The four-year coma is pure self-interest
Published by marco on
The article Liberals Believe In Nothing And Remember Even Less by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack) writes about how most people don’t actually stand for anything. They don’t have principles; they root for a team. She writes,
“I saw a post on Twitter where a leftist responded to a liberal who was acting like ICE just suddenly transformed into a modern gestapo under Trump, saying, “Liberals believe in nothing and remember even less.”
“And it’s just so true. They don’t believe in anything. They don’t stand for anything. It’s just a team sport for these people. Politics for the mainstream liberal is not about advancing values or building a better world, it’s about their team winning solely for the sake of winning. And because they have no real values or causes beyond winning for its own sake, what their team does when it’s in office doesn’t matter to them.
“A Democrat president can be as tyrannical and murderous as he wants and liberals will just brunch away in cheerful obliviousness, content with their knowledge that their team is holding the trophy.”
A good example is The End of College Life? by Jason Kottke in which he wonders whether he can even send his own precious kid to college because he wonders whether it might put his kid’s life in danger. But how else will the kid learn to be a good part of the empire’s machine like their father? How else if not at an elite institution?
Kottke hadn’t written a word about foreign policy since Trump left office. He sure as hell hasn’t said a word about Israel. Instead, he’s blithely asking about how to avoid having his own rich white kids avoid the downsides that have only very recently starting to affect people like himself and his family.
Hell, he’s already prepared his kids well: if they’re anything like him, then they have absolutely nothing to worry about, as they are 100% not going to say anything that the government doesn’t already approve of. He and his kids are absolutely not in the crosshairs.
Instead of worrying about people who’ve always been in the crosshairs—and who likely always will be—people have suddenly woken up because they are terrified that they might lose one of their myriad privileges. Most of the rest of the population was already living with a “fear that they might be picked up at any time for nothing,” no matter who the president was. It wasn’t as bad as in Israel for Palestinians…but it rhymed.
Instead of making any connections, these richie-riches all just worry about how they can shore up their own privilege, which has crumbled by a sand grain or two. Is Kottke rich? He would probably say no. But he’s openly asking people to advise him on how to matriculate his kids into elite institutions that cost near six figures per year.
He’s not asking which institutions his kids should go to now that it’s become apparent even to a blinkered fool that traditionally elite institutions are instruments of power and empire and not, as they would tout, “places of higher learning”. Oh no, he likes that part and the cachet they will lend to his kids’ futures.
Instead of asking that, he’s asking how he can keep his upper-middle-class white kids safe from ICE when they are in practically no danger at all, considering that they’re almost certainly not politically motivated. This is just more pearl-clutching and worrying about yourself rather than people who are in real danger.
As Caitlin finished up,
“Mainstream “centrism” is just as toxic, murderous and tyrannical as Trumpism. These people will watch entire populations being mowed down by the hundreds of thousands via the policies of the people they voted for, and as long as it doesn’t interrupt brunch they’ll keep sipping their mimosas and laughing and tweeting and feeling smugly correct, and then go to bed and sleep like babies in an ocean of human blood.”
