Notices by Joan Westenberg (daojoan@mastodon.social)

Elon Musk comes from a wealthy family - however you slice it, however you value emeralds, they had money.

I come from a family of 7 kids living on a school teacher’s salary on the wheat belt.

But because I’m transgender, I’m the out of touch elite.

Make it make sense.

They’ll cry foul, claim victimhood, say they’re being “silenced” the second the consequences of their ideology come knocking. Pity lets them off the hook, makes their choices seem like the inevitable result of outside forces. But they aren’t.

Anyone who looks, thinks, or lives differently than they do. They keep swinging because swinging is easier than self-reflection, than admitting they might be wrong.

It’s a balm for the gnawing fear that they’re being left behind, that the world is changing, and it doesn’t care what they think about it. So they lash out at the people they’ve decided are to blame. Immigrants. Queer people.

To pity them is to misunderstand what they’re doing. It’s not passive. It’s not an accident. The hatred is the point. It fuels their sense of superiority, their belief that the world owes them something.

They’ve chosen this—chosen to define themselves not by love, or creation, or even simple self-interest, but by what they reject. It’s all agency, twisted and inverted, but agency nonetheless.

And look, it’s tempting to say, “Well, they’re victims too.” Maybe that’s true in the abstract, but let’s be real: you don’t owe them absolution for the misery they’ve decided to inflict on the rest of us. Misery isn’t a free pass. Hatred isn’t a cry for help.

Their entire worldview is a rejection—of people, of change, of the terrifying notion that the world isn’t built to serve their comfort. They define themselves by what and who they despise, and they wear that hatred like a badge, like a personality.

Conservatives today aren’t really about policies, ideas, or even pretending to solve problems anymore. They’ve stripped all that away, peeled it down to a raw, snarling essence: hatred. 🧵

If they aren’t railing against the “woke agenda” or the next bogeyman cooked up by talk radio, there’s just a void where their purpose should be. And yeah, maybe on some level, that’s tragic.

The sad truth is that hating everything isn’t much of a life. It’s hollow. It’s a treadmill of grievance, constantly finding new enemies and inventing new threats to get angry about because without them, there’s nothing left.

And sure, that’s bleak as hell, but here’s the thing: you don’t owe them pity for it.

This isn’t a matter of being harsh. It’s about understanding the game. Pity is what they weaponize, what they demand when someone pushes back against their hatred.

It’s tragic in the same way that watching someone fall into a pit they’ve spent their entire life digging is tragic. But pity? Empathy? No, they haven’t earned that.

We have to consciously apply critical reading skills to modern media instead of reacting reflexively

Read more 👉 https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-death-of-critical-thinking-will-kill-us-long-before-ai/

Something deeply fucking annoying about accounts with literally tens of thousands of followers complaining that they don’t get enough engagement and attention while some creators are struggling to get over 100 followers while pouring their heart and soul into their work.

friendly reminder that while technology evolves, human nature doesn’t

it’s reassuring to know that the most vocal leftist influencers are laser-focused on the greatest challenge of our time: the size of their audience on bluesky

whether we admit it or not, humanity has been waiting for World War III to drop like the next season of a prestige TV drama.

If there’s a “1” and a “2,” the existence of a “3” feels not only possible, but plausible, and then probable, and then all but inevitable.

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/world-war-3-is-not-inevitable-how-sequential-thinking-shapes-our-perception-of-conflict-2/

5/15 They want to turn you into a predictable machine that clicks, buys, and reacts on cue. And they’re good at it. Very fucking good.