Shit man, next year we're gonna be a decade old. Its also wild that you can trace the line of dominoes from us to the exposure of all the current day insanity, one event and regime-double-down at a time.
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I don't know how many believe it but imo without gamergate we wouldn't have had Trump and without Trump we wouldn't have the one sliver of hope there is now for saving western civilization.
James lindsay may be lib but he is right in that Trump made the the gay commies panic and spring their trap before we were fully contained. That disruption is what helped raise the public consciousness of at least a suspicion of what was really going on. Because the enemies tightened their grip too fast a few systems slipped through their fingers, like Elon recognizing the threat and making the heroic decision to buy Twitter. That release of the public discourse is another handhold that we can use to pull ourselves back up the cliff.
Things will continue to get worse before they gets better. It took generations to get to where we are now and it will take generations to get out of it.
We all need to accept that it is our duty to plant trees in whose shade we will never rest.
I generally agree.
Both GG and Trump were wakeup calls, shocks to the system. With how the indoctrination works, the soft libs - the ones who just think they're "liberal" by default - often just need a jolt to make them realize the weird discrepancies and juxtapositions.
I know that's how it went for me. I grew up in a very liberal/progressive environment, Republicans were evil (I mean, sort of true for many of them at the time, and even still now, but it's still a harmful view to cut off a side completely and side with another without even making a conscious choice), progressivism was the way to go...I mean, hey, progress is good, and the like...all by default.
When even minor questioning got you in trouble, despite not being outside your own beliefs, it makes you realize you didn't know your own side at all. Wait, so we're not allowed to question anything, even if it makes no sense? Wait, you'll try to completely destroy me for saying some journalists might be bad? Despite bitching about journalists yourself?
Something relatively innocuous like GG or even Trump, can wake up the defaulters, because it makes them question both what they actually know about the "other side," and what their own side is like.
Sadly, I wonder how many soft libs are left. That's the downside, waking those people up helped solidify both the left and the right; the left kicked out those that weren't True Believers, and hardened their base massively. Proportionally, the left is now much more hardline than they were.
Still, it's a good thing overall. As you were getting at, we would have lost utterly on the slow boil, now we have a chance. As frustrating as all the forced division is, we do need to draw battle lines if we're going to fight back the cultural rot. As you say, we now have at least a sliver of hope. Maybe even more.
The problem is not regarding Republican politicians as evil, which of course they are. The problem is regarding rank-and-file Republicans (or Democrats, who are just brainwashed) as evil, or imagining that because you support Corrupt Politician A rather than Corrupt Politician B, he is somehow good or the messiah. The left has this problem of imagining that goodness consists of agreeing with whatever they are told to believe by the media.
You only realize that you are in an invisible cage when you step out enough to bump up against it.
Very true. I was mainly talking about politicians, but you're right in that Republican voters are/were viewed as evil, which is a much bigger problem, and that's what I should have focused on. Because, yeah, fuck most Republican politicians. The bigger issue was that, at the time, without questioning, I bought the narrative that The Other were indisputably the Bad Guys.
I remember there was a right wing family in my school/friend group, and the other parents badmouthed and excluded those parents. I never bullied them or anything, and I realized it was wrong, but I was too young to either do anything about it, or fully realize how disgusting it was. And, yes, there was basically only one conservative family in my immediate circle, and they were somewhat outcasts. They seemed to do well regardless, though, which isn't really that surprising. I think the more conservative ideals are - in moderation, of course - much better for raising children.
If Trump did anything, it was to alert some part of the population as to what's going on, who stopped being the proverbial frogs being boiled. And not due to anything he did, but because of the insane reaction to him. Even when I despised him, I could easily see that the news sources I trusted (yeah, yeah) were writing non-stop hitpieces on him.
I don't think GG led to Trump. I think we have protagonist syndrome if we think that. Rather, I think both have a common cause: increased lunacy led to both GG and Trump.