• mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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    10 months ago

    There is a roiling mass of hatred simmering in the people of the United States. They’ve been fucked, and on some level, they know it. They sit on top of the greatest pile of wealth the world has ever seen, and for the most part they go to work, reliably, every day, and help to create it. They do their part. And what comes back to them is pennies, health problems, humiliation, exhaustion, and somewhere, off in the distance, where they can just barely hear it, the mocking laughter of the people who are keeping all the money they’re creating.

    They know the game is rigged. Their systems of education and media have been deliberately sabotaged to disguise the fact, but there’s no way to hide it. It’s their life. In their hearts, they know what’s happening, and they know they have to still get up and help make it happen, or else: Homelessness, jail, divorce, poverty, humiliation. The men with the tasers are in the wings, all too eager to step in to adjust anyone who steps out of line. And so, they participate, but anger at the system cannot fully be prevented.

    And so: The billionaire classes constructed channels, conduits, barriers and feeder-lines, to channel and direct that rage at simple targets that would be convenient for them. It’s not that the medical industry has been hollowed out and replaced with a dysfunctional shell that doesn’t care if you die, or suffer. It’s Dr. Fauci.

    Or gayness in the movies. Or Nancy Pelosi. Or whoever the fuck the target is. Someone who’s comfortably far enough removed from the problem that all that rage can find a safe target, where it won’t lead to any change. All that righteous anger, a millimeter from the surface, primed for the taking for any activist organization to grab and channel with their own effective messaging. There are people dying for someone to tell them who stole their jobs, their pensions, their kids’ education, the future. The only problem is that Fox News is telling them that it wasn’t Wal-Mart and Warren Buffet and Monsanto and Sinclair.

    IT WAS FUCKING TAYLOR SWIFT AGRBARARLRRBLBLBB

    There are two problems with this, as I mentioned. One, they’ll get mad at Taylor Swift, or maybe break in Pelosi’s house and fracture her husband’s skull with a hammer. Two, they’ll remain blissfully fine with Monsanto or Bayer.

    And here you are, buying in to the exact same propaganda they did, and cloaking in in some leftist pro-public camouflage. I don’t give a shit about Taylor Swift, positive or negative. Are you right that she probably should be paying 90% tax like would be a good idea for everyone in her tax bracket? Yeah, probably. That’s a good solution, I’m fine with it. Is she polluting the waterways or funding Honduran coups or deliberately engineering the destruction of the planet? No. Are you misguided for thinking that it helps simply getting angry at her, when that very anger at that very particular type of target is probably the most potent weapon the wealthy have had in their arsenal to defeat real social change since the 1980s? Yeah, probably.

    • mommykink@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      All that to say “I will defend billionaires as long as they say things I like on neo-nazi microblogging sites”

      • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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        10 months ago

        Don’t think I was defending anybody. I’m saying how I think these propaganda networks work and one essential element of them.

        What consequences do you think should happen to Taylor Swift? If I know that, maybe that’ll give me an opportunity to defend her against them.