Tag: cancel culture

No-Legislation Attached

~ rebelwillfarnaby ~ Leave a comment

If you ask most of your Democratic friends about the state of America and the culture wars, most would say the battle against oppression has never been more grave. The right is at our throats. What’s strange is there is a paradox here – The left believes they are losing the culture wars, even though they control 90% of the media(look at major endorsements of Trump v Hillary), the messaging on every television channel,  and the film industry. Yet the right has dominated legislatively since Reagan(de-unionizing, placing judges, repealing labor laws) and they believe they are losing their country more than ever. 

First lets highlight that panic and fear are powerful motivators, even when your status doesn’t warrant panic. Anecdotally I hear Republican voters say “this is the most important election of our lifetime, no matter if you like Trump or not we have to get those supreme court judges, because if the other side gets them we will lose the presidency for the next 50 years.” OFF TOPIC- of course we lose to them, our language is weak and passive. On the left you only see this kind of language used towards celebrities that have tweeted something racist or homophobic. The big difference is where Republican and Democratic leadership direct the energy and anger of their voters. 

So what are the results of each of these strategies? The Republicans have run the table on placing judges, stopping dem judges, passing tax cuts, killing unions through labor laws, and generally any economic legislation. The Democrats have succeeded at keeping their voters permanently on the hook with No-Legislation Attached Issues. Whether intentional or not, our voters don’t attach organization and legislation with change. We keep fighting stupid games with stupid prizes. And rest assured the class that funds the republicans, they don’t play stupid games- they play the most important games with the most important prizes. They use legislation to shape the economy in their favor as we argue. 

Why does the left take up this strategy? The same reason as the right, their donors. How many corporations have run racial inclusion, BLM, social justice ads since George Floyd? The is a complete perversion for many reasons. This is capitalism rotting just causes from the inside out. We are seeing companies that engage in near slave labor overseas, yet also claiming to stand for racial justice in the USA just to sell more sneakers, hamburgers, and purses. Talk about delegitimizing a cause, make the whole fight nothing but lip service via tv ads that include no solutions. The second reason businesses are so keen to take up these social justice narratives is specifically because there is No-Legislation Attached! Why is the CEO of Citigroup, one of the major banks that no doubt plays a role in racist policies that make it more difficult and expensive for African Americans to buy a home, now being highlighted by the left!? It is much more affordable to shoot out a tweet and cash in on a hot marketing fad than to actually help Black Lives in America. 

There is a lot of talk, but how much do Black Lives Matter when we cripple so many hard working black women with a stagnant starvation wage that we refer to as minimum wage? How much do Black Lives Matter when we let predatory lenders prey on the impoverished and unbanked in their community? How much could a Black Life matter when we let them die in the street if they do not have insurance? Those questions require legislation, the kind MLK and Bernie Sanders fought for, and it is going to cost. This is were our supposed “friends” at the DNC stop agreeing with us and take up their donors position that we must be destroyed. MLK told many around him that once he started down the road for economic justice for workers, he wouldn’t be around much longer. He told those around him, his white allies will soon abandon him on his next fight – the fight for economic justice would cost them, literally. While his white allies might have taken some risk backing him, they had plenty to gain, they seemed like heroes for not being racist. Yet he knew they only wanted the image or “checked box” of helping, and when it came to making this system fair on economic grounds, they had no intention of seeing Black Lives prosper. 

“What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford to buy a hamburger?” – Martin Luther King Jr.

Cancel culture and Lack of Meaning

~ rebelwillfarnaby ~ 1 Comment

Pete Davidson was recently on Hot Ones before the release of his new movie The King of Staten Island and had some interesting thoughts about millennials and cancel culture. Here is the link to the interview, to summarize Sean Evans asked Davidson about deleting his social media and why he no longer performed at colleges. He explains that millennials latch on to any cause that is just and feel they should immediately react, even if they haven’t checked another source or even thought twice, if something is labeled as politically incorrect they immediately “put you on blast” 

We’ve all known this, but what Davidson said next was so interesting- somewhere in their mind they feel they are actually doing something good, standing up and providing justice. Looking objectively, it’s hard to imagine someone who is degrading and humiliating a person they grew up with has good intentions. As a thought experiment just imagine the mindset that what Trump has done today, truly is threatening your existence and way of life. Today is highlighted here because the liberal(and conservative when they aren’t in office) news cycle is only made of world ending stories that seem to be forgotten the next day with the next story. This is a hellish way to live, albeit a self maintained one. If you are living in this mindset, you really believe a trump voter is ultimately an enemy that needs to be silenced and removed from discussion. (If this attitude was reversed and the right treated any group this way we would scream RACISM! )

Why is this political cultural war the hill so many millennials are willing to die on? You don’t see this passion applied to anything else in most of their lives. When was the last time you were so passionate about something you would confront someone over it publicly, or be willing to sacrifice a real human relationship? Why are the culture wars the deepest meaning in our lives? Perhaps philosophy can take us in the right direction.

“God is dead” – Nietzche 

While Nietzche has been used as a Christian boogie man due to that line, the context is always removed. He was not some radical atheist trying to whip out the church, he was actually extremely disturbed that he discovered what would be the end of religion. Both religious and non religious people best take note of his message. His specific argument for god not existing is unimportant for this article, lets focus instead on the fallout that he predicted. Essentially he believed the concept of God was invented like the wheel to move heavy objects, humans need meaning and the ultimate piece to that puzzle was God. Therefore if the world is at a place where the majority of people don’t really believe in God, those are people who are now facing a massive existential crisis of meaning. He was not saying there isn’t meaning or you couldn’t find it, but now we all have to find a new solution. A new meaning for our lives, and new overarching goal or “team”. His ultimate fear- what would we put in its place? Religions are mostly based in ethics and values, what if something gave us meaning that was based in violence or hatred? 

Even if religion or believing in God is not your thing, it is still beneficial to think about God. While those on the left might cringe, consider the fact that the Left uses aversions to religion as a tactic in the same way the Right uses religion to attract voters. This is the core of identity politics, and if you find yourself constantly attacking religion itself(bashing anything labeled religious before hearing anything else), you’ve been played by the same forces that we ridicule the right for- blind certainty about their side. When we throw the baby out with the bath water and automatically fight anything resembling the right, we are like fighting roosters, so angry and threatened we attack everything in front of us. The worst part, our democratic owners throw the “fighting roosters”(us) in the ring against our friends and family, and we attack with fury. In the same way we chastise a working class voter who “goes against their own interest” by voting Repulican, we should chastise “open-minded” liberals for being social justice warriors. We are constantly cutting out and excluding people, actively shrinking our own tent! This is not a winning political strategy!

What if we thought as strategically as the Republicans who swooped the working class from us in the 70’s? Perhaps we would see that we have younger generations who are struggling, that their anger is being used and abused by the Democratic party. We all need the community that religions provide to their practitioners. We all need a bigger purpose, there is a vacuum in our lives, whatever you do, don’t fill it with social media news. This is how we start as open minded and politically ambitious, then look up at 45-50 and see that the democrats culture wars didn’t change a thing in our actual lives. We didn’t get healthcare, didn’t enact climate change legislation, didn’t raise taxes on the wealthy, and we didn’t lower the cost of college. All we did was cultivate a hatred for the town we grew up in and the people from there that occupy our Facebook feed. As we bicker with Republican voters, we are all sinking together as the working class.