by mitchbob on 10/23/25, 7:43 PM with 22 comments
by deeg on 10/23/25, 9:50 PM
by mitchbob on 10/23/25, 7:43 PM
by neilv on 10/23/25, 9:40 PM
Coming from a non-wealthy, very religious, partly-conservative upbringing, I turned out to identify as very liberal-progressive. (My parents grew up in rural areas, my mom had a huge wood Reagan campaign sign in our yard, they were big on responsibility, and we weren't allowed to ever miss a single blessed Sunday of church nor religious extracurricular. Yet they were also epitomes of Christian charity, kept us in the city even when my dad's job tried to relocate him, and switched us to a noteworthy progressive church parish.)
As a liberal-progressive with this background, I've had a mix of pride and concern, over the years, about how my current socioeconomic peers have supported some good causes, but also let huge swaths of the nation be thrown under the bus.
There's some truth to the stereotype of the techbro "left" glamorizing greed and exploitation, and focusing on a narrow set of fashionable social issues to support, while ignoring the plights of most people.
This began before "dialogue" "on both sides" devolved into scoring points against the enemy team. Now --especially with the overt rise of the fascist right (and a lot of ears-covering cancel culture on the left), and other intellectual dumbing-down of the citizenry (partly created by techbros) -- it will be much harder to find sympathy, and to reconcile.
But I suppose one of the first steps is for people on "sides" to start understanding the other, including by reading some of these stories about the experiences of others.
by lazyeye on 10/23/25, 11:25 PM
by wakawaka28 on 10/24/25, 12:13 AM
by aaroninsf on 10/23/25, 10:32 PM
look no further than the weaponization of ignorance in places like this.
All that is required is voting not according to manufactured cultural issues, but in accord with widely shared values and common interests.
We can have and used to have a capitalism which self-moderated, and with sufficient surplus as in the post-WWII years, gains were widely shared.
Society wasn't perfect but shit was moving in the right direction.
Then came Reagan, deregulation, and the decades-long project by the right of fomenting ignorance and maintaining it through unchecked propoganda.
Today, under surveillance capitalism, all the tools are in place to continue driving ignorance and weaponizing it against those responsible for the loss of prosperity, opportunity, social welfare net, and common infrastructure, that were considered the definition of the American Dream.
People have been made ignorant, encourage to be righteous, made fearful and angry, and it's worked.
Bw, the reason Meta can pay so well is that it's been uniquely successful in accelerating and profiteering off this dystopian nightmare. Don't kid yourself if you work there what you're contributing to.