the future of the culture war

or, war all the time makes peace an arrogant pastime

Those who checked out Friday’s post probably noticed it was missing its outline. No excuse, really. I scheduled it months ago and…forgot to include the outline.

It’s there now. So feel free to click this link right about here.

Anyrate, onto today’s post, which actually is being written on the fly!

or, I name thee Forsaken

The Witching Hour Approaches

When media and political figures have drummed over and over again how we good few liberals are all that protects the gates against animalistic violence and cultural degradation, they probably didn’t expect the otherside to lean into the animalistic characterization.

We called them barbarians and so barbarians they became.

It’s almost funny. Surreal. I don’t know that humans are prepared for this kind of decision making. When Clinton called Trump supporters Deplorable, I think she meant for them to feel shame. Everyone who slapped that phrase on a T-shirt to signal their adherence to civil liberalism, everyone who wore pants-suits to vote in 2016, who wore pussy hats, thought that their shame and disdain would be felt by those they were shaming. We wanted them to be ashamed of their support of Donald Trump¹.

We didn’t expect them to take ownership of that phrase. But they did. They embraced the term deplorables and watched the good liberals cringe, curl up their lips in disgust.

And they liked it.

This is interesting.

I’m fascinated by this behavior. I’ve often said that you are who everyone says you are. You may think you’re nice, but if most people think you’re a dick…that means you’re a dick. Even so, I never experienced people actually taking this idea and applying it to themselves so gleefully.

I mean, no one thinks they’re an asshole, yeah?

This is obviously a bit more complicated, though. These people who take pride in being deplorable still see themselves as heroes, not villains. It’s a case of being named an enemy by your enemy is a sign of virtue, of pride. It is, quite literally, a form of virtue signaling no less silly than buying a pussy hate or buying a shirt that says Not my president, which I remember seeing, for the first time, the morning after Trump was elected.

Like companies were waiting to commodify your political outrage and disgust.

Let’s not get sidetracked, though: I want to focus on this strange development in conservative thought over the last few years.

I thought I had said just about everything I had to say about the culture war a few weeks ago, but I also thought I had said everything I had to say about it several weeks before that².

But here I am again, talking about the culture war.

or, Demiurge, the plaintiff

Since I think I’ve already made my case that the current prevailing ideology in US Conservative spaces is Own/Trigger the Libs, I don’t think I need to outline, again, that US Conservatives have no policies. Just tactics. And those tactics are almost always designed to purely make someone upset.

Sometimes they want to scare their own people, motivate them to do something out of sheer terror that, like, Nancy Pelosi³ is going to usher in some pansexual genderless satanic future.

Sometimes all they want is to make someone like AOC to mention their puerile antics on the internet, where it’ll get breathlessly retweeted and reshared by people who should spend less time watching Tucker Carlson out of outrage and more time organizing an actual grassroots attempt to change US politics. So some GOP asshole posting some sick anime fantasy about murdering his colleagues goes viral, to the utter delight and glee of the self-proclaimed Deplorables, who are just happy to see your disgust and revulsion.

They absolutely love it. They thrive on it.

This is humor to US conservatives now. It’s not telling jokes or making people even laugh. It’s just saying things to trigger the libs⁴. Calling Rep Omar a terrorist gets loud cheers, but is it funny? Same with calling AOC an idiot. People go nuts for it and cheer like maniacs! And they call it a joke.

But is it funny? Is it even a joke? Is it even trying to be one?

Or does the humor derive from liberals getting upset about it?

I find the whole thing depressing. We don’t have political discussions in public anymore. We have politicians trying their hardest to be the most pathetic kind of social media influencer. Everything is theatre, but not even good theatre. Not even good theatre done badly.

Our politics are an embarrassing theatric production. It elicits no thought, no conversations. It only sparks anger, revulsion.

I don’t know what this says about where the US is headed politically or culturally, but I think there’s no way to believe anything good comes out of this except maybe exhaustion. We may become so exhausted with being outraged and upset that we just become immune to this shit.

That’s my hope anyway.

Of course, we’d love to believe it’s only conservatives who behave obscenely.

or, smash your face in your smashed mirror

Honestly, just what the fuck is this?

I know this is just a random reddit user so we shouldn’t make too big a deal out of it, but I do think this kind of sentiment is uncomfortably prevalent.

I see it all the time on the internet. People’s disgust with conservatives has reached well beyond anything rational. Like the people who cheer when unvaccinated idiots die of Covid.

Like, someone died. And not someone who was a war criminal or something serious. Instead, you’re cheering because some poor trailer park dwelling dude died, probably leaving multiple dependents in a dire situation. Or maybe he was a rich dude who worked at Koch Industries and donated to his church, whose pastor quietly or loudly supports conversion therapy camps—he was still a person, yes?

Maybe consider what it says about you that you cheer on the deaths of people you don’t even know because the aesthetics of their politics is unpalatable.

Especially if you’re someone who, for example, thinks public executions are bad.

Obscene is really the only word I can think to describe this type of behavior.

I think of people I know who would describe themselves as prison abolitionists who demanded that Kyle Rittenhouse get thrown in prison for decades. I understand that tweeting that got you a lot of likes and retweets and maybe someone finally clicked on your podcast linked in your bio, but maybe consider what it means to have principles.

It’s easy to believe that only conservatives find their primary pleasure in triggering or owning the libs, but there are at least as many liberals who exhibit the exact same behavior for the exact same response⁵.

And then there are people like this who…I don’t even know what to say about it. I find it embarrassing. I mean, it’s unfair to just share someone’s badly thought out tweet, but, like, you cried because of science?

Do people actually live like this when no one’s watching? Do people just walk around and then get struck like Saul who became Paul on the way to Jerusalem and fall to their knees in awe and wonder, proclaiming loudly:

THANK GOD FOR LOUIS PASTEUR!

These are the people who last October could not believe the absolute horror of Trump’s concentration camps on the Mexico Border who have since forgotten or ignored that those same concentration camps exist and carry out the exact same process that they did under Trump. These are the people who didn’t mind the secret Drone War when it was being waged by President Obama but found it a lot less morally complicated when President Trump took office. These are the people who demanded direct relief payments from Trump only to waffle on whether they were even necessary once President Biden took office.

or, there are better worlds than this

I have no advice. I don’t even have anger.

I’m just exhausted by it all.

The callous indifference, the casual brutality becoming mundane. We mean nothing. We say nothing.

But we never shut up.

We speak and I want to sew our mouths shut. We see and I wish we were blind.

Better blind than this. What good are eyes in this disaster?

I believe we can be better. Believe we can do better. Believe, really, that we must be better if we intend to have a future.

I have no faith in people. No faith in the future of humanity.

Even so, I remain a political optimist. I don’t think it’s rational but I don’t think there’s any other way to be politically active. The cynicism and ironic detachment of so many is soul crushing, not only to me but to everyone in this benighted country. It diminishes us. Ruins us. And we bask in our own degradation, washing ourselves in the revulsion of our nominal enemies while we ignore economic and ecological collapse continually accelerated by, like, a hundred companies on the planet.

If you are not a political optimist, then, please, just shut up and go away.

If you don’t believe that a better world is possible, then leave politics to people who will do everything within their power to just make a path visible towards that better world.

Leave politics to the people who actually care. Especially if you think they’re naive idiots for caring.

Sew your mouth shut and blind yourself. The world will be better for it.

1. The goal never seemed to, like, actually convince them to not vote for Trump. Shame was, ultimately, the only real goal. And while shaming someone may feel good, it is not politics.

2. I’m pretending that I did not, in fact, write these two essays the same week.

3. It is funny to me that anyone to the left of George W Bush is considered a radical Leftist in the US.

4. If you can honestly call Steven Crowder a comedian without vomiting out your soul, I don’t want to meet you.

5. Digital highfives from your allies and breathless anger from your enemies.