“We believe that we believe but we do not believe”
-Merleau Ponty
Me attempting to keep out of the discursive ambush that comes with unleashing on the last remaining MAGA trolls that haven’t exited my Facebook cosmos:
But I won’t let a shared past sanction some old pal’s, some old itchy flame’s, some old grade school acquaintance’s budding fascism, as unconscious of it as they maybe, and y’all shouldn’t either. The few FB acquaintances I’ve had to openly kick in the nuts had been flagged too many times for being way out of bounds. Knee-jerk hate I can deal with but threats, family defamation, and that malicious mischaracterization of viewpoints that’s been unique in driving MAGA nuts to POP and shoot places up (all hallmark hatin MAGA moves), are all beyond reproach, and their spewers need to be flicked out into their own private site beyond the thunder dome. They suffer from what I call “deep hate”, that’s perhaps more so about their own issues then it is about politics:
However, there’s a subtler specie of MAGA folk out there who also need a serious reality check I do believe. It’s the cleaner, more tidy, gleaming white young professional ones we remain somehow connected with. And really, it’s these hyper-burbian social chameleons that need to be doled down a reality check. While you’re clinging to a distorted nostalgia of those halcyon days when you bonged beers with em and puked in a parking lot somewhere a lifetime ago (leaving it to be cleaned up by someone else because you were also kind of a piece of shit), they’re now actively supporting the NRA, or the inhumane mistreatment of immigrants and other human beings seeking a better life. While you defend your continued friendship because they never did anything bad to you personally, they’re totally cool and supportive of bombing the hell from innocent brown people the world over. While you’re agreeing to disagree (about an openly fascistic regime who’s actively engaged in the most bizarre smear campaign in presidential history via his twitter account, your old shot queen now supports the active destruction of the environment because climate change is basically fake news to her. While you’re trying delude yourself into believing you’re both still in the same idiotic clique in high school or college, they’re actively supporting a regime that wants to overturn roe v. wade, build a stupid wall of fear across our southern border, and affirm a leader who retweets messages from open hate groups. While you’re trying really hard to laugh with them about those alleged glory days, you’re failing to see that you were once perhaps a blind privileged unapologetically elitist barbarian you see them as today.
I get it. We want so badly to believe that old Steph is still that sweet girl that once cheered us up after we got dumped in the ninth grade. And perhaps she still does have something of that. But it pales in comparison to her active support of all that is driving the world over the fucking edge. We give far too much harbor to those who’ve become unconscious enough to peddle fascism, hate, and or blindly support it. All based on a bond that once existed in a totally different plane of experience of self, worldly understanding, and education, in a previous life. Such safe harbor gives them further impetus, further affirmation of their actions. Ask yourself in complete honesty, would you avoid a friendship with this person today? If so, don’t be a coward. My suggestion? Cut off communication with them. Be honest and live a life that caters to principle and not your petty ego story…ffs, it’s no longer as simple a split where “agree to disagree” is a plausible scenario, and it’s never a good idea to instigate violence. Stand up for all the lives these fascists are destroying, human or otherwise. They aren’t alienated via strangers, and if it’s not you, who? (if you don’t know why supporters of fascism should be alienated, well…god help you).
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