Cassandra 🔜 SanFranWatching this week's episode of Last Week Tonight, and wow I missed a few things about ukpol. I knew things were bad and knew some of what was wrong (e.g.: fuck Starmer), but Jesus.
More generally, the whole "the nominal left wing turned out to be centrist, by which I mean professional appeasers who keep chasing the right off the cliff, so instead of voting for anyone actually on the left, let's just vote for the fascists directly and cut out the middle man" pattern is so completely familiar at this point, but no less frustrating and infuriating for how often it occurs.
Glyph@xgranade electorates the world over have been screaming “somebody fucking DO something!!!” about our collective problems for decades now and have become catastrophically less discerning about what exactly “something” should be the whole time. The trump/mamdani or trump/AOC voter being the archetypical example now
@glyph It's just so wild to me. The "something" feels so much more critical now than ever, I definitely understand what you're saying and observe it myself, but I still find it very difficult to empathize with that mindset.
@glyph To the ukpol example, Starmer is an absolute disaster who is *somehow* to the right of the Conservatives on trans rights, but how does giving Nigel motherfucking Farage another whack at power help with that at all?
@glyph Or here at home, Biden abjectly failed to do a damn thing to fix what Trump broke the first go 'round, so voters just... gave Trump a chance to break even more shit?
I know I'm preaching to the proverbial choir, and it's far from surprising that people act like that, but I still don't really get it at an emotional level.
Talya (she/her) 🏳️⚧️✡️@xgranade @glyph
i think that at some level of desperation, certain people stop seeking a solution and start looking for a way to break things. i've heard that at least for certain Milei voters in Argentina the appeal wasn't that they thought his ideas make sense, but that they were wild enough to be worth trying. that the present situation was so broken that it can't really get worse, so who cares if it breaks even more.
it's a sign of severe desperation and a singular offer of a way out.
i think that at some level of desperation, certain people stop seeking a solution and start looking for a way to break things. i've heard that at least for certain Milei voters in Argentina the appeal wasn't that they thought his ideas make sense, but that they were wild enough to be worth trying. that the present situation was so broken that it can't really get worse, so who cares if it breaks even more.
it's a sign of severe desperation and a singular offer of a way out.