My mind keeps thinking back to a brief exchange I had with my mother about a year ago. It was sometime in the late fall/early winter of 2020 and my mom was watching some local news channel that was showing a segment on the state of pre trial detention in the U.S., and my mom turned to me and said something along the lines of "That's terrible! Did you know that some people are spending over a year in jails just waiting for their trial?"

(I don't remember the exact words said in this exchange but I remember the jist of it)

"Mom, you know I spent the entire summer yelling at cops. What makes you think that I didn't know about the terrible things they do?"

"Well, this doesn't have to do with cops because this is just the justice system not taking care of these people's cases fast enough"

Now normally I try and educate my mother about the bullshit in the world but that answer was so blatantly intentionally ignorant that I was just fucking speechless. It took me a couple seconds of complete bewilderment before I could ask the very, very obvious follow up question of "WHO DO YOU THINK PUTS PEOPLE IN JAIL???"

At that point my mom just threw up her hands and just gave up. I'm pretty sure she even realized that what she said was completely absurd. But I keep going back to this exchange in my head because it's such an eye opening view into the liberal mind

Anyone else have any good stories like that?

  • cybernetsoc [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The same libs that kept talking about this grave threat of fascism and inherent flaws and failures of America last year and how America is in what might be permanent decline, just switched overnight back to "we can fix whats wrong with America with what's right with America" mode. I kept asking them "okay, but in any major or systemic way, how has anything actually changed except you don't have to read hysterical articles about the Orange Man anymore?" and I get some version of the Democrats just need time, they will get to work on fixing everything. The kicker is that some were willing to acknowledge real systemic failures the Democrats would never touch and that Biden wouldn't have won without COVID happening under Trump's watch last year.

    • cybernetsoc [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      It just really is so shocking to watch the reality distortion fields change in real time. "No, systemic change in that we never question the system, just vote harder!"

    • half_giraffe [comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I like pointing to student loan cancellation as an easy example of a Democratic failure. It covers a lot of the kneejerk apologia pretty easily: Biden doesn't need to court congress or a parliamentarian since it can be enacted with an Executive Order (which is already written, meaning he can do it tomorrow). It's good policy and would be effectively buying votes for the Dems, so it's great politics. And Biden ran on (even limited) cancellation so it would be fulfilling a campaign promise as well. The only thing standing in the way of actually doing this is the fact that the Dems have zero will to do this obvious good thing.

      And as a bonus, since Biden will probably rerun in 2024, it will be at least 2028 before we could possibly get someone in office who will actually pull the trigger. And that requires a lot more effort than just getting Biden to sign a piece of paper.

      • cybernetsoc [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I know, they will always deflect when I point to things like this and vaguely gesture at political capital or offending moderates before midterms. Even for things related to immigration like "Biden could just reverse Trumps revoking Haitians temporary asylum or reverse the 'COVID measures' preventing any asylum applications. Remember when Democrats cared about asylum seekers?"

        This batch of libs I am talking to are against student debt cancellation because "I had to pay it back, it is only fair that they do". Even after I point out that they had parents help them pay so most of them only had $1-5k. The same people that kept complaining that I never went out with them and was a hermit saving money, because my parents didn't pay so I had significantly more. I got all of it paid off and am still in favor of cancellation, you damn hypocrites.