listening to someone talk about a true crime doc they watched and that shit really is effective at getting people to side with the legal system. if not with the cops specifically, then with incarceration and cruel punishment generally. and like it feels like it serves (possibly unintentionally) as a tool to manufacture consent for the current criminal legal system that we have. also gets people victim blaming constantly and building this sense of "I see all the mistakes that victims make in these and I don't do those things which means I'll be safe forever". and also super convinces people to be extremely distrustful of everyone all the time with the like "this crime was totally random and happened out of nowhere... it could happen to you!" stuff that may not always be explicitly stated but does seem to be there to some extent in pretty much every iteration

like I think a lot of white online lefties are like "we need to make this space more welcoming to white men" which I mean.... dumb take. growing the movement is good I guess but you've got weird fucking priorities. whatever. but if you are doing that at the expense of marginalized people, if your way to make the space more accommodating to them is to allow misogyny and racism and ableism and transphobia to slide, then you're not fucking growing the movement. you're bringing in white dudes who suck and haven't unpacked any of their shit and pushing women and black people and trans people etc etc out of the movement because it is not a good or safe place.

also a lot of the (white) left seems to think that if they just get classism under control that'll fix everything, and they don't have to bother looking at unpacking all that tedious "racism" and "misogyny" shit that people are always fucking whining about. look guys we're fighting for working class rights! that technically means we care about the gays and the transes and the women and the people of color and the disableds and all of you whiny losers. so get off our fucking backs about the whole 'you're being sexist' and 'this space is unsafe for marginalized people' bullshit.

I have issues with john oliver but I think he said at one point something like "I'm never going to be friends with these politicians, because then I wouldn't be able to do my job" and that's like. an important thing that more people should do. it seems to me that a number of people in the "left" media space (which is primarily leftish liberals) knew platner or were friends or were just personally charmed by him and that is like half of why they dropped the ball so hard here. they bought whatever charm he has, didn't look toooo closely at anything that came out that might make him a bad candidate, and mocked people who took any of his red flags seriously because they've met the guy and he seems nice! or he was their bartender! the other half is some combination of "we don't care enough about his enthusiastic participation in the military because the harm that he caused there is too distant from us and also we're racist", the general glorification of the ideal of "rugged masculinity", the daydreams about redemption arcs, and the desperate desire to win at all costs.

I think it's still a bad thing when the leopards eat the faces of the people who vote for the leopards eating people's faces party, frankly.