It’s the internet. A truly gobsmacking number of people can’t.
We’re riding around in a machine that runs on outrage, and we’re as susceptible to conditioning as any creature. It’s unsurprising to me, particularly as I empathise with the urge to keep being wary and upset.
Ignoring entirely that it’s a tired gag already. I would wager a sizeable amount of the pushback is from people who are just tired of seeing these posts still clustering about their feeds.
Would they have a right to indiscriminately spray water into the air in public spaces?
It is not unreasonable to ask a person who smokes to have some reasonable restrictions on where they smoke.
When in his almost eighty years on this planet has he ever acted or been treated like a regular citizen? Regardless of what should be, and what should have been, he isn’t normal. He is, by luck, by practice, and by preternatural talent, always evading consequences.
Those he cannot evade, he deflects onto others. So this moment of extraordinary , if his pattern holds, will also be extraordinarily laid upon others. If the GOP doesn’t find a way to remove it for him, and he doesn’t win the presidency, they know they’re in line to be footing the bill. If he does win the presidency, he’ll either evade(saying the president cannot be beholden to such a punishment and serve) or deflect, and through internal graft or external selling of favor, we’ll all end up paying his bill.
This isn’t an argument to feel sorry for him, nor to soften the judgment against him. This is an argument to be wary that he is still the same person he was before the judgment, and is likely to be as conniving as he has always been, if not the more so if he feels cornered by it.
For longevity, perhaps. Considering the Russian government’s penchant for poisoning people outside their territory, perhaps not.
I would recouch the problem as this— does wielding accusations or innuendoes of gayness against the homophobic serve to, in a small way, perpetuate their homophobia?
All meaning is constructed meaning, and, to quote Shakespeare, “there’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
We decide, collectively, and as individuals, what is positive and what is negative. We invent for ourselves, whole cloth or adopting from our elders, meaning in life, the universe, and everything.
That doesn’t mean they are without worth. The world is altered daily through the things people imagine. Money is an invention, its value existing in the collective imaginations of those who use it. Maps are not the lands they represent, but their cartography influences where people live, work, and travel. Numbers and maths are inventions— languages invented to describe the universe and its movings, but the universe moves without needing to know them…
… nevertheless, with those invented languages we orbit distant planets with artificial satellites, and create the wonderful bit of nonsense that allows us to communicate here.
We choose to find meaning in the world, and then we choose the meaning we find there. Ultimately everything else can be winnowed away, but that. I believe we have value because I choose to believe we have value, and I weigh the good of the world with the bad because I actively choose to continue to see both. It isn’t easy all the time, and it doesn’t have to be one way or the other. But it’s what I want for the world, and what I want for me.
That seems like a convenient excuse for him to bear less, or none of, the guilt for his actions.
Does Agent Smith have autonomy?
Yeah… my suspicion is that someone wanted him seen there. It doesn’t really impact him vis-à-vis his audience, but it does a certain amount of flexing for the regime
Or the definitions of what it means to be conservative or liberal have changed, and that’s altered the conscious and subconscious calculus for people.
I would also add the ratcheting up of political identity as personal identity, and an intensification of tribalism.
Then again, that’s all tied up in my own confirmation bias.
Being loud and given attention, they can be the only example of “leftists” some people knowingly interact with.
Another way of thinking about it:
Numbers offer a sense of scale. As numbers go further left from the decimal, they get bigger and bigger. Likewise, as they go right from the decimal, they get smaller and smaller.
If I’m looking with just my eyes, I can see big things without issue, but as things get smaller and smaller, it becomes more and more difficult. Eventually, I can’t see the next smallest thing at all.
But we know that smaller thing is there— I can use a magnifying glass and see things slightly smaller than I can unaided. With a microscope, I can see smaller still.
So I can see the entirety of a leaf, know where it begins and ends, even though I can’t, unaided, see the details of all its cells. Likewise, you can see the entirety of the line you drew, it’s just that you lack precise enough tools to measure it with perfect accuracy.
Eh, there’s also a decent chunk of non-native English speakers who might have a harder time with written sarcasm, and Poe’s law, I don’t doubt, accounts for more.
I don’t have their numbers, but this isn’t the first place I’ve seen similar quoted. First one I found through some friends’ discussion was this, which puts us, at a quick glance, at around a third of last year’s total(still plenty bad).
People broadly seem willing to see through statements the administration makes about Taiwan, but not about Israel. Then again, a lot of critical thought and nuance tends to go out the window when Israel is brought up.
so I just feel like I should be able to live my life and not have to worry about all this. Why can’t I?
Are you seeking permission or explanation?
Depends on where in the process we’re talking about. OP is(to me) clearly talking about the general election. If Bernie had won the primaries, then yeah, that would be true, considering where his base mostly is.
Or blame both.
There’s more than one way to solve most problems, and more than one cause as well. Would a stronger candidate have succeeded? Perhaps. But that was a solution for earlier in the process. A solution for late in the process was voters turning up.
Plenty of loud people seem to think a president is a king, or at least has the powers thereof. That’s something both tips of the horseshoe seem to agree on.