10 years ago, gay Americans could not get married and have it count in all 50 states
20 years ago, you could be made uninsurable because you got sick once
30 years ago, HIV was a death sentence
40 years ago, acid rain was still a problem
Dedicated public servants keep pushing good things forward
That's not the problem with your tweet: it's the lying that these problems were all solved by politicians or civil servants just so.
You've completely erased the years or decades of fighting activists had to do to even get them acknowledged as problems.
I mean, they also left out everyone in private industry that worked to develop new drugs and methods to reduce pollution. We’re all in this together! The point is that we are collectively able to make things better & blanket, universal doomerism is simply unfounded.
The goal of all the work those activists did was to convince the politicians and civil servants to work on their behalf, because government is how our society organizes to actually get shit done
Don’t mean to be too bong-rippy here, but I honestly think it comes from a lot of people (and Western philosophers/critical theorists in the past) undervaluing the awesome but gentle power of persuasion and implementing systems of social consensus, and overvaluing ideals of “power” or “control”.
If you’ll forgive some Christian references and some (shudder) golf references, there’s an old 70s essay by a seminary prof who laid out Two Conceptions of Power: Unilateral/Coercive vs Relational, and how Western Civ, since about Plato, has been all coercive www.religion-online.org/article/two-...
We tend to think of power as the “ability to affect others without ourselves being affected”, but another form of power is “the capacity to influence and to be influenced by others”, that we often ignore or deride. Marx did a LOT to enshrine the instrumental relation of coercive power/knowledge.
But at the same time that simple fantasy mindset is part of the persuasion structure. I could sure do without the dooming, however we could really use those vocal people at the edge imagining the better world so we can agree to implement it.
It's simply because 10,000 years of society doesn't erase 2.5 million years of evolution (plus, hundreds of millions of years going back). We're primates, and primates establish hierarchy primarily from "might makes right".
No, we're equally related to both. They're both first cousin species to us. Chimps are just more famous because they're less endangered and so more experimented with.
However, bonobos are also hierarchical. They're just more flexible about power, with female alliances dominating solo males.
As noted in the other response, not really. Bonobos and chimps split around two million years ago, and our last common ancestor with the Pan genus was around eight million years ago.
I agree that there’s a lot of coding or instinct in us that understands power-as-coercion, but imho we take that understanding and seek out relations that confirm the instinct. There are other models in nature + history that don’t focus on tooth and claw, and we “rose above” primates thru sociality.
Yeah? And?
We're primates that over the millenia learned magic through poisoned sand, and are continuously evolving
Calling us "just primates" is throwing your hands up and saying nothing can be done.
Saying we're primates is acknowledging that reality is numerous layers of truth nested and interwoven with each other.
We are animals, that are mammals, that are primates, that are hominids, called humans.
This is very true. They want a revolution & how can you justify a revolution if the United States isn't irredeemable (even if it's imperfect). I saw a post today implying the US was imploding (which just is not the case). Yes, Trumpism happened but so did the backlash to Trumpism.
The Women's March was at the time the largest protest in US history, and extremely cringe. But all those grandmas and book clubs and church groups actually got real shit done.
They weren’t intersectional enough. There’s actually a point there, but any legitimate discussion of exclusion of women of color and trans women gets drowned out on dunking on the women who organized it.
I think this is it exactly. People will only revolt if every other avenue of change has been exhausted and failed. The first victim of revolution will always be any accomplishment that preceded it.
Even if Trump loses, Trumpism won't go away. I am skeptical of the idea that this movement won't find another avatar once the orange guy croaks. And I worry it'll be a more electorally palatable one.
The problem with Trumpism is you win elections by winning people over. Sure, Trumpism may continue to exist but every year less & less people will find Trumpism appealing because they can't govern/their shared reality has alienated everyone under 50.
I mean, if you believe polling, Trump *isn't* alienating everyone under 50. And far-right movements around the world are often driven by young people; I don't see why America would be immune to that. (I'm skeptical of polls, but I at least need to acknowledge that they *could* be correct.)
The biggest mistake Trumpism made was not adapting after Trump lost in 2020 & it was within the power of the Republican party to do so by convicting Trump in the Senate. Glen Younglin at one time was the face of what I call fascism lite but thankfully Republicans are cowards.
I'm not so sure, he gives off "haunted My Buddy doll" vibes that I don't think play outside a place like Ohio, where he significantly underperformed Trump.
Sure, but there are a lot of people in the online community who do. Granted, I don't think these people really matter IMO because social media is not real life (because they mostly live in non-competitive states/if they live in the US at all). They certainly exist though.
