I'd like to return to hearing uncomfortable viewpoints and being open to debate. And if we were back in the era where people whose beliefs I disagree with chose to practice decorum, I might even think that there was a shot at changing minds.
Here's the thing: over the past decade and change, the line between "teenage edgelord" and legitimate political rhetoric has become increasingly blurred. Those just voted into power and their supporters sound like screenshots of anons on Tumblr posted to Reddit in 10-year-old cringe compilations by college students because, unfortunately, that's what's forming a lot of beliefs now.
For example, no Democrats, be they extreme left (or what passes for it in America) or party establishment, are saying that they hate white men or that white men are the root of all evil. (Look up what they actually say if you think they are, reader; maybe you'll be surprised.) But...
...circlejerk Internet spaces are inferring that...
...online personalities are capitalizing on the gender war nearly omnipresent in most corners of the Internet today...
...most kids are terminally online (it's replaced TV as the screen babysitter), at a time when they don't have the critical reasoning skills to separate facts from fiction and are more interested in the staying power of quips and memes than making meaningful changes to the world around them...
...the algorithm built to engage clicks through ragebait feeds them more based on what they find...
...the parents don't push back because they're tired in a time when it's equally as tough to raise kids as it is to grow up, and they're economically worse off than their parents for the first time since the Great Depression, and they don't know how to deal with their child's unfettered access to technology because they are the first generation to have such things (run-on for emphasis)...
...and we have the nerve to act surprised when Gen-Z grows up and pulls the lever in Trump's direction.
I'd like to model a decorous response, but young or old, Trump supporters very publicly don't give a damn about the behavior we're trying to model. (I wish they did, it would make this a lot easier. The ones that do don't speak up for fear of getting shouted down by their own side or because they think they're not directly affected by any changes, and that's just as bad.) It is evident in every public and private space in which they speak. Luckily we're only getting the mild side in this thread with the poster who crows that he won a fair election. It's much worse in other places.
They don't care whether or if we accept the win, graciously or otherwise. All they care about is that they "owned" us. ("Pwned" us, if you prefer l33tspeak.) All they care about is that their rudimentary understanding of the economy is satisfied. (That's gonna turn around within a few years, not that I think they'll learn anything from it.) All they care about is that they "regained ground" they were told was being taken from them, and ensuring it's never taken away again. They'll learn it comes at a cost, probably too late for it to matter.
I understand where you're all coming from, but this is a new world, and I'm a little tired of pretending that the other side as a whole can be reasoned with when it is plain that some of them can't, and those that can have made ineffectual (at best) efforts to rein them in, and those that can't are (or are about to be, within the next decade or less) the ones in the driver's seat.
Formerly gvendo2005
Broadway Legend
joined: 5/1/05
Blocked: After Eight, suestorm, david_fick, emlodik, lovebwy, Dave28282, joevitus, BorisTomashevsky, Seb28
Updated On: 11/8/24 at 12:21 PM
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