This is the part that is truly amazing to me. The people complaining the loudest about how bad things are truly are the ones that have it the best. Like they spend all their time fretting and worrying about how bad things are in the inner cities, despite being the ones who get to live far far away from all of those problems.
I think there are plenty of liberals who have this same problem, but it really is a problem of politics as consumption rather than organization or action. Like, the things they see on the teevee are the things that feel real and relevant to them, but they have no desire to actually use their collective willpower, political voice, or personal action to make them better. And so rather than saying “Here are our problems what can we do to fix them?” and actually having to think up reasonable solutions, they just use it as an outlet to gripe and bitch about how terrible the world is despite none of the things they are griping or bitching about actually affecting their lives in any material way.
They get off on fantasies of having their good lives taken away from them by fictional scary dark skinned hordes that have overrun America’s cities and are approaching the border in caravans. Only Donnie Dumb Dumb and bump stocks can save them, clearly.
it’s even worse than that, their ideas of how bad things are in the cities are absolutely warped and frozen in this 80s-reagan-era idea of welfare queens and crack gangs randomly shooting any white people they see. They literally think if you accidentally drive into a “bad” part of town you will instantly die.
I live far away from a lot of problems. I’m solidly upper middle class and white. It doesn’t mean I can’t/don’t care about problems that affect people other than myself. I know you weren’t really trying to say this, but that’s kind of how I read it.
Acquaintance (white guy) told me this story yesterday. His boss (straight white man), already pretty high up in this big corp, was passed over for a promotion by someone he thought was unqualified. She’s a Black woman of course. He (boss) went on a “private” rant about how the company was racist blah blah blah. He’s pretty sure this is his bosses’ “last straw” and the guy is out the door regardless.
say nothing
“yeah straight white men just can’t catch a break in this country”
“on one hand, you might get passed over by people who don’t look like you on occasion, on the other hand, you’re pretty damn sure that an interaction with the police won’t end with them kneeling on your neck for 9 minutes until you die”
My brother is a new teacher and is currently a long term sub and my mom told him the other day that he has to be careful without tenure because the district could decide to get rid of him and “put who they want in his place” meaning there are racist people who want to get rid of all the white teachers and install minorities in his place in the name of diversity so he better be careful.
Boss went on rant about company is racist to white people and since he didn’t get the job he’s probably not going to be at that company soon is the thought.
The irony, of course, is that the department is fucking HR, i.e. the one place you don’t want to be a white male executive with career ambitions.
My ultra-religious aunt who is as far down the rabbit hole as you can get on everything, not getting vaccinated, etc. - is going out every week to help her brother who’s basically drinking himself to death, and his wife who doesn’t get around very well. She cleans, runs his wife around, does whatever they need.
The house smells like cat piss. It’s not pleasant. My uncle is in pain and not very conversational. When he was conversational he is very liberal and would constantly pick political fights on Facebook with my aunt who’s helping him.
Anyway I’ve gone from not being sure I even wanted to see my aunt to feeling massive gratitude towards her for helping out my uncle. And very happy that none of that political stuff has yet come ahead of family in our family.
Am I the asshole for not seeing my unvaccinated family in Reno during my trip to Vegas. Southwest moved my flight so I have to rebook anyway. I don’t know what the hell to do.