futon penguin ?
RT @catvalente@twitter.com
The slow destruction of Twitter means I don’t have to limit myself to 280 characters anymore.
So this is a LONG-ASS post about having been online for decades & lost so many spaces to malfeasance and malice & what to do now.
Because I need to scream.
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
??: https://twitter.com/catvalente/status/1605862595193290752
futon penguin ?
Ever wondered why fascists in different places hate overlapping but not exactly the same behaviors? They all hate complexity aka anything different from the majoritarian/power narrative, and those narratives are broadly similar across societies but do have some variations.
futon penguin ?
Though, speaking of conspiracy theories, it's again the same dynamic there: rejecting the intolerable complexity of the real world in favor of some narrative that more easily fits with preexisting scripts.
futon penguin ?
We see it with the Democrats' insidtence on incremental change. There's no conspiracy thinking needed around that. It literally is that they've been selected for their willingness to reject the complexity of understanding how the present might differ from the past.
futon penguin ?
(In the case of the blue haired barista, for that couple, they've clearly spent so much of their lives stuck in one script that they literally don't have the ability to change it. Which them becomes an attack bc they're so invested in rejecting the complexity of human history.)
futon penguin ?
It's why people's self-reported wellbeing is the first thing fascists discount. Fascists are humans, so they know how internally subjective such assessments *can* be, and if they acted on anyone else's, that would be tantamount to acknowledging that complexity as valid.
futon penguin ?
That's why all tech CEOs are doing this anti-worker BS -- because they're all selected for their adherence to the socially simplistic scripts of power. The tech specific script is "big companies are always too complex," and then there's general power class anti-worker sentiment.
futon penguin ?
Add in another couple of iterations and you get to where we are today: that rejection of thinking, and of complexity beyond the surface level, is so identified with power that we literally do not have any leadership anywhere that doesn't engage in it.
futon penguin ?
3. The above works on a large scale *if* those assumptions match reality. If not, the process biases towards anti-meritocracy, because the only people willing to run with the scripts are people who find complexity so existentially terrifying that they're willing to deny reality.
futon penguin ?
It goes like this:
1. You learn some set of ideas & scripts early on in life.
2. The people who are best at running with those gain the most power & legitimacy, because everyone who can grant it is using those same scripts to evaluate.
futon penguin ?
My favorite example of this is that couple that was terrified of a blue-haired barista because they couldn't figure out how to address them in a gender-neutral way. Same phenomenon at a different scale.
futon penguin ?
Same thing happens with literally every other right-wing policy. All that BS they put out about traditional values and the dignity of work or whatever. They may believe it, but they believe it to the extent it acts as a public hedge against having to understand complexity.
futon penguin ?
Like, when people say COVID policy is about putting the economy ahead of people. The economy IS people. It would be better off if we pursued humane policies across the board. Bad COVID policy is the ruling class rejecting the idea that they should have to account for that.
futon penguin ?
This, BTW, is why it's so important to keep calling out hypocrisy among that set. It's not about convincing them. It's about demonstrating to everyone else that they are -- not even lying, but doing something even worse that comes before lying. Nullifying.
futon penguin ?
"The need to be right without thinking about it, and never have to see anything that wakens a spark of doubt in their own choices."
I've been saying this for years. The animating impulse of all this bad shit isn't even profits or tradition. It's the rejection of thinking.
futon penguin ?
On fascists and their preferences: "They don’t even want to think about them. They want them to be automatically considered superior and universally mandated so they don’t have to think about them—or else what do you think the fury over other people wearing masks was ever about?"
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