I didn’t know who Sydney Sweeney was until the recent brouhaha about her jeans ad. I didn’t watch The Handmaid’s Tale (read the book). With so many other things to worry about, she is not high on my priority list.
On school programs my opinion as a parent of a 6 year old is I’m all in favor of a variety of classes at varying competitiveness levels. I’d want my kid in a class that’s challenging but not overwhelming (my attempt at AP Physics went hilariously sideways, feeling like Homer Simpson trying to follow the Home Foundation Repair video, and right as I was unable to follow the teacher explaining why a trend was parabolic some kid asked “shouldn’t that line be acubic instead?” and I practically jumped out the window). So whether your kid is gifted, in need of special help, or average, it’s better for everyone to have all these options available. Reacting to it with derision as though it’s somehow an affront to have gifted programs—better to put them all in the same program, I guess, where the slower kids cannot follow and the gifted kids are unengaged?—is cartoonish liberal bullshit.
As a kid who was in a gifted program but also failed her first calculus exam before dropping the course, I know the feeling you describe. I remember the first “The Incredibles” movie catching flack for being “crypto-conservative” because of the message “if everybody is special, no one is.” I understand the message to mean if you don't let people be the things that make them special or unique, you're cutting them off from being a whole person.
My unwanted advice for liberals is that if you start to sound like the caricature of liberals that Fox News presents, you might be hurting your cause more than an actual right winger would. Are we seriously talking about canceling Sweeney because she’s registered with the wrong party? We don’t know what she thinks about politics. For all we know she just doesn’t like taxes—a bad policy opinion but hardly the “this ruins all her movies for me” type (compare with Mark Wahlberg who actually beat and blinded an old Vietnamese immigrant in a racial assault.
And yes we have to get out of our bubbles more—not to spend time with MAGAs but to not forget how normals people think.
Okay, I am gonna out myself…when I live in states with closed primaries, I register Republican to try to strangle the worst serpents in their cradle BEFORE the general and because I am never gonna be shut out of an election every again by registering “Independent” (Oregon 1992 - ugh, and I had to vote in the general at a 7th Day Adventist Church!) It’s not particularly fun, and this approach is not for everyone. Imagine my old liberal white lady horror having to request a Republican primary ballot to vote for John Kasich over Donald Trump in 2016 in Elijah Cummings’ majority Black district in Baltimore. Luckily there were some terrible judicial candidates on the same ballot I could also vote “against.”
Then I go out and canvass for the Democratic candidates that won their primaries and try to kick every Republican’s ass Out of office.
Why does the designation “non-Hispanic white” exist? Do you think Hispanic whites decided that they didn’t want to be “just white”? Or was it the other way ‘round?
I ask because you just blithely wedded white people together in one “70 percent” pile despite the fact that non-Hispanic whites have been on a tear to harass and lock up a bunch of Hispanic whites without a single disclaimer being necessary.
Fact is, white people turned this country into this ultra bigoted hellscape. Forget 1964, Jim Crow happened because white Northern Republicans were cool with letting white Southern Dems violate the Constitution.
The “enemy” has always been whiteness. Regardless of party.
If the "enemy is whiteness," that is not an enemy you can defeat. Democrats have consistently lost when they compete on those grounds. It's also *not* how mainstream Democrats want to present themselves (likely for a reason).
Democrats have never competed on those grounds. They’re not allowed to.
But mainstream Republicans certainly do. And they WIN by doing so.
They’ve consistently accused Democrats of “identity politics” while literally standing in front of 99.9% white audiences, most of whom call themselves Christian, without the slightest hint of awareness as to their own identity politics.
Aided, of course, by a complicit media that not only NEVER calls out the opposition party’s identity politics, but also uses words like “dogwhistles” to downplay every instance of their in-your-face racism.
All while platforming their claims about allegedly being against identity politics.
Because whiteness has always done this. It’s hegemonic at this point.
Maybe this is just growing up in an environment where it was not uncommon to be a Republican, it’s rarely bothered me that a celebrity has terrible politics. I’ve enjoyed multiple things Kelsey Grammer has done, I never stopped loving Arnold S., and I enjoyed the first Shazam movie.
A woman who grew up in the Idaho panhandle with maga parents: it’s probably going to be an outcome that their kids vote Republican. It’s not to say I approve of her political choices in the slightest. It’s ok to enjoy the work of someone while acknowledging the person who created it might not be a good person themselves.
Will she stay a Republican? Possibly! I’d imagine this stent in the spotlight and being directly perved upon by President perve is going to be a fertile proving ground for her beliefs. That being said I still hope she and anyone who signs up with team maga in 2024 eventually figures it out.
I have been utterly unaware of anything Shazam!-related since the '70s, let alone what anyone involved might have revealed of their politics.
In fact you've just helped me realize that my people have no tradition of making connections between or judgements regarding celebrities/artists & politics. I had to shove aside the nonpolitical campaigns against Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Louis CK before I thought of Robert Price — a world-class voracious reader and paragon of Higher Criticism — who is possibly the only [niche-known] 'Jesus-mythicist' who was also a Trump-1.0 voter (I haven't followed up this decade). Totally enthralling speaker when the topic is New Testament or Lovecraftian mythos, but a trainwreck if asked questions about what humans should actually be doing right now as a nation/society.
I'm tired of the left just acting like agnostic 21st century Calvinists, where you just have to perform being good online, so that the arbiters/priests of morality can deem you 'unproblematic' and you'll be absolved of your sins.
I generally agree with the sentiments, but correct me if I'm wrong. I only see Liberals beating themselves up for not being fair to "innocent" Conservatives. Never have I seen a piece from a right leaning writer about whether it was fair to demean liberals for being too "woke". Nor have I seen any right wing pundits ask themselves if perhaps liberals might have a legitimate point on anything.
Questioning ourselves about fairness is purely a liberal exercise. Rebuking other liberals for jumping to conclusions is purely a liberal exercise. Concerning ourselves about how conservatives might react to legitimate criticism is purely a liberal issue. To me, it's a bit too much like the battered wife blaming herself for acting in a way that makes her husband attack her.
Only liberals worry about the possibility of alienating a young conservative. Have you ever seen the same concern from them?
Al Franken unnecessarily gave up an extremely valuable platform for zero good-faith reasons. Sam Alito got to pretend he understands the mind of a normal person and dismissed "the appearance of impropriety".
This is part of the issue. Both parties used to have conservative and liberal wings (think GOPers like Jacob Javits or George Romney). I think that dynamic helped keep both parties closer to the center. Now, everyone has sorted to their supposedly proper sides, and with that comes more more extreme policy, and more extreme swings in policy with changes in administration.
They lie, but that’s not what gives them an advantage. They’re able to get the public talking and thinking about what they want them to, they’re able to get even liberals using terminology the Right wants (we call them “pro life” and “Christian”), they know how to unite their factions and divide ours. We could learn from this.
In a way, I feel for Sweeney. Whatever bad choices she made, or intentions she had, I'm sure becoming MAGA Aryan Queen (and future Barron's wife, according to Jesse Watters -YUCK!) wasn't in her plans.
And she also doesn't deserve this level of scorn from internet lefties, which helped trigger the MAGA embrace.
It’s hard to know what she’s thinking—maybe she really is “low taxes” or has qualms with abortion—or maybe she really is a Trump fan. Thing is, we don’t know, which is fine—I’m good with not knowing what celebrities think about politics or really anything outside their area of expertise.
I am of the opinion that Gifted and Talented programs were where they put neurodivergent kids they didn't know what to do with, which was not really ego-stroking Boomers as much as being able to try and nurture clearly smart kids who couldn't necessarily thrive in a "traditional" classroom. While well intentioned, it "othered" me more than I already was.
But I digress.
This is an excellent piece and brings up a lot of important and uncomfortable truths that progressives simply would like to ignore.
It's just too bad that the MAGA Project 2025 agenda to completely defund and dismantle the Dept of Education is hurtling along. That means programs for children with special needs, disabilities, behavioral challenges, neurodivergent kids, ESL kids, and kids who are gifted and talented will disappear. Public schools in affluent districts may be able to fund these programs, but most public schools will be forced to cut them. If this were the only reason Democrats should be openly critical of MAGA, it might be one thing. But it isn't. MAGA is bringing irreversible fascist changes faster than we can even react, much less stop them.
I won't be wasting any effort worrying about whether or not Sydney Sweeney is gonna be okay. She'll be fine, with or without Democrats supporting her valiant struggle through this terrible, self imposed tragedy (hard eye roll).
In this piece you compared Sweeney's ad, where she clearly refers to her blue eyes, while showing her lily white belly, and conflates her genes/jeans, to a Brooke Shields jeans ad, where she says "Nothing comes between me and my Calvin's". Sweeney's ad inappropriately drags white eugenics into an ad for jeans. The Shield's ad inappropriately sexualized a 15-year-old girl. Both ads are emblematic of MAGA ideals (white supremacy, hypersexualizing young women and female children, objectification of women, and female girls to promote misogyny, and devalue women). Both ads deserve to be condemned by liberals, progressives, Democrats, or whatever. It's exhausting enough to witness the incessant cruelty, and inhumanity MAGA inflicts around the globe. Being expected to show tolerance for a MAGA nobody who was well compensated for her little privileged white girl stunt is too much. Sorry. I love your work Stephen. But just not interested in helping Sweeney work through her MAGA problem.
I honestly don't see anything to suggest the MAGA destruction is reversible. I wish it was, but really don't see it happening. We are in the last downward spiral.
Stephen, there should be a Pulitzer category for the body of work you’ve written for so many years. I’m serious. I can't think of any other writer anywhere in any medium whose output is as consistently excellent as yours. You deserve real widespread recognition for your work.
brat tried to get me to watch Euphoria. i was able to determine that i was too old and she is too young, but not for much longer. makeup artists did manage to perfectly capture the feeling of having your brain melt on drugs, though.
“Even if you have genuine concerns with TAG programs, you should at least start from the position that parents want the best for their kids and aren’t just status-conscious narcissists.”
I always chafed at the “Talented&Gifted” classification when my kids were in school, because its very name suggests that anyone who’s not in the club is by definition talentless and mediocre. Not a great message to send to elementary-school kids. And I remember fellow parents back then who DID treat it as an extension of their own egos, and like their new BMW or their latest material acquisitions, they’d bring it up, a lot. Another trophy for their collection, but also, a confirmation that they were doing the parenting thing right, for which, in fairness, a lot of us clueless young parents needed some form of validation.
Stephen, I so appreciate your thoughtful assessments, always refreshingly free of harsh judgments or over-the-top outrage. Thank you.
Well I await to see what happens when—presumably—an elected Democrat tells online activists to cool it, and how fast they get flayed on social media. Bonus points if Schumer or Jeffries do that (Jeffries already has his ticket punched for the glass cliff). I really want to see when Democratic candidates end up getting a tight leash on people who support them.
Frankly at this point I say just let Newsom have it. I change my stance on letting the Internet faves drive. Because this also means that there's more disincentive for Chris Evans by voters than there is for Laura Loomer. The lady who crashed and burned trying to pick up Nazis in a bar.
I'll only say this though about the electorate in this country. I watched a bunch of voters gladly swallow fiction about innocent Haitian-Americans, under the thrall of sadopopulism. I watch people continue to support literal concentration camps.
I've been a fan of your catch-phrases for a while, so I feel obligated to grapple with this "glass cliff" thing. I'm familiar with the symbolism of a glass ceiling — but how does it work with a cliff? Does the subject think they're walking on air until whoops, too late? &or can they see the carnage at the bottom long before their 'moment of truth'?
It's actually a term of art I learned around here and is a counterpart to the glass ceiling. Typically in a "glass cliff" scenario, a member of a marginalized group may be brought on or just happen to be around during the nadir of a company or other organization. The subsequent failure of that company or organization can be often ascribed to the presence of that minority in a position of power and thus used as a justification (by, I should say, bad-faith actors) to not hire or promote more of that minority. So essentially that person may be terminated to "save" the organization, hence pushed off a glass cliff.
Democrats can’t win if the online left doesn’t cool it. I’m a lifetime Dem from lifetime Dem parents & some of what these people wrote makes my skin crawl. The white people comments are annoying, but the anti-semitism (oh sorry, antiZionism) definitely would have me running for the door if the far left wasn’t just a mirror image of the far right.
Starting to think that all social media, including Substack, should die until we have figured out how to only allow verified authentic benign human behavior.
Why? Because if we took away the platforms, the global fascist takeover would 🛑. So, that’s what we should do. They can be rebuilt with guardrails when there is the will to do so.
This is only my thinking, and not all of my thinking is evidence-based, but I believe that 2016 would have brought us a different president without the foreign interference. Not sure if it would have been another Bush or Clinton or maybe a Rubio.
The American election result turbo-charged the global hate movements. Therefore, social media platforms have turned out to be an ideal milieu for spreading disinformation and fascism and recruiting for fascist movements. It didn’t have to be that way, but was probably an inevitability the moment Congress decided not to regulate, based on the promises of Our Tech Bros, who told them the Internet would regulate itself. “Don’t stop progress! We’ll lose the battle with China!”
So, that’s my thinking, anyway.
Now, because I must be a masochist, I’m hoping Congress will do better with AI.
You are correct again. OTOH, providing global recruiting tools has allowed Neo-Nazis and other hateful freaks to share best practices & boost all of their signals.
We’ve created a world in which Russia can win - shouldn’t that alone give everyone pause?
I’d be crushed if I cared about Sweeney or if she were, you know, a good actor.
Anyway …
I didn’t know who Sydney Sweeney was until the recent brouhaha about her jeans ad. I didn’t watch The Handmaid’s Tale (read the book). With so many other things to worry about, she is not high on my priority list.
On school programs my opinion as a parent of a 6 year old is I’m all in favor of a variety of classes at varying competitiveness levels. I’d want my kid in a class that’s challenging but not overwhelming (my attempt at AP Physics went hilariously sideways, feeling like Homer Simpson trying to follow the Home Foundation Repair video, and right as I was unable to follow the teacher explaining why a trend was parabolic some kid asked “shouldn’t that line be acubic instead?” and I practically jumped out the window). So whether your kid is gifted, in need of special help, or average, it’s better for everyone to have all these options available. Reacting to it with derision as though it’s somehow an affront to have gifted programs—better to put them all in the same program, I guess, where the slower kids cannot follow and the gifted kids are unengaged?—is cartoonish liberal bullshit.
Folks—get outside a bit, talk to some normals.
As a kid who was in a gifted program but also failed her first calculus exam before dropping the course, I know the feeling you describe. I remember the first “The Incredibles” movie catching flack for being “crypto-conservative” because of the message “if everybody is special, no one is.” I understand the message to mean if you don't let people be the things that make them special or unique, you're cutting them off from being a whole person.
My unwanted advice for liberals is that if you start to sound like the caricature of liberals that Fox News presents, you might be hurting your cause more than an actual right winger would. Are we seriously talking about canceling Sweeney because she’s registered with the wrong party? We don’t know what she thinks about politics. For all we know she just doesn’t like taxes—a bad policy opinion but hardly the “this ruins all her movies for me” type (compare with Mark Wahlberg who actually beat and blinded an old Vietnamese immigrant in a racial assault.
And yes we have to get out of our bubbles more—not to spend time with MAGAs but to not forget how normals people think.
Okay, I am gonna out myself…when I live in states with closed primaries, I register Republican to try to strangle the worst serpents in their cradle BEFORE the general and because I am never gonna be shut out of an election every again by registering “Independent” (Oregon 1992 - ugh, and I had to vote in the general at a 7th Day Adventist Church!) It’s not particularly fun, and this approach is not for everyone. Imagine my old liberal white lady horror having to request a Republican primary ballot to vote for John Kasich over Donald Trump in 2016 in Elijah Cummings’ majority Black district in Baltimore. Luckily there were some terrible judicial candidates on the same ballot I could also vote “against.”
Then I go out and canvass for the Democratic candidates that won their primaries and try to kick every Republican’s ass Out of office.
Why does the designation “non-Hispanic white” exist? Do you think Hispanic whites decided that they didn’t want to be “just white”? Or was it the other way ‘round?
I ask because you just blithely wedded white people together in one “70 percent” pile despite the fact that non-Hispanic whites have been on a tear to harass and lock up a bunch of Hispanic whites without a single disclaimer being necessary.
Fact is, white people turned this country into this ultra bigoted hellscape. Forget 1964, Jim Crow happened because white Northern Republicans were cool with letting white Southern Dems violate the Constitution.
The “enemy” has always been whiteness. Regardless of party.
If the "enemy is whiteness," that is not an enemy you can defeat. Democrats have consistently lost when they compete on those grounds. It's also *not* how mainstream Democrats want to present themselves (likely for a reason).
Democrats have never competed on those grounds. They’re not allowed to.
But mainstream Republicans certainly do. And they WIN by doing so.
They’ve consistently accused Democrats of “identity politics” while literally standing in front of 99.9% white audiences, most of whom call themselves Christian, without the slightest hint of awareness as to their own identity politics.
Aided, of course, by a complicit media that not only NEVER calls out the opposition party’s identity politics, but also uses words like “dogwhistles” to downplay every instance of their in-your-face racism.
All while platforming their claims about allegedly being against identity politics.
Because whiteness has always done this. It’s hegemonic at this point.
Thank you! You’ve pin pointed why this particular piece kinda irked me.
Maybe this is just growing up in an environment where it was not uncommon to be a Republican, it’s rarely bothered me that a celebrity has terrible politics. I’ve enjoyed multiple things Kelsey Grammer has done, I never stopped loving Arnold S., and I enjoyed the first Shazam movie.
A woman who grew up in the Idaho panhandle with maga parents: it’s probably going to be an outcome that their kids vote Republican. It’s not to say I approve of her political choices in the slightest. It’s ok to enjoy the work of someone while acknowledging the person who created it might not be a good person themselves.
Will she stay a Republican? Possibly! I’d imagine this stent in the spotlight and being directly perved upon by President perve is going to be a fertile proving ground for her beliefs. That being said I still hope she and anyone who signs up with team maga in 2024 eventually figures it out.
I have been utterly unaware of anything Shazam!-related since the '70s, let alone what anyone involved might have revealed of their politics.
In fact you've just helped me realize that my people have no tradition of making connections between or judgements regarding celebrities/artists & politics. I had to shove aside the nonpolitical campaigns against Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and Louis CK before I thought of Robert Price — a world-class voracious reader and paragon of Higher Criticism — who is possibly the only [niche-known] 'Jesus-mythicist' who was also a Trump-1.0 voter (I haven't followed up this decade). Totally enthralling speaker when the topic is New Testament or Lovecraftian mythos, but a trainwreck if asked questions about what humans should actually be doing right now as a nation/society.
here here! (is it 'hear hear'?).
I'm tired of the left just acting like agnostic 21st century Calvinists, where you just have to perform being good online, so that the arbiters/priests of morality can deem you 'unproblematic' and you'll be absolved of your sins.
It is, in actual fact, "Hear, hear!"
(Thanks for asking!)
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/hear-hear-expression-explained#78Vnj2o2wjFqYKErm8S5hH
your username is awesome!
I generally agree with the sentiments, but correct me if I'm wrong. I only see Liberals beating themselves up for not being fair to "innocent" Conservatives. Never have I seen a piece from a right leaning writer about whether it was fair to demean liberals for being too "woke". Nor have I seen any right wing pundits ask themselves if perhaps liberals might have a legitimate point on anything.
Questioning ourselves about fairness is purely a liberal exercise. Rebuking other liberals for jumping to conclusions is purely a liberal exercise. Concerning ourselves about how conservatives might react to legitimate criticism is purely a liberal issue. To me, it's a bit too much like the battered wife blaming herself for acting in a way that makes her husband attack her.
Only liberals worry about the possibility of alienating a young conservative. Have you ever seen the same concern from them?
Al Franken unnecessarily gave up an extremely valuable platform for zero good-faith reasons. Sam Alito got to pretend he understands the mind of a normal person and dismissed "the appearance of impropriety".
If Republicans can get away with more, it’s perhaps because they represent a more homogenous group.
This is part of the issue. Both parties used to have conservative and liberal wings (think GOPers like Jacob Javits or George Romney). I think that dynamic helped keep both parties closer to the center. Now, everyone has sorted to their supposedly proper sides, and with that comes more more extreme policy, and more extreme swings in policy with changes in administration.
Enjoyed the article.
Also Republicans and conservatives are far better at communicating and image building than Democrats and liberals are.
If by communicating and image building you mean flat out lying and denying reality, you are spot on.
They lie, but that’s not what gives them an advantage. They’re able to get the public talking and thinking about what they want them to, they’re able to get even liberals using terminology the Right wants (we call them “pro life” and “Christian”), they know how to unite their factions and divide ours. We could learn from this.
By definition, neither activity inherently includes "honest use of facts".
In a way, I feel for Sweeney. Whatever bad choices she made, or intentions she had, I'm sure becoming MAGA Aryan Queen (and future Barron's wife, according to Jesse Watters -YUCK!) wasn't in her plans.
And she also doesn't deserve this level of scorn from internet lefties, which helped trigger the MAGA embrace.
It’s hard to know what she’s thinking—maybe she really is “low taxes” or has qualms with abortion—or maybe she really is a Trump fan. Thing is, we don’t know, which is fine—I’m good with not knowing what celebrities think about politics or really anything outside their area of expertise.
I am of the opinion that Gifted and Talented programs were where they put neurodivergent kids they didn't know what to do with, which was not really ego-stroking Boomers as much as being able to try and nurture clearly smart kids who couldn't necessarily thrive in a "traditional" classroom. While well intentioned, it "othered" me more than I already was.
But I digress.
This is an excellent piece and brings up a lot of important and uncomfortable truths that progressives simply would like to ignore.
Thanks! Yes, I support everything that helps maximize kids’ potential and addresses their unique needs.
It's just too bad that the MAGA Project 2025 agenda to completely defund and dismantle the Dept of Education is hurtling along. That means programs for children with special needs, disabilities, behavioral challenges, neurodivergent kids, ESL kids, and kids who are gifted and talented will disappear. Public schools in affluent districts may be able to fund these programs, but most public schools will be forced to cut them. If this were the only reason Democrats should be openly critical of MAGA, it might be one thing. But it isn't. MAGA is bringing irreversible fascist changes faster than we can even react, much less stop them.
I won't be wasting any effort worrying about whether or not Sydney Sweeney is gonna be okay. She'll be fine, with or without Democrats supporting her valiant struggle through this terrible, self imposed tragedy (hard eye roll).
In this piece you compared Sweeney's ad, where she clearly refers to her blue eyes, while showing her lily white belly, and conflates her genes/jeans, to a Brooke Shields jeans ad, where she says "Nothing comes between me and my Calvin's". Sweeney's ad inappropriately drags white eugenics into an ad for jeans. The Shield's ad inappropriately sexualized a 15-year-old girl. Both ads are emblematic of MAGA ideals (white supremacy, hypersexualizing young women and female children, objectification of women, and female girls to promote misogyny, and devalue women). Both ads deserve to be condemned by liberals, progressives, Democrats, or whatever. It's exhausting enough to witness the incessant cruelty, and inhumanity MAGA inflicts around the globe. Being expected to show tolerance for a MAGA nobody who was well compensated for her little privileged white girl stunt is too much. Sorry. I love your work Stephen. But just not interested in helping Sweeney work through her MAGA problem.
Irreversible?
I honestly don't see anything to suggest the MAGA destruction is reversible. I wish it was, but really don't see it happening. We are in the last downward spiral.
Stephen, there should be a Pulitzer category for the body of work you’ve written for so many years. I’m serious. I can't think of any other writer anywhere in any medium whose output is as consistently excellent as yours. You deserve real widespread recognition for your work.
Stephen is one of the few who could get a Pulitzer and a Tony.
I’m trying to convince him to write a book.
Thanks!
Agreed!
brat tried to get me to watch Euphoria. i was able to determine that i was too old and she is too young, but not for much longer. makeup artists did manage to perfectly capture the feeling of having your brain melt on drugs, though.
I've been wondering who would meet that challenge next since 'Requiem for a Dream' (with a brief diversion in the animated episode of Fringe).
“Even if you have genuine concerns with TAG programs, you should at least start from the position that parents want the best for their kids and aren’t just status-conscious narcissists.”
I always chafed at the “Talented&Gifted” classification when my kids were in school, because its very name suggests that anyone who’s not in the club is by definition talentless and mediocre. Not a great message to send to elementary-school kids. And I remember fellow parents back then who DID treat it as an extension of their own egos, and like their new BMW or their latest material acquisitions, they’d bring it up, a lot. Another trophy for their collection, but also, a confirmation that they were doing the parenting thing right, for which, in fairness, a lot of us clueless young parents needed some form of validation.
Stephen, I so appreciate your thoughtful assessments, always refreshingly free of harsh judgments or over-the-top outrage. Thank you.
Well I await to see what happens when—presumably—an elected Democrat tells online activists to cool it, and how fast they get flayed on social media. Bonus points if Schumer or Jeffries do that (Jeffries already has his ticket punched for the glass cliff). I really want to see when Democratic candidates end up getting a tight leash on people who support them.
Frankly at this point I say just let Newsom have it. I change my stance on letting the Internet faves drive. Because this also means that there's more disincentive for Chris Evans by voters than there is for Laura Loomer. The lady who crashed and burned trying to pick up Nazis in a bar.
I'll only say this though about the electorate in this country. I watched a bunch of voters gladly swallow fiction about innocent Haitian-Americans, under the thrall of sadopopulism. I watch people continue to support literal concentration camps.
I've been a fan of your catch-phrases for a while, so I feel obligated to grapple with this "glass cliff" thing. I'm familiar with the symbolism of a glass ceiling — but how does it work with a cliff? Does the subject think they're walking on air until whoops, too late? &or can they see the carnage at the bottom long before their 'moment of truth'?
It's actually a term of art I learned around here and is a counterpart to the glass ceiling. Typically in a "glass cliff" scenario, a member of a marginalized group may be brought on or just happen to be around during the nadir of a company or other organization. The subsequent failure of that company or organization can be often ascribed to the presence of that minority in a position of power and thus used as a justification (by, I should say, bad-faith actors) to not hire or promote more of that minority. So essentially that person may be terminated to "save" the organization, hence pushed off a glass cliff.
Democrats can’t win if the online left doesn’t cool it. I’m a lifetime Dem from lifetime Dem parents & some of what these people wrote makes my skin crawl. The white people comments are annoying, but the anti-semitism (oh sorry, antiZionism) definitely would have me running for the door if the far left wasn’t just a mirror image of the far right.
Starting to think that all social media, including Substack, should die until we have figured out how to only allow verified authentic benign human behavior.
Why? Because if we took away the platforms, the global fascist takeover would 🛑. So, that’s what we should do. They can be rebuilt with guardrails when there is the will to do so.
"Because if we took away the platforms, the global fascist takeover would 🛑."
How do you figure? I haven't seen any causality-math on that.
This is only my thinking, and not all of my thinking is evidence-based, but I believe that 2016 would have brought us a different president without the foreign interference. Not sure if it would have been another Bush or Clinton or maybe a Rubio.
The American election result turbo-charged the global hate movements. Therefore, social media platforms have turned out to be an ideal milieu for spreading disinformation and fascism and recruiting for fascist movements. It didn’t have to be that way, but was probably an inevitability the moment Congress decided not to regulate, based on the promises of Our Tech Bros, who told them the Internet would regulate itself. “Don’t stop progress! We’ll lose the battle with China!”
So, that’s my thinking, anyway.
Now, because I must be a masochist, I’m hoping Congress will do better with AI.
Well thought out. If I think too much about how much money is being burned for the likes of Benny Johnson I'll give myself an ulcer.
Alas, I fear that this stuff still thrives in darkness. The problem is that we aren't actually talking or listening to each other.
You are correct again. OTOH, providing global recruiting tools has allowed Neo-Nazis and other hateful freaks to share best practices & boost all of their signals.
We’ve created a world in which Russia can win - shouldn’t that alone give everyone pause?
Apple martini, gag!