It's a situation that I have been expecting for a while, but I wasn't fully ready to accept it. Specifically it's one of my LGBTQ friends who honestly believes in the democrats will protect them and their partner. I have tried to make the point that both parties are eroding any sort of civility towards all marginalized groups, but fear seems to drive them more than logical observations. They make the excuse that change doesn't happen over night and that the left continues to grow and will have meaningful affects down the road. I fundamentally just don't agree with that idea and vocalize it regularly. More and more it is ending up in a circular argument where I am painted as unrealistic and my rhetoric (leftist rhetoric) is doing more harm than good because it promotes distrust in the only system we have to work with. I try to tell them it's kind of the whole point. We gotta start somewhere if we want to see a better, more representative system, but they are so hung up on the immediate future while simultaneously saying that my idealistic feelings are shortsighted and I cant expect change in the immediate future... The double-talk is wild, I know.
I am trying my hardest to stop from engaging at this point because on the most basic level we agree on a lot of stuff, but they are just way to wrapped up in the fear mongering of the democratic party. They know that the two party system is broken, they know that something drastic needs to change, but they also think that they are powerless to do anything except choose the lesser evil. It pains me because I am watching them do the same shit past generations have done, where they give up on their ideals for the sake of preserving the current status quo that they benefit from. I am legitimately watching them imply "fuck you, got mine" under the guise of civic duty and I hate it. I want nothing more than to be able to finally say "I told you so" without being a smug asshole about it and ruining our friendship.
Thanks for reading my rant. It's probably a bit disjointed, but the frustration is boiling over and I needed to vent to the only group of people that seems to understand the hopelessness of being a disenfranchised leftist.
Not everyone around me in the northeast is friendly, let alone a comrade, but I'm very glad to be far away from Silicon Valley liberals at long last.
I was very nearly approaching explosive-shouting-replies to the smug, arrogant, and even occult shit they'd keep saying to me, unprompted and unsolicited, especially after dae le epic "AI" hype waves took off.
https://futurism.com/openai-employees-say-firms-chief-scientist-has-been-making-strange-spiritual-claims
That article is from last year and since then NVDIA is now "worth" 11% of the US GDP as a consequence, so I can kind of understand how you can see this as some sort of "miracle".
What is the opposite of capitalism realism? Capitalist absurdism? We are increasingly seeing events and trends that defy even previous well established mainstream rethoric.
Surely they're already believing or soon will turn into the old too big to fail rethoric, everyone prepares for the crash that never comes. When it does come its not a crash at all but a "pullback" only. The line only goes up, you may lose all your money but as long as Blackrock servers keep running the HFT algos Wall Street will be open every weekday at 9am.
At some point yeah, its like believing no matter what happens the church will always be there etc. There is some argument the closer we are to climate collapse the more we will regress towards fantasy escapist beliefs. The world is shit but AI will save us is just what a 14th century peasant would be saying about the church and god during the Bubonic plague. We haven't changed.
I have never lived anywhere else besides the east coast, but I run into enough Silicon Valley types due to my jobs, they are on another level.
I was just a teacher, but even then I had to hear "get in on the ground floor" pitches for numerous startups and grifts from both faculty and sometimes just strangers, and the worst of them would just announce bazinga shit like "do you know that humans are obsolete? Fortunately, I'm planning on upgrading with Neuralink."
I winced at this...
Me too, every time.