These stories amount to "the left was so annoying about pronouns or liberals made people feel so guilty about plastic straws they had no choice but to get on board with the second coming of the Third Reich and the destruction of the planet."
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However, in a bitter unacknowledged way it's *true* we were defeated by "wokeness" and "DEI": we had the uppitty gall to run a *brown woman* for President! Didn't we learn anything from the time we run a super-qualified white woman? Better the literally worst white man in the world than one of them
Spot-on. I tie this to the gender/race gap in US party politics. Since Reagan, the GOP has been the Daddy Party, the Man Party, & Dems have been the Mommy Party, the Woman Party--which means means people automatically give GOP the deference & extra chances given to a white man.
Even when Dems are a majority, most white men are GOP, & since white men are the "default human" in our culture, it always *feels* (to them & to the press, at least) like they should be running things.
"None of this would have been necessary if you'd just let us have our plastic straws," shouted the commandant, as the CyberTrucks arrived to take the prisoners to a new camp in the Connecticut Desert.
Thank you to everyone who read the essay. As for everyone who decided to respond to the one sentence from it that fit into the BlueSky format, you apparently think it's an essay about the election or just want to talk about it and I don't.
I think what they thought would happen Jan 6th was that the police guards would join them in storming Congress, and that the formal pronouncement of who had won would be read out (as Trump) by Pence under the guns, and over the bodies of a lot of elected people. This would fit the 1930s playbook.
Beautiful essay. Well reasoned.The other day, when Trump blamed Zelensky for starting the war, it felt familiar but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Thank you for doing so and for explaining how what is happening is exactly what occurs when victim blaming in the case of sexual assault.
One of the best things I've read in a long time. The points you made about an abusive husband and an abusive political party were painfully accurate.
I am so damned sick of people claiming we lost because of transgender women in sports or Palestinian-American protests or pronouns or cancel culture.
One day hopefully you can spend a few words on fringe people like Samuel Moyn, Shadi Hamid, the middlename guys like Harper en Williams, whose anti-liberal hatred is so overwhelming they'd welcome fascism as long as it destroys these liberals. They are completely and totally of the charts.
She didn’t have all the money in the world. The dems r just liars and try to make ppl beleive they aren’t in the right by vocal bs only. They r the party of war and sell outs just like the reps
Your essay is great. Of some relevance: in 2017 Louise Fitzgerald and I published an op-ed about Trump's use of DARVO. And in 2019 South Park ran a related skit about DARVO...
Now we know even more from our research. The South Park segment and new research are here: https://www.jjfreyd.com/darvo
The AOC pool noodle part at the end is so good & makes me sad that I don't think we'll ever vote for a woman for POTUS...if we get to vote again. Or maybe the fever will break & we'll phoenix-from-the-flame this nonsense. Now I've got Sinéad's Troy stuck in my head. Not complaining. Seems right.
Well GOP and independent voters were manipulated but yeah, the left gave them plenty of ammunition and doubled down through multiple election cycles despite warnings that the “big liberal tent” approach was a losing strategy.
“tell me plastic straws kill turtles ONE MORE TIME and I’m gonna start gassing people” - MAGA bros rage quitting at their local progressive coffee shop
As someone who has read far too much about both the history of women being blamed for their dress and tactics used by abusers, this argument is chillingly accurate.
My concept of some of this has been "Unified Fuckery Theory" because I have been seeing DARVO behavior in even the *mildest* encounter when someone gets called on poor behavior. People who claim systemic problems are personal responsibility won't even apologize for insulting others, etc.
The framing of the “mommy party” and the “daddy party” has been around for a long time, and it’s always confused me, because it rests on the idea that mommy is bad. In this election I finally fully understood it, when they were saying things like “daddy’s back with his belt”.
It’s premised on a metaphor of domestic violence. Daddy makes the children cry, and Mommy hugs them and wipes their tears but she is trapped by Daddy’s power. In this metaphor Mommy deserves the abuse, children deserve the abuse. It’s not an accidental framing. It’s what they want.
Mom is always the killjoy. (She’s not, of course, but the stereotype is that mom is always the one undermining your fun and stopping you from being yourself.)
Look, the American Left can be really obnoxious esp. when they try to force the American prism on everything around the world (y'all can be really American Exceptionalist like that) but...
Anyone using that as an excuse to support Nazis is just looking for an excuse.
(And is much more obnoxious :))
That sounds like a bit of deflection. It remains the fact that the Democrats lost the 2024 election, and that must have reasons. Instead of coming up with strawmen to take down, one should honestly and self critically look for those reasons.
The Ukraine example is great. But don’t forget. From Stop the War coalition to Hasan Piker and Noam Chomsky…. They all said basically Ukraine provoked Russia.
Great work. Apologizing for human rights abuses by non-American counties is such an own-goal for the left. It takes MAGA-level ignorance and cruelty. And for what?
https://events.pol-rev.com/
I believe peaceful protests, especially the ones planned for March 14, will be key to turning this around or digging in for a long dystopian regime.
Trumps inauguration was January 20. +53 days = March 14
Just here to help bring some awareness to the fact that not all women have a uterus (referencing the posted illustration) for a variety of reasons. In a time where we try to be inclusive, I think it’s important to not relegate women to biology like the GOP is doing. My two cents.
Nothing in the piece says all women do or relegates women to biology. But as the caption says the image is most directly about reproductive rights, but I read it as a broader affirmation of self-determination and also it's a gorgeous image.
There was a moment in about 2009 when McConnell said if they didn't back down on healthcare he wouldn't be able to hold back the extremists in his party.
I took that is a pretty nasty threat at the time.
Now I think it's just how they see the social contract.
yes. it's utterly despicable. worse that it's normalized and passed on ... any survivor of abuse knows this in their bones, literally and figuratively.
Thank you for all of your words which serve as emotional life rafts in these times. I'd also like to be first in line for the No Means No (showing my age here I know) tee shirts with nun with machete graphic.
Excellent read. Thank you. It’s striking how the methods of control and abuse are similar to those used in domestic violence, albeit on a different scale. It is controlling. It is abusive.
RIght out of the original patriarchal playbook.
The Garden of Eden
God: Eve did you eat of the apple?
Eve: Yes, Lord. I did.
God: Adam did you eat of the apple?
Adam: Yes, Lord. But SHE made me Do It!
God: Well then, you my son should rule over her.
She is the root of all evil
the american people stood up the democrats on election day because they tried to convene an unholy marriage between good and righteous things (trans rights, the environment) with the mass destruction wrought in Ukraine and Palestine. Or in your terms, nobody ever asked for our consent to go to war.
Indeed. The idea that we progressives can be annoying is a given. The idea that because we said a few annoying things you had to choose fascism…that part doesn’t follow unless you were always gonna choose fascism.
‘It's a well-known psychological phenomenon: "the unconscious defense mechanism that Freud called projection: the attribution of one’s own forbidden – and typically malevolent – motives, impulses, or emotions to others. When people project, what is true about oneself instead becomes true of others."
‘… no matter what abusers take from their victims, they don't want to take the blame. And one of the prerogatives of power is to be in charge of blame, and abusers routinely exercise that power to make their own acts someone else's fault.’
I had an ex literally try to make this argument to me - like why do 'you people' (queer, trans, non-binary) have to have all these labels, and pronouns, and basically bait the bear by existing publicly and asking for basic dignity and respect. What an asshole.
I just hear abusers talking in those examples. One and all, all are one, they are abusers who are delighted to have a fellow abuser and ugly-hearted person in charge. Whatever the reason for them turning out like this, is not an excuse. They are abusers.
While this is no excuse I will find it more useful to focus what we can affect. In my opinion (most) people are good by their nature and they need to feel they make something good. And people hate when they are made to feel guilty for things they cannot affect.
When I was young both feminism and environmental protections were the good things to do, building better world. Now, I do not feel the same way about what I hear and not having my values fixed long ago I am not sure I will sign to these.
So I am not surprised many (in particular young) people fill the guilt-filled vacuum of "what should be the GOOD I will support in my life" with bullshit as "saving internal combustion engines (in Europe from the "evil Brussels") or fight unfair DEI or preserve the nation from migrants.
We know these things are wrong and dangerous but people often depend more on feelings than on rational analysis. We all know it when we try not to buy something that we like but do not need and it is the same with politics and life values.
Also prepositions and plastic straws have one thing in common: it is more a placebo than real cure. Prepositions will not fill pay or work gaps nor make fairer conditions for young families and plastic straws do not solve global climate crisis (and not even the microplastics problem).
Where real solutions and effective policies were necessary we sold our democracy to neoliberal idea of putting economy above politics and hence democracy. We need to reject this first, replace guilt with goals and make real changes that will help real people and will have real impacts on the planet.
Omg hi Rebecca Solnit!! I’ve been a fan for years, you changed my life 😇 I wrote an essay in Danish for my BA about Tove Ditlevsen’s poetry and referenced ‘men explain things to me’ for part of it.
Ily queen hope you’re well ❤️🔥
It continues to amaze me just how much the language of the modern right is couched in terms of an abuser (see also the gleeful "Daddy's home"), and how they conflate being abusive with being masculine.
Abuse victims are not predestined for fascism. Saying so only hurts abuse victims.
Abuse is a societal phenomenon, and even just statistically, marginalised people are most likely to face abuse.
Yet the most likely people turning to fascism are the least likely to be abused.
There is a whole wave of right-wing grifters who heard the words "toxic masculinity hurts men as well as women" and told their followers that masculinity was under attack and that they needed to do really toxic, self-defeating shit to protect it.
It's as if the political and religious Right were a raving maniac with a gun, shouting "Don't come any closer!" as they walk towards us. They keep walking towards us, waving the gun, accusing us of getting closer to *them*.
Finally, they shoot us, shouting. "SEE? LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!!"
I've heard these rants recently in the UK including one where someone echoed the "sin of empathy" line
Person in question is a double degree holder and usual "nice guy" but he has a bee in his bonnet about "blue haired weirdos who identify as toasters" & therefore believes the UK needs a Trump :/
Hopefully u are posting everything here. I followed u on fb for a long time, but fb is limiting the reach of ur posts. So I'm not ur fb friend but I follow you and love reading ur posts. But fb is no allowing it any longer
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If they thought they were doing something *right*, they'd take 100% of the responsibility.
I am so damned sick of people claiming we lost because of transgender women in sports or Palestinian-American protests or pronouns or cancel culture.
Now we know even more from our research. The South Park segment and new research are here:
https://www.jjfreyd.com/darvo
I don't think that means it's the left's fault, though.
#cspan #cspanwj
https://apnews.com/article/deserters-awol-ukraine-russia-war-def676562552d42bc5d593363c9e5ea0
Anyone using that as an excuse to support Nazis is just looking for an excuse.
(And is much more obnoxious :))
and she makes me do everything.
They just do what they think benefits them the most and they don't worry too much about what the truth or details are.
Appreciate your words and intellectual clarity.
I believe peaceful protests, especially the ones planned for March 14, will be key to turning this around or digging in for a long dystopian regime.
Trumps inauguration was January 20. +53 days = March 14
In 53 days Hitler Dismantled a Democracy.
Stop King Musk and his puppet
And as a woman, I couldn't have explained it better.
they’re five fucking years old
I took that is a pretty nasty threat at the time.
Now I think it's just how they see the social contract.
This is 🎵reality🎵™️
"KNOW YOUR ABUSER"
The Garden of Eden
God: Eve did you eat of the apple?
Eve: Yes, Lord. I did.
God: Adam did you eat of the apple?
Adam: Yes, Lord. But SHE made me Do It!
God: Well then, you my son should rule over her.
She is the root of all evil
Sure we live in a free and prosperous society that is the envy of the world, BUT occasionally I have to think before I speak.
F*ck this noise, I want an autocratic dictator to put a stop to this.
What the actual F*ck were people thinking?
They just want to be hateful.
https://medium.com/legendary-women/what-were-you-wearing-art-exhibit-explores-rape-cultures-persistent-question-ff58ba72eecb
Ily queen hope you’re well ❤️🔥
Sick, sick, sick movement.
Name me a fascist who wasn’t/isn’t a bullied or a broken boy.
Abuse is a societal phenomenon, and even just statistically, marginalised people are most likely to face abuse.
Yet the most likely people turning to fascism are the least likely to be abused.
Fascism is a choice.
Finally, they shoot us, shouting. "SEE? LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!!"
Person in question is a double degree holder and usual "nice guy" but he has a bee in his bonnet about "blue haired weirdos who identify as toasters" & therefore believes the UK needs a Trump :/
Adam was deceived by his wife saying, “hey, eat this.”
Who amongst us is truly more powerful, then?