Re: Sad to read this
It is actually about the politics though. Those of us who go there go there because that's the root cause. In my opinion it's also about the, it's not quite a generational gap because it's not generations exactly. But the before-internet people who still live in a world where globalization is this hypothetical thing from a school textbook and we should all be good patriotic citizens of insert-the-country, and those of us who came after where we have friends and we don't even know their real names or their countries and we just grew up that way. For the former group it's very easy to say "There were extenuating circumstances" and "The other place that does it better has a catch" and to just generally have this idea that where you are now is amazing because it's where you are now and you're a good American citizen who believes in America without ever looking around and having to ask yourself if we are doing so great.
That'd have come out as something purely generational, but that sort of penetration of the internet happened kind of slowly, so it's skewed--but if you talk to someone over 50 and someone under 20, you can see a very different sort of worldview around it. it's hard to put into words well what I mean, but, something to the effect of the internet just being this cool toy that helps get work done, and the internet being a thing that's real with real emotions and consequences and things behind it that you can always just reach for to know anything you want at any time.
Like, the internet did a lot of bad. It's doing more bad by the day. But at least cops can't get away with shooting a kid anymore even if the law is on their side still, and you can't easily shut down things like "wait Trump lost by millions of votes, why is he president", and stuff like that. If you want to know why young people tend to be liberal, look no further than being able to always know about the places that have done it better by getting their sticks out of their butts, if not always then at least for the issue at hand, and having this knowledge without even asking for it for more than half a second. And if you want to know why we're passionate, why it's always about politics with us: the world we got handed is shit and no one in power actually listens to us because it's about the majority, and the majority are white guys who got their house and their car and whatever 15 or 20 years ago when that was still possible, who can just go inside and close the door and pretend everything is great as cops shoot kids and the economy melts down and the pandemic just comes rampaging through. And they'll be dead by the time climate change and the like actually come home to roost, as well.
Politics doesn't mean what it used to mean. I'd be happy to be like "yeah it's a shame we went to the political bits" but we literally have towns burning down because politics now, sadly making "the world is on fire" a statement that you probably have to be careful about using.
and: what makes me sad about this thread, and about this site in general is this. There are actually good arguments for being conservative. I don't agree with them, but they're out there, and they can be engaged with, they've even got evidence on their side. Those of us who are liberal to one extent or another can offer arguments with chains of reasoning and such. But the representation of the conservative side here is: Biden is unfit, nevermind a president who lies to us and just mismanaged a global crisis; all the sources of actual evidence out there are "lamestream" and can't be trusted; "Look at all the things the last liberal president did"; and, sometimes, it's almost literally "I believe what I want because I want to believe it, nevermind anything you might say".
The U.S. has been doing a hell of a job over the last 30 years becoming hated by the entire world: we have, for example, toppled multiple democracies and are directly responsible for the instability in the middle east (yes, before 9/11). But we have been cratering any goodwill the rest of the world had toward us really fast over the last 4 years, and we're literally on the verge of being alone during an incredibly mismanaged pandemic with an economy that's shot to hell, and you can actually point at a very small number of specific people and say "it's their fault, also they only got to be in power because of very arcane U.S. election mechanisms that let them win even though they lost". And it is, it's not even debatable. And we still end at "But Obama sucked, end of argument", or "Biden sucks, end of argument", or "This is how I feel so fuck you all, end of argument", and this stance that those of us who are in the position to have a lot to lose should always just accept that as an argument for Trump-style politics to keep rolling over everyone. So. By all means, argue for your side. I'm not going to be able to stop you. But can we please, please, please have a higher level of discourse where there are actually arguments being made?
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