Decided to tell the world the entire reason conservatism exists and the function it plays for its believers and what we, on the left, need to do about it today.
And you’re welcome.
Quick version : conservatism exists to hide the fact that they don’t really understand what is going on from stupid people.
Not stupid in a scientific sense. These are people of normal intellect who handle everyday life with their work and their family and their hobbies just fine.
It is only on the top layer of reality, the layer where politics operates, where they are stupid. That’s the layer that deals with things outside our daily lives and our quotidian needs. It’s the layer where abstract knowledge resides and where, by and large, errors have no immediate impact on our lives.
Believing your car can run on mayonnaise instead of gasoline might, at the very least, make you late for work.
But thinking the world is flat will, at worst, make you look stupid and weird to your co-workers when you bring it up in the lunchroom.
And because of this lack of consequence, people are free to believe whatever it is that makes them the happiest. Whatever suits their needs. Sure, reality is part of the mix too, at the very least as part of one’s common sense understanding of how the world works, but on that top abstract layer, there is a LOT of wiggle room.
Politics is where that layer meets reality. Thinking the world is flat has no consequences until you vote in the Flat Earth party who vows to spend a trillion dollars either “proving” the world is flat or flattening it.
The Trump era is where the truth of all this comes crashing down on all of us. Millions of people all over the world are learning the bitter truth that politics actually matter. That it matters whether the people and the policies they vote for or in make sense, match their morality, are based on reality, and are actually going to be good for them and their families and their interests.
It must be a harsh awakening for these people and I am sure the reason that these right wing lunatics still have a shrinking minority of people as supporters is that some people will be so wedded to the false reality of the right wing ideosphere that even dire personal consequences can’t get them to pull their fingers out of their ears and start listening to reason.
But for the others who are waking up from the honey scented dreams of right wing reality to the heavy hangover of wondering what the hell happened and how they ended up here and why they thought all those crazy, terrible things were true.
The truth, that they believed them because they seemed better than the real world and they liked living in a fantasy land where everything was simple and easy and they never had to think about anything and it was the liberals who couldn’t face “the real world”.
I should mention that the left wing has some equally reality averse types. The difference is that we have managed to resist letting them get the upper hand.
Plus we skew heavily towards the intellectual and belief in abstract things like truth over, for instance, social conformity and ideological comfort.
And our pervasive fear that someone will think we’re stupid and/or not nice.
In my heart of hearts, I don’t have an ideology. I just have my own understanding of reality and apply my own morality to it.
As it happens, by the world’s standards, that makes me left wing. So that is the label I choose to wear.
But to quote Jon Stewart, “I’m anti-bullshit, what does that make me?”.
There needs to be a third way. A new axis. Better labels.
Until then, I’m a free agent.
More after the break.
My Bluesky ban
Relax, it was only a 24 hour ban.
But I am still miffed about it.
I was very surprised yesterday to find I had been banned from Bluesky. So surprised that at first I assumed it was the person whose message I was commenting up who had been banned, not me.
I mean, I don’t know them, and I’m sure they’re perfectly nice people, but so am I.
But no, it was me. And I was, of course, quite shocked and for a little while I just sort of floundered around clicking this and that on the Bluesky website as if that would make them realized they had made a terrible mistake in reinstate me, or maybe I would stumble on some kind of workaround they hadn’t thought of.
What can I say, I was reeling.
Eventually, it occurred to me that they had probably emailed me about it, so I checked my email and there it was :
A Bluesky account you control (@fruvous73.bsky.social) posted:
Agreed. Mitch the Bitch should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell.
This post violates our Community Guidelines regarding violent or threatening speech. This includes, but is not limited to, the following:
• Threats of violence or physical harm: This includes threats or encouragement of violence against individuals, groups, institutions, or the general public.
• Incitement of self-harm or suicide: Content that encourages self-harm or suicide.
• Wishes of harm: Expressions of a desire for harm directed at a specific person or group.
bluesky, being dicks
Bolding and underlining and italics mine, obviously.
The underlined rule is the one I broke, and I can’t very well argue that I was not wishing harm on a specific person, so I am not going to bother objecting to my ban.
I broke the rules, I did the time.
In my Gen X defense, I was only referencing this scene from Ace Ventura :
And, needless to say, my deep and abiding hate for Mitch “The Bitch” McConnell.
Haven’t forgotten how you enabled today’s mishigas, Mitch!
I hope Satan turns the spit slowly.
(Don’t worry. This blog is privately hosted. )
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.