Aspiration
Social Engineering.
- Thread starter luka
- Start date
Aspiration
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
That's a bit different though, as it's people encountering the consequences of their own actions.
Leo
Well-known member
That's a pretty big leap. There's a huge difference between saying "hey dumb asses, how's that Brexit working out for you?" on twitter and wanting to live in a dictatorship where people with opposing views are severely punished.
version
Well-known member
It's easier to justify it to yourself, but you're ultimately just taking pleasure from other people's misery.
I used to be like "Haha! Project Fear, is it?!" when I'd read another negative outcome of Brexit, but I increasingly just find the whole thing depressing. I'm still a bit like that when it comes to a politician or journalist being put on the spot about it, but I don't feel good about kicking ordinary people when they're down and struggling to buy food or whatever because of it.
version
Well-known member
We've already been over this though. There are lots of people gloating over and willing the deaths or ruin of people who disagree with them on the pandemic. There are lots of people who are perfectly fine with protesters being beaten up and arrested if they don't agree with the protest. There are lots of people who want to bring back capital punishment. It just goes on and on. If someone doesn't like you then their supposed values often go out the window.
luka
Well-known member
Leo is an interesting case study in that he is the last man alive for whom the New York Times demarcates the limits of sane and acceptable discourse. Anything outside the New York Times is crank territory by definition. As far as I know no other human has managed to preserve this degree of innocence. everyone else has bought wholly into Trump's 'Fake News' framework.
line b
Well-known member
Its also because most of the self righteous anti brexit/trump people would be their biggest fans with even the most minor change in adolescent circumstances.
Clinamenic
Binary & Tweed
And an enduring neurosis about passing tests, meeting quotas, etc.
Leo
Well-known member
and debt.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
To be clear, I'd never feel like that about someone who voted Leave because they really thought it was the right choice at the time, as long as they didn't then vote for either the Tories or UKIP/BXP in two subsequent elections, thereby ensuring we got the most chaotic and damaging Brexit possible. But plenty of people did just that, and they now fall into two groups. There are those who are insisting everything is going swimmingly, and the only reason anyone would think otherwise is that they've been hoodwinked by the pernicious liberal media (such as the Daily Mail or Express, apparently); then there are those who are well aware that it's a total shit-show, but who are still clinging to Brexit as an intrinsically great thing, except that it's been ruined by Remoaners, or the EU, or Macron, or the perfidious Scotch, or Labour... literally anyone except the Conservative government in general or Boris Johnson in particular.
Now obviously nobody has ever changed their mind by being told "You're deluded", but I think it's fair to say that people in those latter two categories are deluded.
Leo
Well-known member
these from a recent Economist relate to some discussion here and in other threads, hopefully they aren't behind a paywall:
How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?
Left-wing activists are using old tactics in a new assault on liberalism
How did American “wokeness” jump from elite schools to everyday life?
Left-wing activists are using old tactics in a new assault on liberalism
version
Well-known member
I think this stuff's been more or less absorbed now. The people still trying to get people fired and "cancelled," are effectively playing Whac-A-Mole when they should be looking at the machine itself.
Representation's obviously important, but, beyond a certain point, how much good does it do if the result's just a more diverse ruling class preserving the same old structures?
Luke posted something the other day about the military-industrial complex now being run by women and it felt like reading the last line of Animal Farm.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Wasn't one of Mark Fisher's principles that "There is no 'good' ethnicity" - something like that?