I wasted way too much time arguing with liberals on the internet and I just need to vent my frustrations. They turned inaction into a virtue: they call it “pragmatism”. Vote for Biden, don’t question the genocide. They reject the “idealism” of action, critique or even the simple act of imagining the alternative. They consider themselves to be the adults in the room while they are nothing more than reactionaries themselves enabling the worst perversions of this capitalist-realist system.
It’s so frustrating to see this, to see their smug self-sanctification when they just follow the line of the least resistance, when all the effort they put is into retaining their own comfort. They talk about “saving democracy” while attempting to squash any dissent, while being hostile to any alternative that is not a liberal democracy.
They react violently to anything that could imaginably threaten the system exactly because they are comfortable in it. They know that they sit atop the piles of corpses of those murdered for their baubles, the oil for their cars and gas for heating their suburban homes. And they find it unimaginable to ever sacrifice even the smallest of those comforts.
They wear slogans of human rights on their chests but whenever it’s the time to walk the walk, they melt into the thin air, always finding an excuse why it’s not the right time. Why Biden can actually violate the Geneva Convention, why all they can do in a face of the genocide is to shrug.
As it goes in Disco Elysium:
“KINGDOM OF CONSCIENCE – Moralists don’t really have beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child’s toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn’t change – not even incremental change. It is control. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.”
Why am I not surprised in the slightest.
And yes. All those propaganda efforts find very ripe ground with the imperial middle class. My favorite is how easily people fell for the idea of “supplier framework of greenhouse emissions” that makes it seem that it’s all some ten guys collectively emitting all the world’s carbon dioxide - simply because it exonerated all of the middle class’ senseless consumption. It doesn’t make sense under even the slightest scrutiny - but they simply don’t care. It makes them feel good about themselves so they swallow the propaganda; hook, line, sinker, pole.
I don’t think that is a good example. The capitalist class, particularly in the carbon fuel sector, has run been running a propaganda campaign for decades to have people view climate change through the lens of our individual responsibility as consumers instead of viewing it communally/systemically/politically.
Big Oil Is Trying to Make Climate Change Your Problem to Solve. Don’t Let Them
The fact that they’ve been running with one angle for some decades before it got exposed doesn’t mean they couldn’t have changed it. They’re not that stupid.
I’m not sure what you mean. That particular propaganda angle is just one component of a multigenerational, full-spectrum class war project. The scientists hired by big oil who predicted the climate crisis long ago