She Makes Her Own, I Think
I keep seeing this meme going around that’s like, “I’ll still be your friend if you voted for Trump, I’ll still be your friend if you voted for Biden…” and it’s making me ragey.
So writes Sa’iyda Shabazz in the pages of Scary Mommy, where progressive parents display their piety to each other, and where rage and tears, even feigned or delusional rage and tears, are a currency of sorts, markers of woke status. Part of the game.
If you still support [Trump] after the last four years of his bullshit, then guess what? I don’t want to be your friend. Because if you support that monster, you can’t possibly also care about me.
A monster. Specifically, a “racist, misogynist, xenophobic monster.” I suppose we were destined to start in high gear, something approaching opera. It does seem to be the custom among Scary Mommy contributors. Having dutifully denounced Mr Trump as the Demon King, the cause of all human sorrow, Ms Shabazz then goes on to reveal, albeit inadvertently, the extent to which the wider world should in fact care about her, being as she is so lovely and not at all demented.
I know that I have friends who voted for Trump in 2016. And I know I probably have friends who did this year, too. One of them is one of my oldest and dearest friends. To say that I was horrified is an understatement.
In terms of progressive outpourings, understatement is a rare treat. Let’s take a moment to savour it.
The friend that I knew for sure voted for him? We didn’t talk for three years. I couldn’t reconcile the person I knew with the person who’d do something so awful… As a Black woman who is queer and poor, I know this administration wants to make me a second-class citizen. I cannot associate with someone who even hints at feeling the same.
I think I see the problem. The questionable premise.
My college degree isn’t going to stop [the police] from shooting me dead in the street if they feel inclined.
Of which, it turns out, there may be more than one.
Having revealed the somewhat rickety footing of her umbrage, Ms Shabazz resumes her efforts to win us over with a mix of natural charm and mental stability:
As far as I know, none of my friends are actively racist. But I also know that I’m not around them all the time.
We must have round-the-clock monitoring. Some kind of electronic tag. It’s the only way to be sure.
Just because they don’t crack a “Black” joke or mock the stereotype around me doesn’t mean they don’t when I’m not around.
Relentless suspicion being the basis of every solid friendship. And indeed, a happy life.
I can assume they’re not using our friendship to stop other white people from making racist comments.
This she can assume, you see. There then follows a tangle of other assumptions that I’ll attempt to summarise. You see, as a black woman – specifically a black lesbian, someone “Queer AF” – Ms Shabazz knows that some of her white friends may in turn know Trump supporters, who, being Trump supporters, must be making racist comments to all and sundry – there being no other conceivable possibility. And so, Ms Shabazz is certain that her white friends are not only hearing these racist comments but are also not objecting, thereby betraying her.
What my friends may not realise is that silence equals compliance. You may not agree when someone makes a racist statement, but if you’re not vehemently railing against them for that statement, you are complicit.
Vehement railing is demanded as a condition of being a friend, albeit a friend forever under suspicion. However, as with much else in the pages of Scary Mommy, actual evidence of this presumed betrayal, and thereby presumed complicity in Mr Trump’s Age Of Darkness, is not forthcoming. No crumbs at all. And not only is this assumed racism – and assumed silence, and assumed complicity, and assumed failure to be vehement – betraying Ms Shabazz, it is, we’re told, actually endangering her:
I’m not a practising Muslim, but I have an Arabic name. So how do I know that I’d be safe if he ever started rounding Muslims up?
So. Again. Totally even-keeled.
None of my friends know about the anxiety I’ve had this whole election. Seeing them sharing pictures of themselves voting and not saying anything else. “Did they vote for Trump?” is a question swirling around in my brain every time I see it… Without an overt indication, I have no choice but to think the worst.
She has no choice, you see.
The hard truth is that white people often vote in their personal best interest.
Because you just can’t be progressive, and therefore better than other people, without at least a whiff of racial bigotry. And so,
If you know the fear of the marginalised and still voted for that monster, you’re no friend of mine. Fool me once, shame on you. Do it again? GTFO.
Given what we’ve seen of Scary Mommy articles, one can’t help but entertain the possibility that its supposedly “empowered” contributors, our self-styled moral betters, the ones wracked with anxiety and fits of mental twitching, are very often authors of their own unhappy dramas. Having dispensed with the expectation of evidence, and with it, a sense of proportion and the constraints of realism, these titans of tomorrow are truly liberated and can hallucinate wildly all the long day. While disdaining friends for being unwitting props in the author’s own fever dream.
Readers may wish to ponder a mental world in which you essentially can’t interact with people – even “dearest friends” – who may have voted differently, and in which any friends who happen to be white are forever suspected of betrayal, and of endangering your wellbeing, on grounds that they may not have been sufficiently vehement in their scolding of other people – say, their colleagues, neighbours or acquaintances – who may also have voted differently. Or indeed, done less than that. It’s a worldview that doesn’t exactly scream good times ahead.
[ Expanded via the comments. ]
Via Lady Cutekitten.
Heavens, a button. I wonder what it does.
’ The hard truth is that white people often vote in their personal best interest.’
Just white people..?
I have no choice but to think the worst.
medication might help.
Having dispensed with the expectation of evidence, and with it, a sense of proportion and the constraints of realism, these titans of tomorrow are truly liberated and can hallucinate wildly all the long day.
Too true, and one cannot reason with them.
Prior to the ongoing saga I was having a discussion with an acquaintance, with an advanced real degree, with whom I am on friendly terms, about for whom to vote.
A: I couldn’t vote for Trump.
M: Why not ?
A: His absurd hair for starters. (A is a female, but not a purple haired wxmyn).
M: Biden has hair plugs, what is the difference ?
A: Trump is antisemitic. (A is Jewish)
M: Name one thing antisemitic he has done.
A: Oh, he moved the embassy, big deal.
M: Name one thing.
A: There are too many.
M: Just one.
A: He is racist.
M: Was he racist when he got an award with Rosa Parks ?
A: What about the muslim ban ?
M: Are muslims from Israel banned ? What about Indonesia ? (there followed a demographic discussion which shows, yet again, advanced degrees, even real ones, do not mean one is actually educated)
And on and on, utterly stereotypical like the yahoo above, could not name one single thing Trump has done that has adversely affected her or changed her life for the worse in any way. It all boils down to weird hair, brash, not a democrat.
My college degree isn’t going to stop [the police] from shooting me dead in the street if they feel inclined.
That would be the police controlled by the (mainly Democrat) mayors, not the President, who may now feel emboldened by having “their candidate” in the top job, the one who may reverse previous policies such as banning neck holds.
The hard truth is that white people often vote in their personal best interest.
Yes, that _is_ the truth, because that’s exactly the what democracy is.
The alternative is people vote because they’re coerced or threatened, or because, as in her case, the candidate is on their “side” or “team” regardless of their policies.
I’m not a practising Muslim, but I have an Arabic name. So how do I know that I’d be safe if he ever started rounding Muslims up?
You’re in far more danger of being considered an apostate and the subsequent consequences of that.
It all boils down to weird hair, brash, not a democrat.
In-group status is usually a factor. Unlike being progressive, and ostentatiously progressive, there’s little neurotic kudos in being conservative, which is often seen as low-status and boring. At least by progressives. And in my experience, progressives, our elevated egalitarians, are generally quite preoccupied with their own in-group status.
Not so poor that she doesn’t have a computer and Net connection to post her lunatic raving with, I see.
Nice work. *pushes button*
It all boils down to weird hair, brash, not a democrat.
Trump’s attitude to women is the other one often raised.
Pointing out Clinton’s track record usually leads to awkwardness.
Biden’s apparent choice of Ambassador to Ireland is Chris Dodd- an old-style Irish-American machine politician and friend of the late Sen Ted Kennedy. He of the waitress-sandwich reputation.
I am waiting for the howls of outrage here in the Soggy Isle but they have not yet materialised.
Cultist are often keen to see prospects separate from friends and family who cannot also be recruited.
*pushes button*
Bless you, sir. May your pets train you well.
“The hard truth is that white people often vote in their personal best interest.”
Why would anyone, anywhere not vote in their personal best interest? That’s the whole point of voting.
Julia M.: ” ‘The hard truth is that white people often vote in their personal best interest.’ / Just white people..?” African-Americans vote 90+% Democrat. In return, the Democrats provide them with corrupt police, failing schools, illegal aliens to undercut them in the labor market, and hobble the economy as best they can. So — not necessarily.
To be fair, you might decide that while you would be better of voting X, general wellbeing would be better served by voting Y. However, as voting Y for The Greater Good would in this case presumably make you happier, it is still in your best enlightened self-interest…
I think social media gives anyone a voice including the insane, and it probably should not do that.
Since the arrival of social media it seems to me the World goes incrementally crazier everyday that goes by.
“Not so poor that she doesn’t have a computer and Net connection . . .”
To be fair, I went to Walmart with a friend the other day and picked up an android phone over the counter for fifty bucks. I went out to the parking lot (where I could breath unrestricted) and had it all set up, updated and was watching a YT video without cell service before my friend came out.
If you can deal with a T9 keypad a fully network enabled KaiOS phone can be had for less than half that.
It’s a Brave New World.
So she’s “a successful writer” *and* poor and oppressed…
Since the arrival of social media it seems to me the World goes incrementally crazier everyday that goes by.
Nope. It has always been there. You are only seeing it now because of social media. Blaming SM is like blaming guns for murders. The internet in general, outside of its far greater volume of commercial traffic, has enabled people to see far, far beyond their peer groups. What we are seeing is definitely not pretty, but if you have spent much time spelunking into the psychology professions, with all their crazies, you can begin to understand how we got here. Similar to so much of academia. Only far more dangerous if not quite as wide spread across disciplines. This was possible before the internet and SM as well. I have explored much of it since developing a curiosity about these things in college 35-40 years ago. But if you weren’t curious about such things and someone like I raised them to your attention, you (ok, don’t know you but someone like you) likely would have dismissed me as the crazy person. Bah…who knows….maybe I am and this is all an illusion. Maybe I gots hyp-mo-tized watching Twilight Zone reruns back then and never heard the trigger word.
has enabled people to see far, far beyond their peer groups
The village idiots can now coordinate as well as be used as tools.
I think social media gives anyone a voice including the insane, and it probably should not do that.
The great thing about the Internet is that is gives everyone the equivalent of a printing press. The terrible thing about the Internet is that it gives everyone the equivalent of a printing press.
Scary Mommy is mis-named. Scared Mommy would be closer to the truth. As would Hysterical Mommy or, perhaps, Neurasthenic Mommy
I was puzzled by the name of the site. Who wants Mommy to be scary? (Somewhere I have a picture of a kitten, fluffed, back up, ears back, full alarm position: “It was the first time he had seen his mother without her makeup.”). 😄
“So how do I know that I’d be safe if he ever started rounding Muslims up?”
I’m sure he was just about to get to that.
How do I know I won’t end up on the blacklist?
Hysterical Mommy
Etymologically speaking this would be the most appropriate.
My college degree isn’t going to stop [the police] from shooting me dead in the street if they feel inclined.
The curious combination of racial narcissism and female solipsism. Why would she ever find herself in front of an shooting police officer? What could possibly motivate any police officer to shoot someone, particularly any black person?
The ridiculous paranoia about her friends is just an extension of this. “Police shooting THOUSANDS OF BLACK PEOPLE EVERY DAY!?!? I bet my white friends would clap if I, just another poor, gay, ignored black woman with a successful career writing about being poor and gay and marginalized, got shot!”
What the whole Trump issue highlights is just how many NPC’s there are out there. And its not about IQ or intelligence.
For example, Sam Harris has gone stark raving bonkers due to TDS.
I’m trying to picture a mental world in which you essentially can’t interact with people – even “dearest friends” – who may have voted differently, and in which friends are forever suspected of betrayal, on grounds that they may not have been sufficiently vehement in their scolding of other people – say, their colleagues, neighbours or acquaintances – who may also have voted differently.
I mean, it doesn’t exactly scream good times ahead.
We must have round-the-clock monitoring. Some kind of electronic tag. It’s the only way to be sure.
Isn’t that what Princess AOC is planning with her lists of people who supported Trump?
Then: “The hard truth is that white people often vote in their personal best interest.”
Well that’s pretty normal for all groups, but I have noticed that black inner-city folks in certain cities loot in their own interest.
Critical race theory seems designed to amplify our paranoia. Healthy responses like trust, tolerance, and forgiveness evaporate, and every interaction and news item reinforces feelings of distrust. It’s not normal, I tell ya.
Critical race theory seems designed to amplify our paranoia.
It is poison. In a bottle marked POISON in huge red letters. And still they gargle it.
And still they gargle it.
The fundamental underpinning of the modern lunacy states that everything that is – as in, current and testable reality – is wrong by default. When complete sexual license is achieved, for instance, then prudish tsk-tsking will be their in-group status signalling currency.
/stolen shamelessly from Rotten Chestnuts
I’m trying to picture a mental world in which you essentially can’t interact with people – even “dearest friends” – who may have voted differently,
Well, sad to say it but I am moving in that direction. Not specifically because of who they voted for but I am finding it increasingly hard to navigate a world where most of the people in it are convinced that because of the guy I voted for, I must be a misogynist, racist, science-denying, dumb ass free-dumb lover. Especially as such people can watch news reporters stand in front of burning buildings and say the protests are mostly peaceful. I just don’t know how to communicate with such people. We don’t share a common understanding of the meanings of so many important words. Lunch with pussy-hat wearing sister-in-law tomorrow is forecast to be edgy. Wife, her husband, and I voted for Trump. But not sure if she realizes my wife (her sister) did.
I mean really…misogynist I can understand, but…
We don’t share a common understanding of the meanings of so many important words.
Scott Adams likened this to two groups of people in the same theater, watching the same screen, and yet seeing two entirely different movies. I think it’s worse than that now; one group is watching their movie on the screen, the other group is outside trying to burn down the theater.
Scott Adams likened this to two groups of people in the same theater, watching the same screen, and yet seeing two entirely different movies.
I had this idea back when I started to notice these kinds of disconnects across the country, maybe 30 years ago…a play in which the first two acts contain the exact same words but the third act would be different in such a way that the words from the first two acts would be understood to have had completely different meanings and intentions. Release the play in opposite sides or maybe culturally different areas of the country in smallish theaters, then wait for the train wreck to occur. I’m so bloody lazy though…plus I can’t write for shit.
Just because they don’t crack a “Black” joke or mock the stereotype around me doesn’t mean they don’t when I’m not around.
She complains about stereotypes yet spends the better part of the whole article stereotyping “white Trump voters” while buying into the media-created caricature of Trump.
I bet she’s a blast in the lunchroom at work.
“Excuse me, Sa’iyda, may I get by you so I can make a cup of coffee?”
“It’s because I’m BLACK, right? You just think you can just order me around like some dumb Step-n-fetch-it … your white supremacy is so ingrained you can’t see it and how it affects other people!”
“Uh, I’m sorry, I only …”
“You’re SORRY? Damn right, you are! I have a COLLEGE DEGREE! Bet you didn’t know that. You voted for Trump, didn’t you, I can tell. And it’s MS SHABAZZ, cracker!”
Release the play in opposite sides or maybe culturally different areas of the country in smallish theaters, then wait for the train wreck to occur.
Wasn’t that what they did with the Clue movie? Six different endings.
I have worked with the mentally ill for decades. 1) Paranoia as a condition exists prior to identifying an enemy, so when Trump is gone, she will find other enemies. 2.) Paranoids have an uncanny ability to make their worst fears come true. Consider it an extension of “Well, they’re after you NOW, because you are being a public nuisance.”
@ WTP – Tom Stoppard actually does write plays like this. Highly recommended, because he is funny, and gradually become more conservative.
Since the arrival of social media it seems to me the World goes incrementally crazier everyday that goes by.
Nope. It has always been there. You are only seeing it now because of social media. Blaming SM is like blaming guns for murders.
Eternal September.
And that occurring about about a decadeIsh after the early hipsters had already utterly congealed because of the same mindset already being in place. The new access to growing internet capability merely provided a steady and increasing mist of gasoline to that already started dumpster fire . . .
Trump’s attitude to women is the other one often raised.
While carefully ignoring Biden publicly molesting young girls.
“The hard truth is that white people often vote in their personal best interest.’”
People voting in their own best interest??
Oh my Gaia, whatever next?
Weeeellllllll . . . . that certainly does require a special mindset for such a fixation . . . . But then from one day to the next, while I do keep encountering the axiom that You will always have the sufficiently vehement in their scolding among you, I pretty much have just been seeing the occasional reference online, or the news report from somewhere else.
Over the last year and a half, I have had four different jobs—Ah, the joys of C-19—and spent five months or so in a project based, very hands on, coding and computer administration study program.
Over the last year and a half I have never had someone barging through my environment with a particular point of clearly hoping to be a district political officer.
Riding to and from work and school, all has been situationally dead quiet.
—Statistical oddities, like hipsters getting honked at ’cause they can’t drive, or who are having telephone conversations with the immediate city block, don’t count.
At work and at at school, I and my rather various associates have shown up, commented Hullo in some form or fashion, discussed anything coming up in the next few hours that wasn’t already standard operating procedures, and then Just Did Stuff.
The closest idea of political opinions I’ve gotten from assorted coworkers has been an only occasional generalized dislike of Trump with no assessment of Biden. I particularly note all of this being from rather hands on administrators with no interest or time in situational bullshit.—At one job, for a bit, we had one security guard who apparently considered himself The Font Of Wisdom, where after awhile you could tell where that particular guard was, his location would be where everyone else wasn’t.
The closest to any sort of open and definite politicized commentary occurred the evening of the first Floyd riots—It was evening, so we could tell that the protesters had gone home, and the rioters had shown up. Among my coworkers, the consensus was rather definitely that Those Idiots out there are Idiots.
Well, I certainly foresee total and completely lunatics rampaging about online, from both the right wing and the left. But then that has already been occurring.
But, then again, online isn’t out the front door and down the street, and other aspects of actually being out in reality . . . .
Critical race theory seems designed to amplify our paranoia.
It is poison. In a bottle marked POISON in huge red letters. And still they gargle it.
For you will always have the gargler among you.
The closest idea of political opinions I’ve gotten from assorted coworkers has been an only occasional generalized dislike of Trump with no assessment of Biden. I particularly note all of this being from rather hands on administrators with no interest or time in situational bullshit.
Oh, and a very little bit after posting that, I found that the Associated Press had a definite recommendation to follow the money.
@WTP
Nope. It has always been there. You are only seeing it now because of social media.
Not so sure about that. Some forms of madness require an audience, and Social Media lets you get an audience… but only if you manage to grab more attention than the rest of the baying mob.
@David
I’m trying to picture a mental world in which you essentially can’t interact with people… on grounds that they may not have been sufficiently vehement in their scolding of other people.
It makes sense if you view it through a narcissist’s eyes. Trump is Evil and I am the Brave Warrior fighting him. My life, my mind, my soul is bound up in this image of myself. If I am not The Warrior, I am nothing. Anyone who suggests that Trump is not so Evil is not *disagreeing* with me, he is *attacking* me. Everywhere around me, people are attacking me, some directly (mocking me or supporting Trump) and some treacherously (by not denouncing the attackers). I must be alert!
I mean, it doesn’t exactly scream good times ahead.
Not for them, not for their family…
Some forms of madness require an audience, and Social Media lets you get an audience…
The audience.
Instalanche!
It makes sense if you view it through a narcissist’s eyes. Trump is Evil and I am the Brave Warrior fighting him… Anyone who suggests that Trump is not so Evil is not *disagreeing* with me, he is *attacking* me.
Yes. Pretty much. It’s not a happy dynamic and good is unlikely to come from it. But it is very fashionable. Very now.
Instalanche!
[ Rummages under bar, unearths discoloured, badly-worn toothbrush. ]
Be quick about it. And pass it round.
Sometimes one can supply a punchline.
Sometimes one just need skim through the headlines.
VR Furries Are Now Running Around The Four Seasons Total Landscaping
Especially as such people can watch news reporters stand in front of burning buildings and say the protests are mostly peaceful. I just don’t know how to communicate with such people.
Well, responding to fashionable hallucinations or practised dishonesty can be tricky, and can involve more effort, and patience, than is likely to be rewarded. One has to pick one’s battles.
My own friends, neighbours and relatives cover a range of political affiliations, from leftish to conservative to libertarian, and some are unknown to me. We still manage to interact, often agreeably, largely because we don’t scream politics at each other every bloody day. It isn’t the basis of the relationship. Despite what I do here, and am doing right now, I don’t see my real-world social interactions as an excuse to proselytise. I’m not trying to sway them politically. I have a blog for that, should they be curious.
Though it can get, um, interesting if the other person can’t resist the compulsion to indulge in a bit of blurting.