This is not an isolated incident. It’s systemic. The political class no longer sees itself as accountable to all constituents, only to the symbolic community they perform for. Everyone else becomes an enemy. Even students.
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No, the political class as a whole does not think like this. The voters are polarised, and they treat democracy as a means to harms their enemies. They therefore elect politicians who hate their enemies, and that is what happened here. Democracy worked.
The main difference is the depth of institutional capture. The Republican party has become fully engulfed in disordered discourse. It is important to establish what our values are in terms of what democracy should attempt to achieve and recognise disordered discourse creates the antithesis of that.
We’ve normalised a political climate where mocking your own constituents for being queer, Palestinian, or visibly different is a winning move. That’s not democracy functioning. That’s epistemic decay, where truth and dignity are replaced by clicks and clout.
They’ve been working on the ideology on 4chan and reddit for FIFTEEN YEARS. The redpilled freaks on the chans are now running things. The dumbest most addled people we’d ever encountered starting 2010 or so (I rarely encountered such people in life, they are still a small group) now RUN THE USA.
Yawn, nothing new. Reagan 1966.
This ostentative display of rebellion, or whatever this is, will *always* be offensive to more conservative people (it's probably what they're looking for anyway)
The goal of disordered discourse isn’t just to "debate" ideas.
It’s to define who belongs in the public. This student is being told, implicitly and explicitly, you don’t. That’s what makes this moment chilling. That’s why it matters.
We've had an inversion where instead of elected officials being answerable to constituents they now expect the constituents to be answerable to them. All in service to establishing a new fascist hierarchy where the leader is supreme and can do no wrong and power is based on proximity to the leader.
in its essence, fascism is a theft. once someone or some group doesn’t belong, it’s open season for stealing everything they have, from their possessions to their dignity.
The antidote isn’t more outrage. It’s rebuilding a culture where identity is not weaponised, where difference isn’t a spectacle, and where elected officials are held to standards of evidence, respect, and accountability.
Or: real democracy.
Hold social media accountable for the content that gets published, just like traditional media are accountable for what they publish?
So that when, say, sb published a death threat on SM, you should be able to sue the social medium itself, rather than need to go against a rando sockpuppet
A big component of the antidote involves eschewing labels, like: Left, Leftist, Liberal, Centrist, Moderate. These are meaningless labels meant to divide people.
Yes, I prefer to see examine issues first through whether they're based on the broad democratic ideals of verification, deliberation and accountability, or a regression away from that.
How do we publicly do that in a two-party political landscape where literally only 1/2 of the parties actively want to engage in actual helpful policy? In an unbalanced media & most social media owned by conservative billionaires how do we fundamentally change/rebuild culture?
What do you mean ‘where identity is not weaponized’ and ‘difference isn’t a spectacle’? What do you suggest? Please remember how this ideology of ‘weaponizing’ works? The right will go after anything, Eliot—drinking lattes, reading the wrong book. There’s no way to evade their culture war.
And this last one is where you lose me and everyone on the clear receiving end of this stuff. You need to believe that trans folks and Palestinians have some type of ability to change things on equal footing. Look what happened to Ana Valens; she attacked a clear racist, the racist retaliated.
Ana Valens ends up extricated. That's the reality. You cannot sit there and pretend that there is not an equity problem here, that there is not a very real power dynamic here, that needs to be accounted for and, very specifically, opposed materially.
the oppressors. You have to get over that. You have to. Or you will forever be oppressed.
This person deserves no respect, and should be unaccountably extricated without much need for evidence; and very importantly, *liberals*, who *actually have power to do this*, must become fine with that.
This is someone's proud child, sibling, friend..... They succeeded to complete a degree with good grades...tje American fream....what the f*** is this council person thinking?
If you don’t have the support to oppose pro-weaponization, you’ve lost that fight and you operate within an pro-weaponization environment.
At that point you need to fight with regard to the parameters of that reality—if you were in space, you can’t try to move around as though there’s gravity.
John Dewey, the American philosopher and democratic theorist, would push back hard on the idea that democracy "doesn’t care about your values." For Dewey, democracy isn’t a neutral machine, it’s a way of life, shaped by practice, habit, and shared inquiry.
(Alas, for too many people these days right and left, politics IS culture. It's what they have instead of art or religion, which is a hell of a thing to do to politics.)
You’re close, but we need to ask *why* identity became central. Treating it as the core of meaning hasn’t empowered us — it’s made politics tribal, discourse fragile, and truth harder to reach. We need a culture where ideas matter more than labels.
This goes way back. But really accelerated with Nixon and Reagan demonizing the "hippies" in the late 60'ies. Flower Power with Love and Peace were demonized. They were drug crazed, etc.
In the late 60s this country had just passed the Civil Rights Act after tolerating a white supremacist legal regime for generations. Most states had official eugenics programs, some of which lasted into the 1970s.
Acknowledging injustice isn’t the same as building your worldview around identity. The problem isn’t that people wanted equality — it’s that we’ve replaced shared values with tribal markers. That’s not justice. That’s stagnation.
I think we make a minor mistake when we believe that identity has only just become central to the division. I remember being in high school in the mid-'80s, in the car with my mom, and she commented on one of my visibly punk classmates: "she's just doing it for attention."
You want sweeping change, but don't want people to care about creating that change? You don't want people to to feel the anger about current systemic harms that might motivate that change?
I am outraged by adults ritually humiliating children, so I'm the prob?
The arc's been bending this way for decades, but the real pull began in the last 15 years. When social platforms replaced gatekeepers, the logic of public discourse changed, outrage spread faster, identity became content, and politics turned performative.
Righteous anger about systemic problems (not individual identity) is an essential ingredient to winning the fight for human dignity. But I agree with your characterization of what the councilmember said. Truly gross.
This is like when Democratic politicians talk about voters being "tired of division" and wanting "bipartisanship". No they don't. Neither side's voters want that, Republicans least of all.
of course you can. you forget that the majority of people in this country aren't very-online people wallowing in this. you win people over by taking the high road every time. people who aren't living second-by-second in the blathersphere WILL notice that there's a difference between group A and B
I think this is true. Dems need to use this. But in contrast to Republicans, the tactic is to use it against other politicians. Go after them, not ordinary citizens.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/29/pelosi-condemned-pro-palestinian-russia-ties
Inna Vernikov is a trumpist former D on NY city council
performative targeting of identity isn't an absolute monopoly of trumpist Rs, but it is a specialty
and maybe it's epistemic decay, I'd say it's depraved indifference to our freedoms + safety
Epistemic decay perfectly describes what's happening in the USA.
This garbage only comes from one side of the political spectrum.
This ostentative display of rebellion, or whatever this is, will *always* be offensive to more conservative people (it's probably what they're looking for anyway)
It’s to define who belongs in the public. This student is being told, implicitly and explicitly, you don’t. That’s what makes this moment chilling. That’s why it matters.
Or: real democracy.
So that when, say, sb published a death threat on SM, you should be able to sue the social medium itself, rather than need to go against a rando sockpuppet
"Of course I'm going to be professional. I love my job and I'm not going to let one person ruin it. I'll just professionally and politely bury them."
You cannot beat oppression without oppressing
This person deserves no respect, and should be unaccountably extricated without much need for evidence; and very importantly, *liberals*, who *actually have power to do this*, must become fine with that.
The student graduated the top of their class and did nothing to this f****** council person but exist
If someone is pro-weaponizing speech, then you have the force via votes / public support to propagate it or you don’t.
At that point you need to fight with regard to the parameters of that reality—if you were in space, you can’t try to move around as though there’s gravity.
(Alas, for too many people these days right and left, politics IS culture. It's what they have instead of art or religion, which is a hell of a thing to do to politics.)
Black People: Um, maybe black people are also human beings?
White People: WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TO BE IDENTITY POLITICS?
I thought it looked cool.
You want sweeping change, but don't want people to care about creating that change? You don't want people to to feel the anger about current systemic harms that might motivate that change?
I am outraged by adults ritually humiliating children, so I'm the prob?
I don't really know how to do that without outrage.