I have been on the internet a *long* time. Writing about television and getting hate mail for a *long* time. The spittling vitriol I have seen about MR. & MRS. SMITH on Prime, most of which vitriol ranges from thinly veiled racism to open racism, is freaking me out. People’s brains have been bent.
I seem to have lost the screenshot, but Sherrilyn Ifill said it best on Twitter a few years ago, and it was along the lines of, people were looking for an excuse to be the worst version of themselves and Trump gave it to them.
One of the pieces on Trump that’s stuck with me the most was about how establishment Republicans responded to him in Connecticut. Basically they had always acted like their wealth came with perceived obligations to society, then Trump showed them “actually it doesn’t” and they all got on board.
continue changing the norms until such racists hide from being outcast instead of from quietly knowing that all the powerful ppl would implement their desires
Every time my soft left sensibilities start to go "hmm, is it okay someone did that?" I remember that I'm actually asking "should I be a literal Nazi sympathiser?" and I quickly remember how good the version of that video set to Mambo No. 5 was.
A lot of the worst of us are feeling licensed to say and do nightmarish shit. I hate it a lot but don’t know what we can do at the macro or I can do at the micro level to shove that shit back down whatever hole it oozed out of.
