this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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It's not useless.
It's specifically not useless because people forget this.
Where there is disagreement, there is politics.
Telling Mariah Carey to leave politics in her b-sides is, inherently, not possible.
It's true that where there's disagreement there's politics. It's also true that where there's agreement there's politics. There's politics in Mariah's B-sides and A-sides and in the font chosen in the album cover. The material the disc is made out of is politics, and so is the air that transmits the sound waves to your ears.
My point is that if everything is political, then calling something political loses all meaning. The term political is, then, useless.
But how would you tell someone of the world's politics without it?
You don't seem to agree, but it's kind of incontrovertible.
All communication is rhetoric. The way that you stand, the clothes you present, the style of speech you adopt—but rhetoric is just the name for all of that.
Colloquially, political just means something is more terse than usual.
But that's the thing I'm arguing about. The usual, the normal, is still at odds with the fringes. There is no debate between the political instigators and normal, apolitical society, who would like to return to a time when trans people weren't in movies (or blacks, or women)—there is only politics.
I'm just saying, a lot of people are afraid to rock the boat, and they need to get off that shit.
The issue I have is that when you say that "trans people deserve equal rights," and "I prefer my toast with butter on it" are equally political, I can't take that position seriously. You might as well be saying they are equally "clifnibble" for all the meaning of has.
What you're doing here is an "everything is a sandwich" type thing. Taco, sandwich. Ravioli, sandwich. The planet earth, basically a ravioli, so sandwich.
While that's a fun thought experiment, and maybe technically true depending on how you define the word, if someone started trying to eat dirt because they said they wanted a sandwich, I'd call them nuts.
Yes, all things are political, if you define the word political that way. But when you start spouting off about how someone butters their toast being political, you're reducing issues that actually matter down to that level.
And look, I do understand what you're driving at. You are pushing back against people who don't want to involve themselves "in politics." I think it's horribly reductive to paint them all as wanting to go back to the 1950s. I think most are probably fine with the LGBTQ+ community, and aren't looking to go back to some racist "utopia."
I think most just want to live their lives. They have families and jobs and parents with failing health and financial pressures. There are thousands of marginalized groups. They would happily throw a dollar in a donation tin for them, but they don't have the emotional bandwidth or time to travel to DC and stand in protest, or argue with strangers on the Internet over it.
They're not scared to rock the boat, they just have shit to do that has a far more immediate impact on their life and mental/physical health.
Equally political..?
Mate, I don't imagine that Mariah Carey's latest album and the Rosa Parks Bus Boycotts are, like, the same severity. I don't really know how to respond to that.
No.
I'm pushing back against people who don't see politics. Who view being "normal" and doing what society expects of you as anti-transgressive.
To coerce people into normal society is transgressive. After all, you can't do that without power.
What I'm describing is a "no standing still on a moving train" kind of situation. I'm challenging the idea that "being normal" or "maintaining the status quo" or "not rocking the boat too much" is a moral good. That "difference" is political, and "the same" is where we ought to be. The idea that the real problem with society is that people complain too much.
Somebody can agree with everything I just said and never talk to their congress person once.
But in the 1950s, people wanted the rabble-rousers about women to shut up, didn't they?
The issues today are different, but it's all the same.
The issue then is one of definitions. 99% of people would say that the OP image of a distorted Luigi is, in fact, apolitical.
While you can argue that it's political, it cheapens the word.
If, on a spectrum from 1-10, with Rosa Parks being a 10, this is, well, I suppose I can't say a number lower than one.
The colloquial understanding of the word political then, is one not just of kind but severity. There is some severity threshold of "abstract political-ness" of a thing that, below that said threshold, would not be considered "political" in the colloquial sense.
The issue is that, when you assert that "no, those things are political," you are elevating them in severity above that threshold. To the average listener, you are likening our distorted Luigi friend to Rosa Parks, and that is offensive.
That's why I'm pushing back on the all things are political position.
The issue with the latter point is that you're painting a false dichotomy.
We are not in fact on a moving train, we are living life where we find ourselves.
Yes, society moves forward, but it isn't a monolith. Some parts move faster, and others slower. There are 10,000 different cultural fronts, and on some you are extremely progressive, and on some you are "standing still" or "normal" as it were. It's impossible to devote the emotional/mental bandwidth to be on the bleeding edge of every front.
And standing still isn't the same as advocating that where you're standing is where everyone else should stand. It's more than possible to live a "normal" life without "coercing" other people to do the same.
I think the differentiator here is "a" moral good vs "the" moral good. I think it's more than reasonable to see unity and peace as worthy goals to strive for, and to know when to pick your battles on any given issue. That compromise can be preferable to chaos for all reasonable parties.
Which is not to say there aren't hard limits. Compromise of human life and dignity are clearly unacceptable. But the idea that someone is willing to not build their identity around political issues (which is to say, those that rise above the political severity level to make them so in our current cultural zeitgeist), and to live in peace among those with whom they disagree. That doesn't seem so bad to me.
Not really. I just assume more of their intelligence than you do.
Was Roe v. Wade overturned with or without you?
It was overturned without a lot of people.
But, regardless, this actually has nothing to do with whether having Christmas dinner with mom's family or dad's is an issue of politics (the family's).
If you lack the imagination for why two people might disagree about some Luigi head, whatever. They still can. Maybe somebody views it as ableist, maybe it becomes a nazi dogwhistle, maybe it's not funny enough and the community argues about whether content like this should even be welcome here. Maybe somebody thinks it's gross and doesn't want it in their eyes, and what was just an image of Luigi is now a point of stubborn unwelcomeness from the community and the reason why this individual decides to leave forever.
Not all of these examples demand that you care about them. People leave sometimes. Oh well.
You don't have a counter to the idea that politics is everywhere—you keep agreeing with it and then dismissing it. This grandstanding about treating very serious ideas very seriously is getting really boring.
I think you're misunderstanding me, willfully or unwillfully.
It's not about treating serious things seriously. It's the understanding that when someone says "let's not talk politics at the dinner table," they don't mean to not talk about distorted pictures of Luigi.
Words have meanings. Sometimes multiple meanings. But we have to share a common understanding of what a word means to have meaningful conversation. All the arguments about the Luigi image are as much "politics" as a chef boyardee ravioli is a "sandwich." Which is to say, probably arguably so, but people will think you're stupid if you make the argument in all seriousness.
As for roe v wade, it depends on what you mean. I'm not on the supreme court, so I certainly didn't repeal it myself. I didn't vote for Trump, so I didn't repeal it in that manner either. But I didn't campaign for it. I didn't call anyone or post angry messages online. I think it was ruled the wrong way, but it also isn't an issue that directly affects my life.
And that's my point. If you spent emotional energy on every miscarriage of justice, you wouldn't have time to live your life. Are you equally mad about every dictator in Africa or the middle east? Did you buy products from companies that take part in deforestation? Do you eat meat? Follow every single local election closely and have deep opinions about the two people running for the children's court judge position? Do you have opinions about the people running for president in the Philippines? In Canada? Mexico? If you don't actively care about all of those things, then you're the one "standing still and reinforcing the status quo" on all those issues.
It's okay to not let every issue dominate your life.
But I do agree I got bored with this exchange 2 messages ago, and am mostly responding on autopilot. Happy to call it here if you'd like to. No worries either way.
Hope life is treating you well, and you're having a restful weekend my guy.