Anti-Trump #Resistance members say they’re demoralized by their long fight against MAGA Republicans. Considering what members of actual Resistance fighters had to go through–executions, torture, reprisals against their family members, poverty, being sent to death camps–the minor annoyances these snowflakes report after doing basically nothing since 2016 (unless you count attending one or two rallies) don’t even begin to pale in significance. The least they could do is to stop insulting the memories of actual Resistance fighters by comparing their lame selves to real heroes.
The Anti-Trump #Resistance Is Burned Out
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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I wish you sold posters.
The “resistance” has been like this since Cheney. We’re invading Afghanistan? Everyone on the left politely marches off in an orderly fashion to be corralled into a “Free Speech Zone.” Occupy Wall Street was taken down by cops who knew all the dirty tricks the trustfunders drinking Starbucks and trying to get laid didn’t. If you have a copy of “The Grapes of Wrath” (it’s a book, by a guy named John Steinbeck. He was a writer. That’s someone who … nevermind) you can see exactly where the cops got their playbook.
Trump? Trump isn’t the problem. If the left had pushed the correct candidates, advocating for the issues that were most popular, Trump never would have emerged. He would have been right there next to Lyndon LaRouche with a fraction of a percentage point of the vote.
But let’s keep debating pronouns because that? That’s what will decide the fate of the Republic.
> But let’s keep debating pronouns because that? That’s what will decide the fate of the Republic.
It is not an “either or”. We can fight to solve climate change, poverty, war in the Middle East, etc., all while using pronouns that respect people. And no, trying to get respect for queer people is not a de minimis issue. Murder and suicide are literally matters of life and death, and it is the general disrespecting of queer people that leads to significantly higher rates of murder and suicide of queer people.
Demonstrably, we cannot.
I don’t question the issue of suicide. Nor do I consider the issue minimal. But it is a non-starter. You simply CANNOT get the disinterested middle — the people who, genuinely, don’t care one way or the other — up in arms about it.
But it’s an easy out for a lot of people. “Hey. I care. I care. I have my pronouns on my LinkedIn, and I recycle my cans. So I’m socially engaged AND I’m saving the environment.”
When the ice caps melt, and Rachel Carson’s silent spring finally arrives, regardless of how each of us identifies, we’ll all be screwed.
> You simply CANNOT get the disinterested middle — the people who, genuinely, don’t care one way or the other — up in arms about it.
But the disinterested middle do care about the issue, very much so. By miscasting it as a way to disrespect non-queer people, right-wing demagogues do have the folks in the middle up in arms … AGAINST respecting pronouns. (Compare to the battle to eradicate racism being miscast as a battle to make white people feel guilty.) Giving in to right-wing demagogues on these issues means giving in on life and death issues to opponents who have no argument against progress other than something they made up. Oh sure, right-wingers can find a few over-the-top progressives to mock, but they are using that to derail the 90% who are working hard to, literally, save lives.
Lee,
“By miscasting it as a way to disrespect non-queer people, right-wing demagogues do have the folks in the middle up in arms … AGAINST respecting pronouns.”
Not really. A relatively small, relatively loud group has sucked all the oxygen out of the room, using SocMed to reinforce the star chamber. The media gravitates to it because pronouns requires almost no work to write about and permits lots of journalists to write about their feel-feels rather than report facts and, you know, do work. Salaries have been stagnant for 40 years. The dems haven’t tried to force universal health care through in just as long. Why should they? Every election cycle, they’re told they HAFTA vote for the dem. So they do. And the dems then proceed to sit on their hands. Why work? The dummies will vote us all in again next time, too. God, these voters are chumps. I almost want to deliberately mistreat them, just to see how bad they’ll let it get before they stick up for themselves.
All the polls I look at? They all tell me the same thing. People are worried about jobs. About the environment. Pronouns? Don’t even show up in the list. Statista’s latest puts Civil Rights at about 3% and 12th on the list. It doesn’t even have an entry for pronouns.
Perhaps if people had job security, billionaires were being taxed fairly, and there was a safety net worth a damn, people would be more interested in pronouns. But for now? The entire left, as a collective unit, should be utterly Borg-like. Pick one thing that has large public interest (not artificially inflated coverage on click-scroll SocMed) and everyone, get behind that. Po’ white trash and Black Panthers, lesbians who think Oswald was a lizard person and junior-high teachers who brown bag it to lunch every day, set aside all the differences and divisions, and just agree to agree on one thing. And only one thing.
Ah, Chateau Collabo, cuvee ’43…
A year where they were many collabos and few resistants, the bulk of the latter waiting for the allies to land in France to start settling their personal accounts with their fellow “countrypersons” (*), and occasionally butchering a few Germans on the way.
So that’s what lefties were then drinking rather than Chablis ?
As for the queers, good luck to them with their claims in a world with less and less energies where wars will be raging everywhere and spring will be anything but silent.
(*) Totally inclusive