The Peanut Gallery: The One Where Storyteller Rants at the Television
March 2, 2024
Welcome to the Peanut Gallery! Today I wanted to shout into the void.
Please remember that I know nothing.
We have got a social crisis in our societies that pits truth against a sense of political agency. Truth is pitted against the idea that they can meaningfully be part of the political system that runs their society—meaningfully be part of the political culture of their society. We’ve got large chunks of our population increasingly like their sense of agency is obliterated by...what? What people like you and me might call true and factual observations about the world.
One side—the side Tucker swims through, says people having a crisis of political agency and that’s because they have the truth and the truth is being denied.
Bro, it’s not political agency—I mean it is, but not in the absolutist way you describe. Most don’t care how their car works, only that it works, so the idea that they’re losing trust in their political institutions because they can’t change or observe them is absurd.
Walk into any school board meeting in the United States and you’ll learn right-quick what local politics actually looks like. Most of the time life’s quiet and orderly, then something happens and suddenly shit’s intense. When you’ve got local churches literally yanking books out of school libraries, it’s not a problem of control over government. Most of MAGA country is actually over represented in our federal institutions, at least here in the United States.
I mean we’re talking,
Senate’s basic structure.
Gerrymandering & arbitrary Representative limit.
Electoral College...
Supreme Court, apparently.
These people have an iron grip over their local politics. If they’re concerned about their political agency then it’s a problem of perception, not balance. No, what the average MAGA-voter lacks isn’t political agency, it’s personal agency. These people are pissed and have no idea why.
It might be that they’ve got to balance two jobs with fluctuating schedules, both somehow written weekly on a Saturday evening. Or maybe it's because driving for Uber often pays less than minimum wage after all expenses. Or, just possibly, it’s because tired, overworked and chronically stressed people often want a way out, and a satisfying fantasy is to burn it all down.
Self-reliance is the gospel of our oppression, folks.
Put yourself in the average Trump voter’s shoes: white, lower-middle class, possibly college educated, male on the ass-end of life. Over the last century that man has probably watched his town dry up as the factory that gave it life outsourced overseas. He’s watched his family home grow increasingly run down. And he’s watched his brother lose himself to methadone, the other go queer, and every damn thing in the grocery store go up in price. That man is pissed, tired, and hungry. He isn’t paid his worth, so he gets up each morning and goes to bed each night having gone nowhere. That bastard is miserable, but he’s been miserable for a long time, so the problem can’t be him...as he’s already tried everything.
It’s not that Joe Average can’t affect political change, it’s that Joe Average has lost control of his own life. He is miserable and can’t alter the circumstances. He sprints all day just to stay in one place. His world is essentially one big Rent-A-Center.
Life is a series of challenges, but when those challenges are consistently insurmountable...well, eventually everyone stops trying. We see this behavior in dogs when we repeatedly electrocute them, and it’s the same with humans—just look to the cycle of abuse. Eventually we all sink into learned helplessness.
But first we are angry. Always first we are angry. A People do not simply become like the Russians overnight, broken down and pitiful. To break something, it must start whole.
Russian authorities in Moscow Oblast created “training programs” for people potentially considering adopting illegally deported Ukrainian children in Russia.[80] The program reportedly falsely conflates Ukrainian and Russian culture. The program reportedly tells participants that their main objective is to create a “second homeland” for Ukrainian children in Russia and that they will need to overcome “difficulties in international differences.” Participants of the training program must undergo interviews in which Russian authorities ask if they have Ukrainian friends and relatives. ISW continues to assess that the forced deportation and adoption of Ukrainian children likely amounts to a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Please give Ukraine what they need to bring this war to an end.
‘Q’ for the Community:
Have you ever felt learned helplessness?
Join the conversation of on /r/TheNuttySpectacle!