The "acceptable" economic anxiety: Voting for reality TV stars, vandalizing things with swastikas, paranoia of the 'other', belief in conspiracy theories, and falling in love with confederate statues

The "unacceptable" economic anxiety: Why should we have this economic anxiety? How about instead of racism and sexism, we actually mitigate the source of the economic anxiety? Let's have debt forgiveness, a more robust safety net, not denying things like healthcare or education to people, etc.

It's weird how one of these is SOCIALISM and causing trouble according to the 'liberal' media and *some* of the politicians... and it's not the first one, the "acceptable" one.

It's just weird.

Russians who are resisting Putin are not our allies... no, they are our brothers and sisters.

As opposed to Trump

It's day vs night, bigger than Democratic Party vs Republican Party or left wing vs right wing, it's...

Meritocracy vs inheritance
Action vs reaction
Activism vs laziness
Civic participation vs keeping others away from the table
Inclusion vs exclusion
Pluralism vs exclusivism
Self-empowerment vs hostile privilege
Progress vs holding onto the past
"I earned it because I work hard, I study hard, and I didn't do it alone" vs "I earned it because I'm rich and that automatically makes me right and smarter than everyone else"
Hope and change vs paranoia and stagnation

There's a real possibility that when people think of "America", inside and out, they no longer see Trump's mug, but these 4 Congresswomen.

I know I do.

That might also explain the fixation from the right against these 4. They want to destroy the set of things on the left side of that list.

The contest to be the face of America is going on now. I'd rather have the values of that left side of that be our symbolic face, even if that means a permanently diminished symbolic role for the POTUS even after Trump.

Where:

One person's access to healthcare is made sweeter simply because other people do not have access to healthcare

"Good national security" means there is a mass shooter, but it's just a white guy, so you can relax

A heterosexual rapist is somehow more mature and respectable than a law abiding and loving GLBTQ person

"Socialism" is anything that's not acting like a degenerate, a sociopath, putting profits ahead of human lives, or a combination of those things

One's love for their country is put on trial by those who have no love for their country

If you run afoul of them, be prepared to face death threats and insinuations that in any other culture would be taboo to not only participate in but to also accuse people of being in them... like Pizzagate or QAnon

We're told that "all lives matter", but so do statues dedicated to traitors for some reason

We're supposed to have peace with Russia so we can wage war on 1.5 billion Muslims

"True" religion is now a backer of power and status quo seen in things like prosperity gospel, things where you being rich and powerful must be a sign that God loves you

It's apparently "reasonable" to think that if a kid doesn't want to be shot in school, then they must have had their mind warped by "George Soros and his je-'globalist' buddies"

According to Tucker Carlson, a government sometimes has to kill people, but Twitter enforcing it's TOS, that is what is beyond the pale

...

Defend others from them
Vote against them
Deplatform them
Discredit them
Debunk them
Defund them

Ignoring them won't work though, this completely immoral right wing is on parade and it's only going to get worse.

as the "division" and "incivility" ships are.

Perhaps even more dangerous.

The idea that we can simply debate or discuss away racism, sexism, classism, the hypocrisy and double standards surrounding Trump and right wing evangelicals and coming from them on a daily basis, white nationalism and white nationalist terrorism, etc. is naive at best, lazy in the middle, and outright running away from the issue at worst.

Idealism is a nice thing to have, don't get me wrong, but warm fuzzy feelings and nothing but are going to get us the same thing that 65 million votes got us in 2016.

You can point out the fact that middle America or the "real American" is losing his job because a rich white man is closing down the factory and that it is a rich white Republican cutting his safety net all day every day, but you know what? He's still going to blame immigrants for taking his job and minorities for leaving him in the lurch. Happens every time.

This didn't happen overnight, the same forces that turned just the word "liberal" into a pejorative have been cornering the market on using cognitive distortions (Like black and white thinking such as something they don't like being "socialism" ), logical fallacies, ignoring cost-benefit, not caring about the long term consequences of one's actions, and more in our political landscape and using them as rhetorical tools.

And we shouldn't be a party to this, by letting them get away with the lack of rationality, we are contributing to this. It's time to say no more; from debates on forums to discussions at family dinner tables all the way to what we see in DC and as we go into the 2020 election, if people can't discuss things as rational actors, then there's no point in having a discussion and we need to call that out.

And as for platforms that traffic in these things... sites like Infowars, groups like the Alt-Right, and QAnon; looking at you fools... shut them down.