I need to get some sleep, but
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The extremely online lib comentariate are basically putting on an “I’m a bleeding heart liberal and I care about people costume” because they like being part of that culture. They like the food, the music, they like NPR, they like suits that fit and long meetings
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The majority of libs are hopelessly lost. They’re stuck in this hyperreal whatever the fuck of politics, culture, media. They care about people, or they want to care about people, but they’re so mired in media lies and distortions they have no real concept of what is real - They’re still seeing “40,000 killed in Gaza”, they’re seeing “Uighur Genocide”. They’re seeing their leaders go on and on about immigrants, or Hamas, or whatever teh fuck idk I don’t watch their news. But the important thing is; They don’t know what is or isn’t real. They don’t have the skills, allies, or knowledge to sift through the bullshit.
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and then there’s a tiny layer of dregs down at the bottom of the barrel of nerds and perverts, us, who are obsessive about politics and information, who talk to people across the world, who are reflexively hostile to authority enough to try and i hope to god succeed in trying to pull some kind of actual picture of what’s really happening together.
But the Libs are paralyzed, unable to act, and trapped in their cycle of ritually voting then spending 4 years wondering why things aren’t getting better because they either have no grounding in reality at all, or because they cannot tell what is real and what isn’t anymore. It’s not even just propaganda and lies, it’s an inability to know that there is a real world that could be obscured by propaganda and lies.
IDfk, but there’s some big scale, big picture fuckery happening that turns people in to whatever the fuck is happening out there. I’m goinjg to bed.
I need to effortpost this sometime, but I think it’s more useful to focus away from the individual liberal and take a Gramscian look at the culture that produces the liberal. A lot of people aren’t arguing with you, they are telling you their personal story.
Baudrillard’s various works show how the Signifier gradually displaces the Signified, and the manufacture of Signifiers. Zizek’s Sublime Object of Ideology shows how these free-floating Signifiers are stitched together to form a personal identity as a story about themselves that they tell themselves. From a certain point of view, the liberal is working exactly as manufactured. People don’t lightly let go of their personal narrative. But once you understand this process, you can begin the process of restitching, Symbol by Symbol, a person’s personal narrative rather than confronting them about it.
As a personal example, I have openly shown contempt for advertising. I mock them and point out how frequently they show up and/or repeat. Now others around me are repeating a few of the mannerisms. Through this cultural breach another organic and genuine culture of questioning and discussion about advertising is emerging.