Oh, I love the vicarious enjoyment from introducing a friend to something I love. It feels like the closest I can get to re-experiencing something afresh without losing my memory. I am envious of Drag for this opportunity.

I don’t know how much the UK collectively regrets Brexit yet. I come from a heavily Leave voting area and it was depressing as hell being a part of the vote count. Leave, Leave, Leave, Remain, Leave, Leave, Remain. Now in the most recent election, Farage’s Reform party got a concerningly high vote share, especially in areas like where I come from.

I was glad to see the Tories go, but I can’t be too happy about the UK election when I consider Reform. I think back to how UKIP were like at local government level. They’d campaign on absurd promises like “we’ll slash council tax and increase public services funding. Lots of things are possible if we get rid of those fat-cat Labour councillors”. Then they’d get enough councillors that they could cause real harm to their constituents by obstructing progress; it helped their cause to make the Labour majority council look bad. They could promise the world because they knew that they were never going to get enough councillors to change much, so they could blame their utter failure to do anything useful once elected on Labour (in my area at least. Apparently the same playbook works in Conservative majority areas too)

Brexit was unambiguously a political disaster. Many of the people who voted Leave have been actively harmed and I can’t even feel any schadenfreude at them because they haven’t connected the dots there. Like, I see people having their faces eaten off by the leopards they voted for, and they’re going “this is really hurting. See, this is why we needed the leopards eating faces party”. It’s honestly heartbreaking to witness.

If I wanted an autistically over-literal answer, I’d either ask myself (or come to Lemmy)

Stochastic parrots is an excellent phrase.

You’re right, and thanks for checking me on that. On reflection, I said it was trite because I think I felt uncomfortable with the level of vulnerability I was feeling when writing that comment, so I tacked that onto the end. The vulnerability came from a place of “who am I to give advice when the advice I’m giving myself hardly feels sufficient, because my inner monologue is basically a screaming possum most of the time”. Lots of people are feeling similar, which is why I made my original comment in the first place.

I think a lot of us are struggling under the pressure about not knowing how to cope with this dreadful situation, and for me, that meant feeling like I needed to come up with the perfect words that would be useful for everyone who is struggling. It is sufficient for me to go “for me, this is a useful way to think (and other people may do also)”. It’s silly for me to dismiss myself as trite just because I feel like I am only valid if I have a Solution. As you highlight, this is a collaborative process, so muddling along together is how this goes.

This is only tangentially related, but I’m reminded of a thing from Plato where he was complaining that communicating through writing was a bad way of doing philosophy. His concerns weren’t just around communicating ideas between people; he was even opposed to writing as an introspective tool to help a person think through their ideas, or make notes to come back to.

"And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.”

• Plato, “Phaedrus” ^([citation needed])

It’s interesting because I don’t think he’s necessarily wrong about the skill atrophy angle of it. It’s just a question of to what extent we need those memory skills in the modern era.

Even if you’re competent at arithmetic in school, those skills can definitely atrophy. I say this as someone who’s unreasonably slow at basic arithmetic despite being an ex-mathlete; I got complacent because I’ve been learning and using graduate level maths, so I thought that would keep me from getting rusty. Nope — it turns out that basic arithmetic that you’d use in daily life is a different “muscle” to the kind of maths you use in academic research (which is obvious in hindsight)

I can’t imagine how much I’d be struggling if I didn’t have a good foundation to be starting from

“You can be the juiciest, ripest peach in the world, but some people just funny like peaches.”

“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard”

That’s interesting, I hadn’t thought about things in those terms before. I am wondering whether part of why the right seem to be so good at recuperation is that the right (in particular, fascists) benefit from capitalist support. Money and media have a lot of power; I weep for the people who were indoctrinated to hatred to the extent that they voted against their own interests. The scales are tipped in the right’s favour in that regard. What do you think?

(I haven’t read Society of the Spectacle yet, in case that addresses some of what I’m saying)

Tangentially related, but I’m reminded of this quote from Disco Elysium:

“Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who critique capital end up reinforcing it instead.”

Thanks for sharing that article. I actually haven’t heard of Mike Davis before, but following this article, I am now reading one of his essays.

Not so much advice as a selfish request: please try to stay with us. I mean that both figuratively (i.e. mentally checking out and becoming hollow) and literally (i.e. existing in this world). It’s a selfish request because though I’m not even American, I am one of the countless people who are scared shitless today. I don’t know how we will make it through this, but I know I can’t do this on my own.

If you’re here, scared with me, then I am not alone, and neither are you. It’s a bit trite, but it helps me somewhat.

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I wonder if it’s a case of trying to make a habit of good practice. I’ve gotten into the habit of citing stuff when writing online, even if the context wouldn’t really demand that (or slapping a [citation needed] onto the end of stuff I know I could cite, but I’m too lazy to do and I want it known that lack of sources mean my assertions are questionable)

If this were a shitpost, I would unironically love this.

Unfortunately, I think it isn’t intended that way, so thumbs down from me

That’s hilarious and I don’t think I’ve seen it before. Thanks for sharing.

Man, I hope that kid is alright. Depending on how old this photo is, that kid may well have died in a pointless war. Fuck

A friend who recently had a kid said that when she and her husband were building up to having children, she became acutely aware of the government discussing “why are people having fewer kids and how do we ensure that we have a sufficient workforce in the future” and she became increasingly exasperated to hear how out of touch politicians spoke about it, when the actual answer was so simple.

Affordable housing is one of the biggest no-brainers. For example, she is one of only a handful of friends my age (millennial) who owns a home. As someone who has been homeless multiple times due to landlord fuckery, I can’t imagine choosing to have kids if renting a home. That seems so obvious, but she said that she never heard them connect the dots in this way — the government would sometimes talk about the need for more affordable housing, but never in the context of “hmm, we don’t know why people are having fewer kids and how to encourage people to start families”. They literally don’t understand how living in precarity gets to you and it’s depressing

Does Nitter still work? I thought it had died

The red and white garb is from The Handmaid’s Tale. I think the original cartoon might be suggesting that the voting booth is a chance for women to shed the garb that’s representative of patriarchal oppression. Given reproductive rights are a big topic this election, I think that seems true, to an extent.

For figuring out what the twitter user was talking about, let’s consider a more general interpretation of the cartoon, such as “the themes of theocratic and patriarchal oppression are relevant to this US election”. It seems that they have picked up on the fact that theocratic patriarchy is a thing in the Handmaid’s Tale, but they have (likely due to cognitive dissonance) concluded that the author clearly couldn’t be talking about Christianity, because Christianity is Good, and they are Christian, and they are also Good, you see?

Now, I haven’t actually read The Handmaid’s Tale, so I don’t know to what extent it is targeted allegorical criticism at Christianity. It is true that some Muslims also ascribe to (and attempt to enforce on others) a theocratic patriarchal ideology, and also the shape of this kind of oppression looks pretty similar no matter what religion is driving the theocracy — so it’s certainly plausible that The Handmaid’s Tale could be used to criticise theocratic patriarchal manifestations of Islam too. However, the twitter user is clearly not thinking along these lines. I think they believe that The Handmaid’s Tale is aimed at Islam because it helps alleviate some of the cognitive dissonance they feel from a book that is directly criticising them. It definitely is very Christian coded though, I feel like this twitter user is so close to getting it that they’re a self-awarewolf

Because certainly not all Christians are patriarchally oppressive. Some do the most progressive, compassionate people I know are Christian and they will be the first to acknowledge the argument that Christianity itself may be inherently patriarchally oppressive (as well as other kinds of oppressive). We can sort of imagine a separation, where there’s an abstract “Christianity”, and then there’s the ways in which Christianity has been used as a tool of oppression by powerful people. I like the way my friend put it: “I really want to say that the assholes [who use Christianity as an excuse to hate and oppress others] aren’t real Christians, but that feels too easy and appealing to do — denouncing them in that way doesn’t feel very Christian of me, because it would allow me to ignore them. I think my duty as a Christian is to acknowledge the discomfort and be on the watch for this and challenge it where I can, especially in my own community.”

TL;DR:

• the Handmaid’s Tale is against religious theocracies (such as what conservatives Christians would have the world look like)
• this election is big for women’s rights, which have been eroded largely by religious conservatives
• a Muslim theocratic patriarchy would look similar to the Christian version, especially considering that theocratic patriarchies aren’t about religion per se, but using religion as a tool of oppression.
• thus the Handmaid’s Tale can be seen as a criticism of both Muslim and Christian theocratic patriarchy, though it’s obvious to most people who have read the book that it is more directly critiquing the Christian variant.
• The twitter user has (presumably) read the book and seems to have been close to “getting the point”, but their xenophobia saved them from having to do some uncomfortable and difficult self reflection about their own (presumed) Christianity.

Thanks for this breakdown, I can see why people are protesting. The situation is fucked

and that she has seen it in the past

Damn, that’s just sad