Eric wrote:
Yeah, the theme of performative cruelty as a social movement has now fully found and asserted its identity.I wonder when the rest of us decide this is enough of a threat to need an organized response, and how we do that.
Having just recently toured the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam and walking the streets of Weesp, seeing brass plaques memorializing the jewish families taken (and almost consistently exterminated) by the Nazis, I am freshly sensitized to how fast and how bad things can get... especially recognizing that this all happened in my parent's lifetimes. Mary's mother was born the same day/year as Anne Frank and identified with her from the time her diaries were released in English (early 50s). Another friend's parents were at Nuremberg for the trials (Belgian mother worked service for the Allies and father was an MP guarding those on trial). All of this generation are dead now but we heard (some of) their stories growing up.
We also met (on our European travels) our own generation (moslty professional class) who still remember growing up in the aftermath of WWII, bombed out buildings, machine gun holes in walls, etc. Their perspective on the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a bit sharper than mine has been. The few "strangers" we spoke with about US politics were very circumspect... this would be service people we met along the way, usually somewhat displaced by EU opportunities (e.g Czech in his 30s driving a bus in Iceland) and pretty careful about making assumptions about our politics when discussing (at first)... I didn't run into anyone casually (or otherwise) who was openly populist or right wing. On individual issues, we did meet our share of anti-globalists and anti-progress (i.e. Brexit, Windmills, etc), however...
The forces of anger/intolerance always seem to have a certain kind of transitory upper-hand... if you don't stand up to them you lose, but if you stand up to them too strongly you risk becoming them and lose doubly. And yet, those periods of extreme always seem to burn themselves out? /
/ /Performative cruelty/ *is* a very apt term. - Steve
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