Mastodawn

Arushi Manners (she/her) 🍉Aug 20, 2023

wet forest moon folklorist

a big reason covid misinfo has been so successful imo is that most people simply believe in capitalism.

to understand, let alone question, why covid misinfo is so readily promulgated by mainstream Democrats and their media, you have to understand that regardless of where this set lands on culture wars, they are fundamentally faithful to the current capitalist order.

if you accept the implicit hierarchy of capital, all the Covid myths make sense because they serve that order

wet forest moon folklorist Aug 20, 2023

the myths —that Covid is mild, doesn’t hurt kids, doesn’t spread from schools, should be accepted as inevitable, is more or less like a cold now, is over, can’t be prevented by masks, is less important than education or economic activity, etc— are all easily disproven and yet they frame the worldviews of a majority of progressives, liberals, and democrats. Why?

wet forest moon folklorist Aug 20, 2023

Because to question mainstream covid myths as a body you have to question everything about what’s driving modern society and most people are just not prepared to do that. Most people just have not yet gotten to a point where they can see that it is capitalism itself that runs the society and sacrifices human health to keep itself going. Half a century of perpetual red baiting has worked.

wet forest moon folklorist Aug 20, 2023

And even if you can agree intellectually that profits before people is problematic, it still takes courage and community to begin to fight back and start questioning the crowd of intellectuals, journalists, and politicians who occupy and rubber stamp the left edge of modern capitalism. They have a hegemonic hold over the brains of many of our friends

wet forest moon folklorist Aug 20, 2023

And those friends are still logging on to corporate social media, reading their NYT subscriptions, listening to NPR, or watching MSNBC for 90% of their info intake. It’s branded center left but a great deal of all those sources rely on capital, accept capital as an implicit and unstated frame, populate users vision with corporate ads, and often ruthlessly vilify anyone who effectively questions capital

wet forest moon folklorist Aug 20, 2023

There’s a reason why ableism is last in line in the culture wars! Because it forces us to accept that humans have worth outside The Economy & judging humans according to their ability to keep up with the treadmill of capital is immoral. We have not yet accepted this. Even die hard feminists or anti racists etc will eventually dismiss the concerns of friends who can’t keep up, many of us who’ve dealt with serious illness know this. Covid forced ableism’s hand and ableism won

wet forest moon folklorist Aug 20, 2023

Ableism is really one of capital’s most powerful allies. It has a whole constellation of ideas propping it up: individualism, hustle culture, careerism, fatphobia, etc. And to see proof of ableism’s reified status in American society look no further than our anomalously violent health care “system.” We all choose at each election to keep sacrificing the sick and dying to a demonstrably corrupt billion dollar health insurance industry! We choose that!

wet forest moon folklorist Aug 20, 2023

Long rant, sorry everyone. Im just trying to get at the root of why covid mythology is so hard to slay, even among friends who we think should know better. We have got to start seeing our social frustrations as patterns within systems, and looking at how to most effectively start spinning those systems the other way. The nice thing about feedback loops is you can interrupt them anywhere and it will impact the whole system — but you have to consider interruptions from that systems perspective

clarebee Aug 20, 2023

@seachanger Found this whole thread so helpful - thank you! This constant marketing campaign for normalcy, unrelenting precisely because things are so ab-normal. All part of capitalism's self-protective denial.

Aviva Gary Aug 20, 2023

@seachanger This ^

Amelia Aug 20, 2023

@seachanger This - all of this - is precisely why I've made it my life's work to radically shift power towards disabled people and communities.

Ableism is indeed one of kyriarchy's strongest holds. If we can break that, nothing else will withstand us.

Cavyherd Aug 20, 2023

@mordremoth @seachanger

I mean, this seems maximally efficient and makes a tremendous amount of policy sense: if the most vulnerable are secure, than *everybody* is secure. But of course that would cut the ground right out from under the kyriarchy, because they require want and fear as levers of control....

kb Aug 22, 2023

@seachanger Haha I found this same thing. I call them "cycles".

TransitBiker Aug 22, 2023

@seachanger you’ve basically summarised how I have felt for the last several years now, and it seems like the pandemic really put a spotlight on all of these issues. Taking the spotlight away from the pandemic, conveniently takes the spotlight off of the glaring issues of a capitalism focused society. We argue for remote viewing/participation options, FFP2/N95 in medical settings and we get told that the pandemic is over etc. It’s infuriating and very Twilight Zone feeling.

Estarriol, Terrorist Dragon Aug 20, 2023

@seachanger mob rule, this is fascism in action.

raymoo the HomoGaymoo Aug 20, 2023

@seachanger it may not be the worst example, but god do i hate hustle culture

Charles J Gervasi ⚡🛡️🥥Aug 20, 2023

@seachanger It makes me think voting for a government to implement a system to take people's money by force and then use it to take care of them does not work well.
Despite the bests efforts of those trying to control people by force, individuals find ways to hustle and exchange services to meet one another's needs.

Lucifer ☄️Aug 21, 2023

@cgervasi @seachanger Arguing against a hypothetical government taking away people's money and giving them care when you live in a country where the government takes away people's money and gives them no care is a hell of a choice

Charles J Gervasi ⚡🛡️🥥Aug 21, 2023

@LuciferMorningstar @seachanger I'm from US. We have a system where the government actually does provide subsidies to the poor, but they must be used on health insurance that's heavily regulated, so it's really not an insurance product; it's more of managing all your purchase. So people go around it and just buy services. It's a mess. That's why I said it doesn't work well.

Riley S. Faelan Aug 30, 2023

@cgervasi Ah, I got it. You're one of these people who believe it'd be better for a government to not create money in the first place, so everybody would have none, than to implement policies that create an artificial demand for money as a medium for paying taxes?

Charles J Gervasi ⚡🛡️🥥Aug 30, 2023

@riley @seachanger I don't mind government creating money, but I definitely like competition from other media of exchange. Even if the government did not coin money, they still collect taxes in other units of measure of value.

Charles J Gervasi ⚡🛡️🥥Aug 30, 2023

@riley @seachanger In this context, I was saying regardless of the unit of measure or medium of exchange, when the government takes citizens' stuff for the purpose of providing for them, it's much less efficient than leaving people alone to buy things for themselves. That's true even if the government central planners are very skilled and trustworthy.

Khalid is Preparing for Hijra Aug 21, 2023

https://youtu.be/OO18F4aKGzQ?si=EqlV3GhPeIjDOFGV

Brother Ali - Uncle Sam Goddamn (Official Video)

YouTube

PhoenixSerenity Aug 23, 2023

@Noricenolife @seachanger I freaking love Brother Ali music 👊

Patrick McLaughlin Aug 20, 2023

Because it *forces* us to accept the worth of every human being, period.

Cavyherd Aug 20, 2023

And also fundamentally in denial of the possibility/likelihood that any given individual can lose their ability arbitrarily at any time, and find themselves as a member of "that" population.

sidereal Aug 20, 2023

@seachanger I've been saying for awhile now that most North Americans will not recognize covid as eugenics because then they would have to recognize the way smallpox and other viruses were used against indigenous people as eugenics -- which they have personally benefitted from.

Most people around me won't recognize that the gov't's covid policy is eugenicist because first they'd have to stop being in denial that their ancestors/they themselves are people who participated in a genocide.

Ambient Sponge Aug 22, 2023

@seachanger I can't believe how anyone can look at the handling of the pandemic and not see this. It's clear as freaking day.

All the deaths are blood to oil the machine of capitalism. A few million die to keep profits high, that's absolutely what will be done.

TransitBiker Aug 20, 2023

@seachanger fear & money.

climate voter/radical oldie Aug 20, 2023

@seachanger We have never been able to handle the truth. If people have to die in the service of business or capitalism, then that is apparently fine. This has been clear at my local level where business must be accommodated and served. This relates to covid but also a bunch of other things like healthy towns and cities. But very few people can see through the veil of bull shit.

TransitBiker Aug 20, 2023

@tmstreet @seachanger the fact that people go to work sick, even before the pandemic is a sign that our system of economy and governmental policy simply does not acknowledge public health as a primary concern. As long as we are just healthy enough to rake in profits for the oligarchs, nothing will change

Lucifer ☄️Aug 21, 2023

@seachanger This is a useful insight.
It also explains why the response to every other crisis we face will be sacrifice the poor and infirm so as to upset capital least

@seachanger what covid misinfo are you talking about?