Rightwingers are promoting aggressive anti-bikeism as a key element of the reactionary political identity. Just the most destructive people, reflexively raging against anything coded “left” or “woke.” And so even the most universally beneficial trends and behavior are declared evil and “Un-American” 1/
@tzimmer_history just not happy til they get people killed in the name of their "freedoms" to continue destroying the planet for the sake of having a big truck or SUV to compensate for their tiney tiney dicks.
Polls are not objective reflections of public opinion – they help construct that which they ostensibly just measure. But that also means they have a massive impact shaping political behavior.
And this one is really concerning – because “Biden too old” seems to dominate everything else.
This column by David French is entirely incoherent as the author fails miserably at distinguishing between what annoys him - the phrase “OK Boomer” becoming popular as a symbol of defiance and/or dismissiveness - vs. what is actually indicative of significant societal problems.
Shamefully silly to publish such utter nonsense even at the best of times - a complete disaster doing it in the current situation in which a paper that has adopted “Democracy dies in darkness” as its official slogan should have other things to alert and inform the public about.
Much of the political discourse is animated by a longing for a “golden age” that never actually existed. This pervasive sense of nostalgia blunts and undermines the mainstream response to the reactionary assault on democratic multiracial pluralism. 2/
Beyond offering a misleading interpretation of the present, the “polarization” narrative usually comes with a hefty dose of “golden age” nostalgia for a long-lost “consensus” – it tells a story of decline, suggesting that the status quo ante before the 60s was one of unity and order. 5/
Moralizing Nostalgia Leads to Bad History – and Helps the Anti-Democratic Right
David Brooks’ “How America Got Mean” offers an ahistorical tale that obscures rather than illuminates – and provides fertile ground for a politics of reaction.
Take the ability to block away, and Twitter immediately becomes utterly unusable for anyone who doesn’t revel in being overwhelmed by an avalanche of racist, misogynistic, bigoted filth - and that’s intentional, of course. An incitement of abuse.