A blog of wonder, bliss, and blunder

Heard at coffeeshop -

https://youtu.be/pMATzftsSPI

"We can acknowledge that young people learn to weaponize identity politics and bigotry accusations early in their online lives and then take those tactics into adult politics and maybe try to improve things. We can teach them that accusations of bigotry are powerful and fraught and should never be used frivolously, that to do so risks the progress we’ve achieved. Or we can do what so many people do these days and say “Hey, they’re just stupid kids, this is just online stuff, it doesn’t matter….” But those aren’t the real reasons they practice avoidance. No, they practice avoidance because here in 2026 the game is never to appear to say the sort of thing our opponents say. It’s associative politics at its purest and most corrosive. I suspect most left-of-center people agree with me that it’s absurd that fandom types so often suggest that not getting what they want in their stories is a species of interpersonal bigotry, a kind of identity crime. But saying so would bring the risk of looking like a Republican, so they don’t say so. And that’s the real condition I’m interested in today: the sheer number of left-leaning people who consistently refuse to express their opinion on topics of controversy because they don’t want to appear to be the wrong sort of person."