An Optimistic Method of Looking at What I Said Yesterday
There've been a few articles floating around, as well as off-hand comments on forums political and otherwise, and additionally mentions in conversation IRL, to the point that people have been activated who otherwise were never activated before.
The tone hits a certain hushed amazement when it comes to a specific group of activated individuals. These would be Millennials or slightly older, early or mid-career, largely urban and suburban, and mostly white collar. The amazement isn't that they're throwing in with liberal causes or complaining about the government on Facebook: that's just demographics and digital marketing bubbles at this point. The awe isn't the 'with liberals' part of that phrase. The awe is for the 'throwing in.'
And the reason is thus: despite being largely, to use Neo-Nazis' own new marketing term, 'globalist' and for 'the administrative state', these individuals also tend to be slacktivist and disengaged at best, if they aren't outright 'apolitical.' 'Apolitical' to them doesn't really mean they don't have an opinion: it's a statement of intent to not engage in the first place. 'Apolitical' people are like 'atheists': they believe in a contrary only supported by an initial supposition. You can't have atheists without religion, in the same way nobody would bother being apolitical without partisanship.
There are two reasons people are apolitical: they either brandish a well-defended and purposeful naivety (see: that ridiculously over-cheery lady at work surrounded by trinkets at her desk; bubbly Christians bubbly about Christianity; New Age retreatists who believe they can bring peace but willfully ignoring war, thus starving it of 'attraction' and 'negative energy'), or they're too fucking busy and their risk-reward ratio requires not getting into disagreements with people who potentially hold opportunity.
I'm of the latter group, including the willful 'apolitical-ness'. I made a decision awhile ago to be 'friends with everybody' for the purposes of my career. Right now I have to fill out tax forms to send to co-members of an LLC I created; I have graphics work to do on a side-project; I spent the day setting up an HSA for myself and looking into money market funds; and I rebudgeted and replanned for the next six weeks. All of those things I did aren't just tasks, they're prep --> they all lead to other tasks I have to do over the next week, two weeks, month, and usually those tasks when 'finished' come back around to be done again or get replaced by the next step of some larger task (eventually a task large enough to be considered a 'goal', the attainment of which is supposed to provide fulfillment of some sorts --> or maybe I just like making myself really fucking busy).
And I'm lightweight in this industry, in this culture, in this city. New York is the geography of workaholics, and my generation's creative-class mentality (even to less creative-class jobs) is sort of a constant incorporated branding of 'self'. We're energized by doing shit ('having experiences' is the commercial advertising term, as in whenever some Medium post breaks down how 'we' value 'experiences' more than 'stuff', a completely consumerist method of holding anti-consumerist values). New York is heightened levels of this, but New Mexico is this too, Denver is this, Chicago is this, Facebook is this, LinkedIn is this.
Note also Silicon Valley's parallel apolitical world, where they seemingly exhibited 'libertarianism' basically by avoiding building any institutional relationship with the government in the first place. The expectation: that government would just have to catch up with The Future(®™ the Alphabet Corporation), or cancel all its redundant and atavistic services. Just stop providing taxi medallions, yo, kids these days use Uber! Stop printing money, we have bitcoin. You just don't get it yet.
Same deal. That 'class' of whatever you want to call it can also appropriately be called the white nationalist pejorative 'coastal elites.' The distinction here is that the white nationalists believe the coastal elites are specifically trying to destroy their lives in order to enrich themselves, when the really real world of real people is just a bunch of mid-to-upper-middle-class people who make themselves too busy to really think much about how the ACA affects or doesn't people in 'coal country,' and even when the subject comes up just don't want to piss anyone off by doing anything about it.
Well anyway, where I'm going with this is that THOSE people, the 'apolitical' purposefully too-busy 'Hey, I don't want to miss an option' class are putting aside their 'experiences' and are activated. They're activated because the current administrative stands to destroy the infrastructure of what makes their lives possible... much to the white nationalists' misplaced, ill-wished delight.
The problem the administration and all their fascist firebrand base have right now is the same exact mistake the apolitical class made with the Tea Party: they think this sort of activism just goes away, a silly minority of random people, probably bought out by some billionaire or another, Astroturf, dumb mixed up because of bad media, will choke on their own arguments once they realize their obvious badness, hell I don't know whether to feel sorry for them or take a clear schadenfreude from their misfortunes, but either way I really hope they burn out and schism amongst themselves quickly because boy howdy, they're REALLY obnoxious and keep fucking up our progress.
Sound familiar?
Yeah, but the problem here is that once you get the busy apolitical types, you get the type of people who, you know, do things like I did today. They make lists. They structure. They research. They figure out next steps. They talk to people. They make agreements. They move together. And they don't stop even when things stop working, they just pivot.
So that's the optimistic side of what I said yesterday. I'm not the only one who is putting aside a lot of personal and highly valued goals in order to activate for the next four years (and probably longer, 45 or beyond). Literally millions of people whose energy would be spent trying to teach themselves a new hobby with some ideas on how to integrate them into further individualized sources of cross-disciplinary income are now interested in how to start influencing public institutions. At this point it's a race between the administration to destroy those institutions, because whatever institutions remain will be irrevocably altered by the influx of creative workaholics... somehow.
--PolarisDiB
The tone hits a certain hushed amazement when it comes to a specific group of activated individuals. These would be Millennials or slightly older, early or mid-career, largely urban and suburban, and mostly white collar. The amazement isn't that they're throwing in with liberal causes or complaining about the government on Facebook: that's just demographics and digital marketing bubbles at this point. The awe isn't the 'with liberals' part of that phrase. The awe is for the 'throwing in.'
And the reason is thus: despite being largely, to use Neo-Nazis' own new marketing term, 'globalist' and for 'the administrative state', these individuals also tend to be slacktivist and disengaged at best, if they aren't outright 'apolitical.' 'Apolitical' to them doesn't really mean they don't have an opinion: it's a statement of intent to not engage in the first place. 'Apolitical' people are like 'atheists': they believe in a contrary only supported by an initial supposition. You can't have atheists without religion, in the same way nobody would bother being apolitical without partisanship.
There are two reasons people are apolitical: they either brandish a well-defended and purposeful naivety (see: that ridiculously over-cheery lady at work surrounded by trinkets at her desk; bubbly Christians bubbly about Christianity; New Age retreatists who believe they can bring peace but willfully ignoring war, thus starving it of 'attraction' and 'negative energy'), or they're too fucking busy and their risk-reward ratio requires not getting into disagreements with people who potentially hold opportunity.
I'm of the latter group, including the willful 'apolitical-ness'. I made a decision awhile ago to be 'friends with everybody' for the purposes of my career. Right now I have to fill out tax forms to send to co-members of an LLC I created; I have graphics work to do on a side-project; I spent the day setting up an HSA for myself and looking into money market funds; and I rebudgeted and replanned for the next six weeks. All of those things I did aren't just tasks, they're prep --> they all lead to other tasks I have to do over the next week, two weeks, month, and usually those tasks when 'finished' come back around to be done again or get replaced by the next step of some larger task (eventually a task large enough to be considered a 'goal', the attainment of which is supposed to provide fulfillment of some sorts --> or maybe I just like making myself really fucking busy).
And I'm lightweight in this industry, in this culture, in this city. New York is the geography of workaholics, and my generation's creative-class mentality (even to less creative-class jobs) is sort of a constant incorporated branding of 'self'. We're energized by doing shit ('having experiences' is the commercial advertising term, as in whenever some Medium post breaks down how 'we' value 'experiences' more than 'stuff', a completely consumerist method of holding anti-consumerist values). New York is heightened levels of this, but New Mexico is this too, Denver is this, Chicago is this, Facebook is this, LinkedIn is this.
Note also Silicon Valley's parallel apolitical world, where they seemingly exhibited 'libertarianism' basically by avoiding building any institutional relationship with the government in the first place. The expectation: that government would just have to catch up with The Future(®™ the Alphabet Corporation), or cancel all its redundant and atavistic services. Just stop providing taxi medallions, yo, kids these days use Uber! Stop printing money, we have bitcoin. You just don't get it yet.
Same deal. That 'class' of whatever you want to call it can also appropriately be called the white nationalist pejorative 'coastal elites.' The distinction here is that the white nationalists believe the coastal elites are specifically trying to destroy their lives in order to enrich themselves, when the really real world of real people is just a bunch of mid-to-upper-middle-class people who make themselves too busy to really think much about how the ACA affects or doesn't people in 'coal country,' and even when the subject comes up just don't want to piss anyone off by doing anything about it.
Well anyway, where I'm going with this is that THOSE people, the 'apolitical' purposefully too-busy 'Hey, I don't want to miss an option' class are putting aside their 'experiences' and are activated. They're activated because the current administrative stands to destroy the infrastructure of what makes their lives possible... much to the white nationalists' misplaced, ill-wished delight.
The problem the administration and all their fascist firebrand base have right now is the same exact mistake the apolitical class made with the Tea Party: they think this sort of activism just goes away, a silly minority of random people, probably bought out by some billionaire or another, Astroturf, dumb mixed up because of bad media, will choke on their own arguments once they realize their obvious badness, hell I don't know whether to feel sorry for them or take a clear schadenfreude from their misfortunes, but either way I really hope they burn out and schism amongst themselves quickly because boy howdy, they're REALLY obnoxious and keep fucking up our progress.
Sound familiar?
Yeah, but the problem here is that once you get the busy apolitical types, you get the type of people who, you know, do things like I did today. They make lists. They structure. They research. They figure out next steps. They talk to people. They make agreements. They move together. And they don't stop even when things stop working, they just pivot.
So that's the optimistic side of what I said yesterday. I'm not the only one who is putting aside a lot of personal and highly valued goals in order to activate for the next four years (and probably longer, 45 or beyond). Literally millions of people whose energy would be spent trying to teach themselves a new hobby with some ideas on how to integrate them into further individualized sources of cross-disciplinary income are now interested in how to start influencing public institutions. At this point it's a race between the administration to destroy those institutions, because whatever institutions remain will be irrevocably altered by the influx of creative workaholics... somehow.
--PolarisDiB