politics

So I have a personal example, and I'll keep it brief because there's a lot of really detailed nuance here.

I was holding a meeting about 2 years ago, and someone recommended a follow up sub-committee meeting. I told them I'd pull together a small group of people to hold a "pow wow". An Asian-American girl in the meeting who's your prototypical hyper-aware leftist reached out to me after the meeting. She handled it 100% professionally and exactly the way she should have, and she politely said, "I didn't want to say something during the meeting because I know you didn't mean anything by it, but I do cringe a bit when you call your meetings a 'pow wow.' I just thought you should be aware." I thanked her for pointing it out, apologized that it was something I'd always said almost unconsciously, and told her I'd try to do better in the future.

I've thought about that interaction for years. There's something in my lizard brain that feels almost offended that she'd call me out for something like that. I consider myself to be a keenly aware left-leaning person, and I'm quite sensitive to racial or sexuality-based jokes. I run in some conservative circles, so these kinds of jokes are common. Though this particular confrontation shouldn't bother me, for some reason deep down it does. My irrational, emotional brain wants to say, "That's not fair! You know I didn't mean anything by it! I'm not racist!", and my rational brain just says, "No big deal, be better in the future."

I can't explain why it's so deeply unsettling to be called out for doing something racist when I clearly didn't mean it that way. But it does help me understand a right-leaning person who's used to building social capital by telling racially-charged jokes that were probably very funny 10-15 years ago. Suddenly they're not just living in a culture that doesn't find those things funny, they're surrounded by people who readily call them "racist" for repeating jokes they've probably heard dozens of times from other people. I do not think those kinds of people are racist, I just think they grew up surrounded by subconsciously-racialized tropes, and they're simply reflecting those tropes back out into the world. And I now know how deeply painful it can be to be called a racist when you 100% didn't intend it that way. I'm sure there's a spectrum of intent and personal reflection, and some people fall closer to the "racist" end of the spectrum, plus some people think more or less about how they're perceived by other people, but I understand their pain now. I cringe when the left so readily throws out these labels, not because they're not true on some level, but because they're "othering" to people who might be sandwiched between cultural sub-groups, and those kinds of attacks aren't going to make those people more reflective or open to your arguments.

I don't think cancel culture is a thing. You literally can't cancel anyone in this day and age. Ben Shapiro, Hulk Hogan, Jordan Peterson, Trump, Elon Musk, none of these people who "got cancelled" ever suffered anything other than an opportunity to get their names out there. The controversy is the point, they got clicks out of it. So there's that. Cancelling isn't a thing. It just gets you views.

...that usurps the politics of shame, and it's a very recent change. It now functions as a signal amplifier and makes things into a constant moralization machine. A machine that creates judgementalness. Like, an unnatural and exhaustive amount of judgementalness which starts to come off as fragility. Frailty, weakness, "victim culture" whatever you want to call it. It's a space ripe for trolls who want more views. Like there's a reason Matt Walsh can make millions from the "documentaries" he makes.

Anyways, I don't have a coherent answer for you. I've come to the conclusions I have, seen what I've seen and tried to explain it - it's all very new to me. I realized whilst trying to explain the garbage truck thing on here today.

...that there's two narratives on Trump the garbage man, and that they don't connect, and only one explains Trump's strange behaviours, appearances, and strategies.

Some of the credit for me seeing this, goes to monitoring right wing spaces, and videos like this one from ShoeOnHead - who says she's a progressive leftist, but essentially supports and explains the positions of young right wing men.

...and that probably ties into part of it, gender, race, class, ethnicity. These things are close to people's emotions. To their emotional identities.

I don't think I'm giving a good explanation here because I'm still figuring out how to explain it. But it has to do with

1. the digital landscape changing the function and profitablity of the politics of shame (Jordan Peterson brags about it this way "I've figured out how to monetize the Social Justice Warriors").

2. The moralization and judgemental landscape this creates being ripe for more trolling.

3. Identities being core to what emotionally drives people's responses. Whether that's fragile white masculinity, or Black Lives Mattering, or Trans rights.

4. An exploitative fascist like Trump coming along who understands PR.

All of this coming together at once creates a digital and emotional landscape that can be manicured by fascists in a way that may get them into office.

societies have utilized shame in order to shun unwanted or undesirable opinions forever

Using shame isn't new. Using shame in this particular way at this particular time appears to be a poor strategy. It's deliberately divisive and conservative reactionaries aren't the only ones who are motivated to vote against it. By now many people who call themselves liberal and have a history of reliably voting for Democrats oppose it too. I think Nate Silver does a good job of expressing why in the context of Israel, although he's looking at a much bigger picture. Most of these people are still voting for Democrats, because Harris is a centrist and Trump is, well, Trump. It's still not helping.

Lemmy is a place where it often seems like leftist views are almost universal among Democrats, but Lemmy is not representative of the large majority of Democratic voters. I don't think most Harris voters (as opposed to just the vocal Democrats online) despise Republicans.

Thanks I'll check it out!