what makes all of the "2010s culture war gave us right backlash" stuff false is that most people's reaction was not to get "radicalized" but rather to just tune out
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The right's backlash wasn't organic bc People were suffering from results of bad policy, no. It was engineering by political messaging of Congressional Republicans & right-wing media against the ACA & President Obama.
That in retrospect turned out to be good popular policy & good popular president.
yes, and left of center groups spent a long time normalizing a mode of political participation that had the worst of both worlds -- ineffective and emotionally exhausting. the emotional exhaustion was the point
Screaming at people about your pet issue is good for establishing that avoiding you is the only way to avoid being screamed at, as well as associating that issue with lots of screaming, but I'm not really sure what else it does.
We also have a system that has refused to do much of anything for most people's lives. (Median US age is 39. Congress has done exceedingly little in the past 30)
Almost *any* high involvement activism in this era *will* generate burnout unless you can hold onto the Stockdale Paradox.
but more narrowly this is also why the term "awareness raising" should be banned. people have rich private live and at the very minimum the ability to tune out. even in the television era you'd see a report on starving refugees in a place you never heard of and then a commercial break for ACME Shave
A democratic system I'd like to see would be one where folks can more publicly more aggregateable more visibly say what is important. A nation's top 10 list.
The demand for attention is endless. Having a declared list might make us think, and might help us better see.
God, I can't remember that one twitter activist dingus with the million dollar home outside New York. He was inescapable! I can see his face, but his name is void.
I think part of the problem is that the party’s fundraising apparatus also started to resemble cons and scams.
Constant push notifications and emails about how you need to donate now to save Roe v. Wade (which they couldn’t do) or sign Obama’s birthday card (which he never read), etc.
My experience of 'awareness raising' (albeit in the different environment of the UK) is it nearly always traces back to an NGO rather than to an actual movement.
Every interaction being ruthlessly optimized for income was completely destructive for things like video games, and its wild we dont see a parallel in politics
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That in retrospect turned out to be good popular policy & good popular president.
Interesting to contrast that with how social media overall has normalized "political participation" methods... wouldn't that be more relevant?
https://bsky.app/profile/aelkus.bsky.social/post/3lklkoqlvfc2w
https://bsky.app/profile/isaiahbishop.bsky.social/post/3lklkibe7jk2b
Almost *any* high involvement activism in this era *will* generate burnout unless you can hold onto the Stockdale Paradox.
The demand for attention is endless. Having a declared list might make us think, and might help us better see.
*commercial break*
"ACME Shave. So clean. So powerful. It's like taking an anvil to your face!"
https://bsky.app/profile/oldjacket.bsky.social/post/3lklld6fim22a
https://jacobin.com/2022/02/from-post-politics-to-hyper-politics
Constant push notifications and emails about how you need to donate now to save Roe v. Wade (which they couldn’t do) or sign Obama’s birthday card (which he never read), etc.
....the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/159364/musee-des-beaux-arts-63a1efde036cd
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_Landscape_with_the_Fall_of_Icarus_-_Brussels%2C_Royal_Museums_of_Fine_Arts_of_Belgium_-_Google_Arts_%26_Culture.jpg/800px-Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_Landscape_with_the_Fall_of_Icarus_-_Brussels%2C_Royal_Museums_of_Fine_Arts_of_Belgium_-_Google_Arts_%26_Culture.jpg