Government =/= Public. Since the politics of the right are inextricably tied into economic models of oppressing people and controlling society, we would be more successful to re-think what “funding” and capital even means. And act accordingly.[quote=“Phrenological, post:18, topic:90681”]
So also goes your solution and implementation-free “ideas”.
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My very point is that it is not the ideas which are failing, it is the lack of implementation. So perhaps we agree.
Exactly! They can’t advance a shadow-platform without doing one or the other. It is only possible using one-sided media.
We agree on the issue being messaging, but “oh destroy the old guard and new that promote untruth” is something that nobody has any clue how to implement without the potential to be just as bad off.
I trust reformers more than revolutionaries because I know the reformer understands the system and can conceptualize a better version. The revolutionary generally says “this couldn’t be worse! We’ll figure out the details after our glorious win!” and we’re back to the old evils with new faces.
Social Justice Warrior is used ironically, meaning that they think the person doesn’t care about actual social justice, and isn’t a warrior but is going after low-hanging fruit. I would embrace the term Social Justice Warrior for myself if used literally, and I have known several others who would, in addition to you. However, the people commonly called SJWs (or tumblrinas, or whatever) are a little too academic for me.
As I always say, if you need permission, it’s not a protest, it’s a parade.
This is a big part of Trump’s appeal. The Right is sick and tired of talking like Jeb Bush and John Kasich. They want to be able to express what they know we’re all thinking (wink wink nudge nudge!) Eventually something has to give. Either they have to stop being bigots or they have to stop pretending they’re not bigots.
I was not suggesting destroying anything. What I was advocating was being constructive and establishing something different, more realistic. Creating new media, new kinds of wealth and funding, new measures of cultural capital don’t need to be destructive because they are voluntary. None of that stops anybody who genuinely prefers the oppressor’s economy from staying with it. Your concern assumes substituting one totalitarianism for another totalitarianism rather than enjoying an ecology of different systems. I doubt if there are any one-size-fits-all systems applicable to hundreds of millions of people.
The only reason why I touched upon this here is that I think that broadcast media do play a large part in this process of how people perceive (or ignore) privilege, persecution, rights, ingroups/outgroups, etc. There does IMO need to be more progressive media, but getting into the details of how seem beyond the scope of the immediate topic. I even made one just for it, so we don’t need to derail the discussion here:
“Until recently, religious institutions, academia, and media set out the parameters of acceptable discourse, and it ranged from the unthinkable to the radical to the acceptable to policy,” Simas said. “The continuum has changed. Had Donald Trump said the things he said during the campaign eight years ago—about banning Muslims, about Mexicans, about the disabled, about women—his Republican opponents, faith leaders, academia would have denounced him and there would be no way around those voices. Now, through Facebook and Twitter, you can get around them. There is social permission for this kind of discourse. Plus, through the same social media, you can find people who agree with you, who validate these thoughts and opinions. This creates a whole new permission structure, a sense of social affirmation for what was once thought unthinkable. This is a foundational change.”
I think it’s a consequence of decades of mainly shaming racists into silence instead of attacking the substance of their ideology. We have gotten some better treatment for people, but the bigotry simply festered in the background. Like when an infection hides until the medicine is gone. When we decide that ANYTHING is “unacceptable” for discourse, that thing does not simply cease to exist.
There does seem to be a thing where victimhood is somehow a thing to be desired. I don’t think it is a very healthy attitude. The persecution thing has always been a big part of the fundamentalist Christian identity. Christian folklore always exaggerated or misrepresented the levels of persecution experienced by the early church, and when there was no persecution, they invented it. I attended a Christian private school for a while, and it was a big part of the fundamentalist movement. They had Anita Bryant speaking about homosexuals, and there was always the threat of organized secular humanists, who were working under the direction of Satan.
There is a thing going on, I don’t know if it is really any sort of persecution, but this video sort of shows an extreme example of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsoVYStL6gQ
There’s another example in the President Elect who is the eternal victim. Anything that goes wrong, any criticism, always a horrible, vicious, unjustified attack on a poor innocent victim who’s never ever done anything wrong.
Another one I am hearing a lot these days is “racist” for a black person who calls another person racist. Like, not even reverse racism, but just, they’re a racist - against a white person.
