Those primaries sure are tickin' on, huh? Kind of shitshow as far as I'm concerned, what with Bernie's faltering momentum and the Neoliberal Voltron all lining up behind Biden to try and push him into the oval office before he drops dead or calls someone the gamer word or something. All except Elizabeth Warren, the neoliberal who wants to pretend to be a leftist. She's taking her damn sweet time making a decision as to who to endorse, isn't she? Some of us are getting antsy.
Others, however, seem to be in no hurry at all, extolling Warren's bravery for standing up as her own person and refusing to bend the knee to either of the candidates who are actually still in the race at this point. She doesn't owe anyone anything, right?
Well, aside from the fact that actually, as a public servant whose salary is paid by taxes, yes, she actually does owe the voting public something, the problem here is that this take obviously comes from such a place of privilege and indifference to the actual material affects of Warren's actions that it would be absolutely laughable if it weren't so disgusting.
This sort of rhetoric has the same energy as when Tim Pool suggested that in 2016, Bernie Sanders shouldn't have "bent the knee" to Hillary after getting stabbed in the back. It's not an actual political stance, it's an expression of personal grievance about people's careers that are being broadcast seemingly as entertainment. There's no practical political purpose Bernie would have been solving by going home and pouting instead of working with Clinton's team to adjust he platform and campaigning for her against Trump, it just would've made some way-too-online Bernie fans and/or Clinton haters feel a little bit better about the fact that the TV show didn't end the way they wanted it to.
Because the way these people engage with elections isn't politics, it's a soap opera. They have their favorite characters and the characters they don't like so much, possibly for ideological reasons, possibly for personal ones, never as a result of material analysis, and they're motivated by seeing good things happen for their guy and bad things happen for the other guy. When bad things happen for their guy, they have no concept of minimizing harm or setting up for a future push, because it was never about what the actual effects of the election results would be. They want to throw a big prissy temper tantrum, and they want to see their candidate do the same thing, because all they're interested in is catharsis.
It's the inevitable result of the current neoliberal mode which primarily propagandizes politics as consumption and elections as television entertainment. Social media, news networks, corporations that benefit from the status quo, and the corrupt politicians themselves all stand to profit from this sort of vapid, disconnected political engagement, and those who actually care about the state of the world and want things to get better are usually so disgusted by the results that they fall into crushing nihilism and hopelessness.
Everybody wins, except the vast majority of the population, who of course are still subject to crushing poverty and indignity on a daily basis. But that's okay, they're not the people who matter, you almost never see them on TV, do you? The people who matter are folks like Elizabeth Warren, who is just such a wonderful progressive candidate that does things like back down on her welfare policies and lie about her heritage for woke points. How dare those damn Bernie Bros not vote for her? How dare Bernie campaign in her home state, and beat her? They need to be taught a lesson, and if that means throwing millions of marginalized people under the bus, so be it.
This is what also allows Pelosi to be the "lion of the left." Because she ripped up Donald Trump's speech, which clearly signals how disgusted and appalled she is with his antics. No, it doesn't matter that she's signed off on a number of his most disastrous bills and stifled opposition to his racist border policies by people like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, that's immaterial, and also AOC had it coming because she was rude. If she wants to save brown people's lives, she's gonna have to go about it more politely next time.
This mode of Soap Opera Politics has managed to maintain hegemony for a while, putting off a lot of people, but it seems like there are finally some actual leaders trying to work their way into politics again. It's going to be a long, uphill battle to fix shit from where it stands now, but we do have one major advantage over all the existing characters.
When they take an L, they go home to pout and feel sorry for themselves.
When we take an L, we switch over to plan B, try to minimize harm, and figure out how to move forward from there.
I'd rather be on a team that's playing to win than a team that's playing to feel good.
Others, however, seem to be in no hurry at all, extolling Warren's bravery for standing up as her own person and refusing to bend the knee to either of the candidates who are actually still in the race at this point. She doesn't owe anyone anything, right?
Well, aside from the fact that actually, as a public servant whose salary is paid by taxes, yes, she actually does owe the voting public something, the problem here is that this take obviously comes from such a place of privilege and indifference to the actual material affects of Warren's actions that it would be absolutely laughable if it weren't so disgusting.
This sort of rhetoric has the same energy as when Tim Pool suggested that in 2016, Bernie Sanders shouldn't have "bent the knee" to Hillary after getting stabbed in the back. It's not an actual political stance, it's an expression of personal grievance about people's careers that are being broadcast seemingly as entertainment. There's no practical political purpose Bernie would have been solving by going home and pouting instead of working with Clinton's team to adjust he platform and campaigning for her against Trump, it just would've made some way-too-online Bernie fans and/or Clinton haters feel a little bit better about the fact that the TV show didn't end the way they wanted it to.
Because the way these people engage with elections isn't politics, it's a soap opera. They have their favorite characters and the characters they don't like so much, possibly for ideological reasons, possibly for personal ones, never as a result of material analysis, and they're motivated by seeing good things happen for their guy and bad things happen for the other guy. When bad things happen for their guy, they have no concept of minimizing harm or setting up for a future push, because it was never about what the actual effects of the election results would be. They want to throw a big prissy temper tantrum, and they want to see their candidate do the same thing, because all they're interested in is catharsis.
It's the inevitable result of the current neoliberal mode which primarily propagandizes politics as consumption and elections as television entertainment. Social media, news networks, corporations that benefit from the status quo, and the corrupt politicians themselves all stand to profit from this sort of vapid, disconnected political engagement, and those who actually care about the state of the world and want things to get better are usually so disgusted by the results that they fall into crushing nihilism and hopelessness.
Everybody wins, except the vast majority of the population, who of course are still subject to crushing poverty and indignity on a daily basis. But that's okay, they're not the people who matter, you almost never see them on TV, do you? The people who matter are folks like Elizabeth Warren, who is just such a wonderful progressive candidate that does things like back down on her welfare policies and lie about her heritage for woke points. How dare those damn Bernie Bros not vote for her? How dare Bernie campaign in her home state, and beat her? They need to be taught a lesson, and if that means throwing millions of marginalized people under the bus, so be it.
This is what also allows Pelosi to be the "lion of the left." Because she ripped up Donald Trump's speech, which clearly signals how disgusted and appalled she is with his antics. No, it doesn't matter that she's signed off on a number of his most disastrous bills and stifled opposition to his racist border policies by people like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, that's immaterial, and also AOC had it coming because she was rude. If she wants to save brown people's lives, she's gonna have to go about it more politely next time.
This mode of Soap Opera Politics has managed to maintain hegemony for a while, putting off a lot of people, but it seems like there are finally some actual leaders trying to work their way into politics again. It's going to be a long, uphill battle to fix shit from where it stands now, but we do have one major advantage over all the existing characters.
When they take an L, they go home to pout and feel sorry for themselves.
When we take an L, we switch over to plan B, try to minimize harm, and figure out how to move forward from there.
I'd rather be on a team that's playing to win than a team that's playing to feel good.
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