Presuming that’s what you’re doing. That is not what you are doing, even if you believe that’s what you’re doing.
Requiring political candidates to have values we respect. is also an “old gimmick.”
Welcome to the world of rights pleading, where instead of arguing the world should be better for everyone because it’s been shitty to marginalized groups, we instead argue it has to get shittier for everyone. (In a way that only benefits the powerful people like employers, but of course.)
Whataboutism is not a solution to fucking anything. Especially because labor relations are a relevant aspect of left-wing praxis. If you see this as a distraction from issues, then I don’t hesitate in the slightest to say you don’t understand what the issues are.
And if Bernie Sanders or AOC or any candidate that is currently running is this nasty to their employees, I have choice words for them too. But that’s not what I’m seeing. I see Bernie Sanders pledging to do better and implement systems to protect his workers from harassment in the workplace and AOC paying her staffers a living wage. Fucking show me the beam, and I will denigrate it as well.
What’s happening here is old-school, indeed: People are being rooked by their own rhetoric. I’m not going to stand idly by while the language of justice is co-opted by the establishment for its own mercenary purposes. That goes for Mr. Sanders or AOC or Joe Biden, or literally any fucking person. I’m done being fucking timid about this bullshit appropriation of genuine social causes to protect some of the most powerful people on this planet. And if you’re running for POTUS, then are defintionally someone with a lot of power, no matter what demographic you come from.
I would put it differently, that the crime of this story is to make Senator Klobuchar seem somehow uniquely bad. To make it seems as if she is an especially bad. That’s why the money quote for me in Laura McGann’s article in Vox was the first one in the excerpt I quoted.
That is not what I am saying at all. What I am saying is that a lot of these behaviours are things we let slide every day because it’s men doing them.
A man yells at his staff and he’s “passionate”. A man asks for the impossible and he “has high standards”. Bernie gets described as “brusque” and “grumpy”. A woman would be called “abrasive” “caustic” or “shrill”. She’d be called “overly demanding” or “nit picky”.
I am not saying to cut Klobachar some slack. I am saying that maybe men should start being subjected to the same scrutiny as women. Maybe men should be held to the same standards instead of hiding behind them. My very first post I said both things can be true.
Funny how everybody wants take “hey this is sexist” and think that we want women to be given the same breaks men all the time get instead of demanding that men clean up their acts, too. So quit twisting my words to suit your narrative. I have no time for that.
Men have heroic faults and strong driving personalities. Women have devastating weaknesses and vicious unregulated emotions. When men challenge others they are being manly, when women challenge others they are out of control. Same as it ever was… and I’d vote for Bernie, but I’m not going to lie to myself over it.
