I do categorically agree with you, but I have, and you might also have had, the benefit of a lot good environment that deliberate fostered my critical thinking, including being plugged into punk in the late 70s by an uncle who knew I would need it. But I’ve still got my heroes, some of them problematic ones, so I don’t hold the mere having of a hero who is not my hero against someone.
I also don’t waste my time with Trump fans or that ilk, because in the case of Trump I cannot identify how any of his fans are getting anything from what he’s offering, other than literally the much-vaunted “own”. Like, to explain the 2023 Trump fan, as far as I’m concerned one needs to reach for Plato or Nietszche and their conceptions of how mental slavery works. I don’t think anyone’s come up with anything that explains it better than either of those two; the only difference would be the degree to which they apply the principle.
Foucault might have something to say, but y’know, academic Postmodernism is a measurable part of how we got here, so fuck that guy…
But the circa-2020 Musk fan, that person is easier for me to explain to myself. That person has been steeped in capitalist mythology and deprived of a real picture of history, and statistically speaking, has not had their critical thinking fostered very well at all, and they believe that their life happens in a more or less static social world that does not have the upheavals and strife that happen in Those Other Places, because that is the reality that we North Americans have lived in for the last thirty years. We are so bored, in fact, we have nothing better to do than fuck up our own society with convoys and antivax movements that killed children with measles years before Covid came for us all.
So in the end, I see their current silence as indicative of thought taking place, and take good hope from that.
I likewise see the increasing loudness and escalating hyperbole of the right as a sign that they are at least becoming aware that they are losing; at some point, simple ignorant pride/pride in ignorance will explain whoever is left in that group.
I do categorically agree with you, but I have, and you might also have had, the benefit of a lot good environment that deliberate fostered my critical thinking, including being plugged into punk in the late 70s by an uncle who knew I would need it. But I’ve still got my heroes, some of them problematic ones, so I don’t hold the mere having of a hero who is not my hero against someone.
I also don’t waste my time with Trump fans or that ilk, because in the case of Trump I cannot identify how any of his fans are getting anything from what he’s offering, other than literally the much-vaunted “own”. Like, to explain the 2023 Trump fan, as far as I’m concerned one needs to reach for Plato or Nietszche and their conceptions of how mental slavery works. I don’t think anyone’s come up with anything that explains it better than either of those two; the only difference would be the degree to which they apply the principle.
Foucault might have something to say, but y’know, academic Postmodernism is a measurable part of how we got here, so fuck that guy…
But the circa-2020 Musk fan, that person is easier for me to explain to myself. That person has been steeped in capitalist mythology and deprived of a real picture of history, and statistically speaking, has not had their critical thinking fostered very well at all, and they believe that their life happens in a more or less static social world that does not have the upheavals and strife that happen in Those Other Places, because that is the reality that we North Americans have lived in for the last thirty years. We are so bored, in fact, we have nothing better to do than fuck up our own society with convoys and antivax movements that killed children with measles years before Covid came for us all.
So in the end, I see their current silence as indicative of thought taking place, and take good hope from that.
I likewise see the increasing loudness and escalating hyperbole of the right as a sign that they are at least becoming aware that they are losing; at some point, simple ignorant pride/pride in ignorance will explain whoever is left in that group.