full regression into unga bunga caveman "me hit you with big stick because look different" pack mentality. ruinous for long-term social cohesion

It just underlines what I've said before here: the sentiment of "credit for fighting" is bullshit because the reality is folks will not give you credit for trying. It's win or fail, and failure isn't treated as a setback, but a permanent tattoo of disgrace that stains you forever.

ROB REINER C. 1993: "Well my last two flicks were pretty heavy. I think for my next outing I'll make a wacky comedy about a young boy traveling the world."

(TBC: I think the law is fine.)

Yeah, imagine a world where insurance companies nakedly and callously wrote off people's lives as "too expensive".

Either we are a society of grown, responsible adults with agency over society and choice or we are but sheep waiting for our next shepherd to lead us to our glory or our doom.

We can't be both.

Something like that, with the notable deviations that

1) people like that Cinnabon server genuinely are barbarian savages unfit to take part in civilization and

2) the ringmaster thinks they should rule the world

Like, shit, one of the best reasons to criticize the Democrats of the late Cold War is that they *gave up* on being the “identity politics” party and shelved defending/expanding civil rights to try and appeal to the white working class voters that rejected those

Terminal allergy to responsibility of any kind

Literally every single bad decision this country has made over the past half-century can be attributed to “a lot of voters are panicky racist morons” but left, center, and right all have a vested interest in denying that and keep tying themselves in more ornate knots to avoid confronting it

Why did the White Working Class turn on liberalism in the late century? Can’t be bigotry, just Money In Politics

Why did the Iraq War happen? Shadowy conspiracy by Them for profits

Why did Trump get elected twice? Well you just have to understand the economic anxiety of the left behind working man

“The Democrats stopped caring about normal people in the late ‘60s/early ‘70s” is probably one of the most hideously racist statements you can make without actually trotting out the triple-parentheses and yet it’s now left-wing orthodoxy for…some fucking reason that isn’t latent racism, I’m sure

I’ve come to just absolutely despite populism and the parochial conclusions it draws regarding how the world is ordered

Most notable accomplishments
of populists this century is the reintroduction of measles as a communicable threat in developed states.

The other version of this: 'I marched for civil rights and to end the Vietnam war. I am a genuine American hero. I want nothing more in life than to ensure no homes are ever built near me again.'

This sort of absurd, ultra-bleak reading of the remarkable prosperity of modern societies is not only embarrassingly wrong - and I saw a historian retweet this sincerely (!!) - but also helps fuel not materialist, left-wing politics, but rather reactionary right-wing politics ('RETVRN-ism').