dick.
Look closer…
She’s not able to articulate properly what her distress is. But I think she knows, perhaps subconsciously, that her job is going away due to automation. Which it is. And her kids are going to have less opportunity than she did. Which they are. At least as things are going now.
As Trump fades, it presents an opportunity for someone to lead these people (and me) to a better place. Ignoring them and calling them names at this point is the equivalent of disbanding the Iraqi army after Saddam fell.
Two different things. Ignoring them is not what we’re doing (sunshine is the best disinfectant, etc.). And pointing out that someone is an inarticulate and ignorant conspiracist because she voluntarily demonstrates herself as such is not unfair name-calling. She had a chance to bring up some real problems about working as a long-haul trucker and she blew it.
Also, it’s been well-established that trying to lead people like this to a better place as you suggest only results in an angry “you think you’re better than me?” in response.
I don’t know, maybe a lot of them have complained about electronic logging and the media just aren’t listening because that doesn’t bring the clicks.
Empathy should apply here. We should be able to extend empathy even to inarticulate, poorly educated people. If not, they will find a demagogue who (as we have sadly seen) will magnify their fears and feed them nonsense.
It kind of feels like the expectation of empathy had been pretty one-sided though.
We’re always asked to have empathy for the people who are literally waving banners reading FUCK YOUR FEELINGS as they reject science and law and try to overturn free and fair elections and continually fight to ensure certain folks are denied basic human rights.
I don’t know. I grew up around inarticulate, poorly educated people and was, in fact one of them. Didn’t stop me from getting past knee-jerk abstractions that have no foundation in reality.
For the most part, anyway.
We do extend them empathy around here, mainly by encouraging them to join trade unions where articulate and better educated people can speak on their behalf and effect change in DC that’s a little more substantive than trying to block traffic on the Beltway.
Where’s that “THIS!” gif?
That’s the entire subtext here; empathetic people (almost exclusively liberals, sorry not sorry) are expected to keep on extending a hand to those drowning in the sand of their own ignorance and are decried for their occasional forays into humor and collegial ribbing because it’s impossible to exist in a permanent state of wokeness and abstraction. It’s fucking exhausting.
And there are plenty of articulate, well-educated people who are outright garbage human beings. It’s not like Trump has any shortage of doctors and lawyers and media personalities on his side.
You don’t need an advanced degree to tell which side courts the biggest assholes.
And maybe they can access some of the benefits of collective bargaining such as access to higher education (paid by the man) and a deeper understanding of their role in the mill currently grinding them to dust.
But, “Let’s go Brandon” is catchy, so here we are.
What happens when that occurs in the opposite chronological order and they try to overthrow the legitimately elected government? Empathize harder? Can we stop empathizing when they are beating us with fence poles?
