I mean, it’s great that people are getting more involved and aware. But I think the combination of the explosion of political awareness with the current state of discourse thanks to social media/the devolution of the right into petty, bald-faced, reactionary rage (some of you may not have been around for this, but the right used to have a mask over their petty reactionary rage) has made for a noxious cocktail of nothing of value ever being discussed.
Now, was it more frustrating when they were less open about their intentions? Sure. Because it felt like shouting at a wall. And it was more “boring” to be politically aware. But under those wraps we had the patriot act, PNAC, intelligent neocons playing politics way more competently, and a serious problem with somehow even less conscientious democrats.
But now we have companies operating blanket eavesdropping via apps/home aid/LLMs (and the patriot act is still hanging around), project REDMAP/Project 2025, less than intelligent far right lunatics not understanding how to play politics, and democrats playing conscientious for appearances while still being, at best, useless neoliberals and at worst, reactionaries themselves.
Things have changed, and not for the better. Add on top of that discourse deteriorating into nonsense while everyone throws their hat in the mix with their uninformed opinions…it’s a depressing landscape. So, I don’t know if people can grow out of that obnoxious, I’ll-informed political stage because that’s just politics now.
Definitely a skewed signal to noise ratio, which at this point feels intentional. Politics felt far more boring in the before-fore, but I think most of that was me not paying close enough attention.
I had a casual conversation with ChatGPT a while back about how this level of political division is unprecedented in the country (I guess I conveniently forgot about the civil war during this), and the response was basically “Everybody says that in every era,” so I wonder if I just have too narrow a focus. I should look into that…
I was so apathetic in my early voting years, so I guess I’m doing my weird political thing in mid-life.
I mean, it’s great that people are getting more involved and aware. But I think the combination of the explosion of political awareness with the current state of discourse thanks to social media/the devolution of the right into petty, bald-faced, reactionary rage (some of you may not have been around for this, but the right used to have a mask over their petty reactionary rage) has made for a noxious cocktail of nothing of value ever being discussed.
Now, was it more frustrating when they were less open about their intentions? Sure. Because it felt like shouting at a wall. And it was more “boring” to be politically aware. But under those wraps we had the patriot act, PNAC, intelligent neocons playing politics way more competently, and a serious problem with somehow even less conscientious democrats.
But now we have companies operating blanket eavesdropping via apps/home aid/LLMs (and the patriot act is still hanging around), project REDMAP/Project 2025, less than intelligent far right lunatics not understanding how to play politics, and democrats playing conscientious for appearances while still being, at best, useless neoliberals and at worst, reactionaries themselves.
Things have changed, and not for the better. Add on top of that discourse deteriorating into nonsense while everyone throws their hat in the mix with their uninformed opinions…it’s a depressing landscape. So, I don’t know if people can grow out of that obnoxious, I’ll-informed political stage because that’s just politics now.
Definitely a skewed signal to noise ratio, which at this point feels intentional. Politics felt far more boring in the before-fore, but I think most of that was me not paying close enough attention.
I had a casual conversation with ChatGPT a while back about how this level of political division is unprecedented in the country (I guess I conveniently forgot about the civil war during this), and the response was basically “Everybody says that in every era,” so I wonder if I just have too narrow a focus. I should look into that…