What in the hell is this?! The chairman tweets, “Protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio” because he goes down some crazy rabbit hole, completely debunked that aliens are eating pets. My God, are you ok, Mr. Chairman? Because last year, for a very long time, you tweeted and promoted Kanye West as he was calling for genocide against the Jews and you kept it up. And now when we have victims coming here, you’re tweeting this nonsense.
I, I don’t know why you would do this. I hope you’re ok. I don’t know if the aliens who are eating your ducks are in the room with us right now. But, Mr. Chairman, this is a serious issue. These people have loved ones who have been lost. And you tweeted this.
I’m not entirely at ease with the characterization of this as them doing it performatively, or as part of a narrative. Everything nowadays is slavishly reduced to “optics” and agendas.
I will equivocate though; Swalwell’s reaction here is effective because it mirrors the reaction many of us have had to the dark turns of our friends and loved ones in recent years. This madness has frayed our social fabric, maybe irreparably.
If optics is how you win elections, then go with the optics. And it seems to be optics.
Yup. I would personally love it if the electorate studied the various policies of candidates that wished to be their representatives, decided which ones’ positions were the most beneficial to themselves and to the country as a whole (which is indirectly beneficial to themselves, after all) and then selected that one on a rational basis. If we lived in that world then each candidates’ campaign would ideally focus on debating issues and presenting their views.
We don’t live in that world, alas. I’ve become cynical about democracy of late because the electorate are a bunch of sports team fans who just want “their guy” to win. Well, so be it then. It’s kind of an emergency right now so play whatever strategy keeps the regressive loons out of power.
We don’t even live in a world where more than half of the eligible voters even show up, let alone can name a single policy point of any of the candidates.
“When they go low, we go high” has been proven to be a losing strategy over and over.