This guy called me Debbie Downer the other day. I unfriended him. He is a libertarian from my old town. People in my old rural town are nuts. The place has a Q believer for a mayor and on the Facebook boards they talked about how two of the city council members were at Trump's insurrection, I don't know if they were in the Capitol building or not. It's a damn good thing I never moved back there. The place has gone insane.
This guy was an atheist but still into the conservative movement. He is rich and flies airplanes and goes to Europe. I know a lot of people judge me for not being perky and a lot of NTs hate Aspies for not being happy acting enough. I even said you expect me to smile and be positive as the world burns and they have destroyed our lives. He doesn't recognize his own privilege. I am sick of people judging me for not being happy enough or even talking about injustice in general. He was mad at me for talking about all the homelessness that's going to happen from Covid. If I am a Debbie Downer I was made this way.
I have been thinking about the kind of people out there who think everything's all right jack, even during a pandemic. It's kind of messed up. Many of them are upper class boomers. If you noticed all those Capitol protesters had cash for 80,000 trucks, their endless flags and trips to Washington DC. So many good jobs lost due to their traitorship.
I don't mind fellow UUs trying to be cheerful and doing some volunteer work, I mean people like that make you happier, and don't insist on patroling your emotions. But these conservative types, this one actually posted against the minimum wage. They are so petty lest someone get a dollar above them, even as they rake it, they glory in a world view where they can be in the highest position while spitting down on those below. I guess that describes the entire Republican party.
This particular guy didn't like Trump, but he embraced all the Charles Murray crap and gave people lectures on one Facebook board about "bettering" themselves, still thinking it was 1980 and a college degree automatically opened the door to the middle class. These are the types who will tell you things like "Go feel sorry for yourself, blame everything on external conditions!" Which is kind of funny given that they will go on about how everyone is victims while doing everything to destroy our lives. This one at least wore masks but most of his compatriots spread pandemic.
He summed up our conversation with:
"As to me, I've got a meeting with another potential capitalistic partner. Excelsior!"
All the small minds only care about their money and privilege. The world can burn but if their cable and tablet work they don't give a damn. Those homeless people down the street can suck it according to types like this, they didn't "improve" themselves.
I'm still cleaning the slate this many years in. I don't buy that unity talk about allowing people with different views in anymore. I don't expect friends to be carbon copies, but some people do have shitty values, and I don't want them in my life anymore. I realized many of these people match the anti-values of my so called family.
I responded:
"So who are you to judge whose refusing to "improve their lot" in life? Oh I forget that bottom ledger is supposed to count for everything. Silly me. Save the speeches for those who still "believe". Wonder what our old rural town's poverty rate is now? 50 percent? [It was 37 percent just a few years ago]
What is the rate now of sociopathy in America? If this place folds, the lost altruism did it. A society can't survive when everyone's just out for themselves. I pay attention now to what values the people I surround myself with have, if they suck or they don't have any, I am done. People of the corrupt system have nothing to offer me.
Republicans have more psychopathic traits
As I like to say, you don't make friends with a Nazi. You shoot the damned thing center-mass for a good clean kill. Unfortunately Nazi-hunting isn't in vogue right now, but at least you can totally shut them off and do what you can (leave a bad review for their business, refused to buy/sell with them, etc) to make their lives worse.
ReplyDeleteYes I am done with all the Nazis. If people believe harmful things where they want to harm my life and those like me, it's better to cut them off. They will bring nothing but pain. I wish I didn't listen to all that Christian kumbuyah garbage, where they literally taught me to accept everyone else. Sometimes people with terrible beliefs are better run from!
DeleteI got kind of pissed when the "dharma talk" a few weeks ago at my temple was by a guy (we have a lot of guest speakers) was about not hating Trump supporters but listening to them. I thought, "I don't need to listen to them, I know what they think!" but then I realized that actually, in some cases, if you get listening to their actual gripes and it will always come down to insecurity, whether financial, career-wise, or whatever. They probably don't get listened to much either. But I can see a way listening and befriending, on some level, the odd Trump supporter and gradually showing them that Trumpism is opposite of what they need.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard though. A few years ago I met a Nazi violinist. He was playing some kind of Irish? Scottish? folk music in Mountain View and looked like a real hippie. Painted toenails, long hair, older guy who looked like a real "granola". He taught folk violin at the music store across the street and busked between students.
This was when Trump was running and David Duke was making noise and there were various white-supremacist groups around, and we'd gotten talking and he unabashedly thought it'd be great if Trump or David Duke won. He said he'd put his body on the line to defend any of them.
I was shocked, and thought about it ... You see, in Germany there was a big "naturist" and natural foods movement and some of the most enthusiastic proto-hippies there were Nazis. There was the "wandervogel" movement where kids out of high school would dress all hippy-dippy and wander around Germany for a year then buckle down and go to college.
The violinist no doubt was thinking of a Nazi America, where as a "Pure Aryan" practitioner of "Native White Music" he'd probably be given his own music school, and all those too-smart Asian kids who play violin better than him would be exterminated, and so on. This is honestly how a lot of these people think. They dream of an all-white country where magically (or as fast as the furnaces can go) about half the population is gone, and the world's like "On Cherry Street" or the "Little Red Reader". The Nazi dream, 1.0 or 2.0, doesn't change. Not only is it a thoroughly evil dream, but Nazism has only ever made things worse for those who believe in it. Just ask millions of dead Germans.
The famous Rev. Neimoeller actually started out as a Nazi though. He started out Right, and gradually saw what was going on and moved Left. So it is possible.
I may have shocked a friend today who is being dragged into the Qanon, conservative abyss. She keeps going on about communists and China, I said well at least China, got Covid under control and wrong, I'm not afraid of any communism, more socialism would make this place better. At least under Communism my husband would have stable employment. I feel like I am losing the battle, the propagandists are stronger then me.
DeleteSometimes they do that "unity" talk at the UU, "be nice to Republicans". Sure maybe 30 years ago when they were sane though maybe little bit of selfish rich assholes who wanted cheaper taxes. One could understand the motive, now they are insane, basically wanting every progress in society shredded. I reminded the friend falling into Q, the Christians and others want all the women's rights taken away.
I have nothing in commmon nor do I want to play kumbuyah who are voting people in who basically want to destroy me, and want me on the street without any health care. My husband basically goes without needed medical care all the time. I'm not interested in kissing Republican ass sorry.
In my case since I am ex-fundie Christian, though I never was Republican I was basically INSIDE their world. I lived in one of the most Republican small towns in America, I had to listen to them for over a decade. Now I'm not interested. With a few that have some brain cells left, maybe one can make an effort to get them out. I got out of the religion, so I know people like me exist, maybe I can wake my ex-liberal friend getting suckered in by the propagandists, sometimes she seems to wake up a bit out of the stupor but then snaps back. :( The majority though they aren't interested in changing. I'll give a little energy to the ones who may be capable of change, but the numbers without empathy, then you are just opening yourself up for pain. Anyhow bargaining and compromising with Nazis is one reason the USA is so FUBAR right now because Dems played nice, and smiled and were enablers, instead of saying "This is a bunch of BS" and "Where's your empathy". Now they even lack the balls to say "You people are nuts!" Hell even as a full blown conspiracy theorist who believed in the "new world order" I thought Qanons were nuts and stupid, and wrote AGAINST them on my Christian conspiracy blog. I said "Yeah right a billionaire's not part of the powers that be, give me a break!" [paraphrasing]
So sure we can befriend a few or try and rescue a friend, but in most cases, it's wasted energy. I've been shouted down for years. I listened to that Nazi crap. Liberals were few and far between in the last 4 communities I've lived in except for Chicago.
Yeah I've heard of or read about the weird Nazi folk music people, some of the fundie Christians seemed to go this way [I didn't have anything to do with any overt Nazis] I wonder how many of those cottage core types, wanting to live like it's 1850 are into white power and reading that racist as hell American Renaissance website. Yeah some are dressed like hippies. There's a scary Qanon overlap you know with hippies and New Agers many people can't imagine, the whole holistic health thing and Qanon beliefs, Gaia.com is a website where you can see the New Age hippies getting into some weird stuff. I don't know if any were Nazis over there but some were full blown Trumpsters. [ah whats the difference to a degree] continuing...
ne reason I left the fundie world, is some seemed to have this view of the past like they couldnt wait for it to be 1850 or 1950, some dabbled in neo-Victorianism all ideals with no bases in reality and all about dialing back the clock so all progress could be erased. Of course white supremacy is tied into this. One thing in the Christian fundie world that really got going was the patriarchy movement, this was an extreme movement with overlap with the Quiverfuls, I was against it, where they wanted men to be completely in charge. The Nazis love that stuff too, you see some taint of their beliefs in the incel community and other red-pillers, who bitch about women. I see Trumpism as basically the revival of Nazism. People forget, HItler lost too in the early days and got imprisoned but came back strong. Trump is old so can't pull a Hitler, chances are he will die of old age and heart attack by 2024, but they'll put in a young charismatic to help keep the Fourth Reich on the march and their's plenty of stupids [or insecures and afraids] ready to vote for that future fascist.
Deletecorrection above their's should be "there is"
DeleteYep agree. It's the same worldview, it's Nazism 2.0. Don't forget there's Identidy Christianity and Mormonism where the whiter you are, the more "holy" you are.
ReplyDeleteI indeed fear a young, capable, charismatic. If I can get back to Hawaii by 2024, well, it's a much more Leftist place than the US mainland. And it's that much closer to places in Asia.
You may do better in Hawaii. It's far away enough too, that if the USA gets worse maybe they will be better off. How is Covid out there, did they manage to hold it at bay? Yeah a Trump protege is probably going to arise and I get the feeling this time this one is really going to care the cross and pull off the "I am a holy Christian" garbage unlike Trump. Glad to hear Hawaii is more liberal. It's hard to leave the country so that may be the middle option.
Deletethe ironic thing is that these same “bootstrapping” “you’re an eternal victim” sort are often the first to cry victim when people go against them/fight back. They’re the first to cry when they no longer have license to ruin other people’s lives.
ReplyDeleteIt wouldn’t surprise me if he got pissed that you unfriended him. A lot of people like him can’t stand rejection.
Yeah they are. I fortunately live far away from him and have no mutual circles anymore since he was from my old town. Yeah I am sure he was not happy I unfriended him.
DeleteMy mom got her degree in 1978 and she still ended up becoming a welfare queen. She said that she wanted a government job but they were only hiring Indians at the time she was looking.
ReplyDeleteCould she have been autistic too? My mother never had problems getting a job she wanted in her case and my father too. Do you think there were personality and other issues where she couldn't get a job and ended up a welfare queen? I got turned down for jobs before not being the right "ethnic group"
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