Aravo Celta

Did this person (who turned out to be a trans man) say, ‘actually I’m a guy’ and move on? No. They WENT OFF about how this other person in the comments had ‘misgendered me’, like this understandable wrong guess was a malicious act. The other person apologised and attempted to move on, but oh no, that couldn’t happen. This was a clear indication that the other person was evil, daring to misgender a trans person (again, this was a completely unintentional wrong guess that was immediately apologised for and not repeated), and not only that, the OP was evil for ‘allowing their followers to misgender me’ (the OP had not been involved in this conversation at all, nor was their any indication over whether either participant followed them. It was two random Tumblr users having a discussion in the notes of this one post. Nothing to do with OP). This proved that the OP and this person supporting them were evil transphobes, see, and proved that ‘all women are negatively affected by gender policing’ was an evil transphobic thing to say and shouldn’t be talked about.

Was any of this discussion remotely useful for any purpose? No. It was just a derail of a legitimate discussion by someone deciding to invent new transphobia and misogyny so they could use invented victimisation in their personal game of oppression olympics, instead of usefully discussing the actual transphobia and misogyny that the post was about. Someone using their identity as a trap to try to bully random people on the internet via ‘I think Coolsville sucks’-style invented attacks when there are very real transphobes and misogynists out there to focus on instead. All it did was make a bunch of people -- including the person stirring up the drama! -- very angry for no reason.

were the proto chuds of the 80s through the early oughts wrong about their takes on "oppression olympics" and "PC police" and "identity politics"?

yes. unequivocally yes they were wrong because they simply wanted to say slurs.

But I have a theory that conservatives as a whole, the people group not necessarily the political theory, has this kind of Horse Sense (where a horse is dumber than its rider but is able to detect danger and react to it earlier than the smarter human) where they recognize the base issue with a social behavior and can even trace down the line issues with it better than their more educated fellow citizens. However they react to it much like a horse by freaking the fuck out kicking you off and breaking your spine in twelve places.

Just the basic idea of identity as argument, using the idea of "lived experience" this way, you can trace from the earliest usage of this lead us to "i am literally a minor." If you're not weighed down with baggage of the left wing side of culture war and all the hand wringing therein, the flaws were obvious from the start. However being weighed down the the right wing side of culture war meant these people were just going to use these observations to be basal racist reactionaries.

Because they think that having to do this intentional living, using a gas mask or other ppe, being mindful of daily living like monitoring clean water and food, is something you do if the world is nuked. There's a definitive starting bell and if that bell is run ok now you can start living this way. and in their case, refusing to deal with it and offing themselves.

But as you say, the whole game of thresholds. "the apocalypse" and the things I and others "prep" for are more like continued crumbling of society, climate change, things of that nature.

and those don't have a starting bell.

so you then imagine someone saying "i'd kill myself if the apocalypse happened" and they're trying to measure how much bread and gasoline has to cost before it's time. Like, milk hits too many dollars a gallon and now it's time to put a .44 in your mouth. And that's obviously insane.

Things often only get the category long after the fact, the 20th century having these clearly delineated and defined eras and aesthetics and events is actually an outlier in human history, most of the time stuff happens slowly and piecmeal and it all blends together.

so, in the case of "when" regarding american fascism, well, what they're asking is when is it nazi germany and by when is it nazi germany they're asking when do I have carte blanche to shoot down anyone who's not also freaking out about all this, like I would do in nazi germany.

and the nazis are weird. Because like, america experienced something akin to fascism (an insurgent politcal movement of extreme anti immigrant and anti intellectual sentiment taking charge) with the know nothing party. But that was a phase. and while it continued to be part of the broth in the US, no one is really like "ah yes, the Know Nothing era" like they do with nazis.

and frankly, i think the thing that sets the european fascists apart from the rest of history really is that there is that definitve starting bell where they change the flag and rename the country and give everyone new uniforms. Because fascism is somewhat downstream of bolshevik communism (not in a "hur hur, it was called national socialism" way, please trust me) in that it is a desire to address the perceived inefficiencies of capitalism by centralizing authority and planning capacity and also reinventing national cultural identity in a way that is out loud and intentional and centers around the political party. So, the european fascists have this unique advantage and disadvantage from every other shitbag movement in history in that they give people the psychic mooring post in time of when we changed the flag and the names and now it's OUR time and if you hop on the team you can be part of all this cool stuff we're doing.

so, "when has america crossed the line" is perhaps a useless question. Unless these losers make the mistake of changing the flag and the constitution and the outfits declaring "ok, now we're a different thing" there will be no contemporary starting bell that gives people the permission to view this as the new and different epoch that requires them to fundamentally shift their relationship with the state and people around them. That is, there's not going to be a public sign given for when it's time to start machine gunning anyone on mainstreet who isn't also upset about all this. There's no threshold you can see that allows you to start the killing. If the killing ever starts, if an open insurgent movement takes off, it will almost certainly be some random bullshit that causes it that seems to be not as serious as things that happened earlier. And it will be up to that movement to manufacture consent and legitimacy for their actions. To create some foundational myth to deliniate in time the era before and the one after so people feel like they've got a clean break to becom second american civil war about it,

it's a psychological thing more than a sober minded viewing of what policy is too far.

Every day since The Nation State first became a concept, every single nation state has engaged in genocide and committed other acts that delegitimized its existence with the sheer depravity of its crimes. There's not a measure of cruelty and blood after which you as an individual are morally required to suicide bomb a traffic cop because that threshold was crossed by every entity in the world before my great grandparents were ever born. Bhutan committed genocide as a means of creating itself.

because the framing that there's some line that's crossed and now you do everything different is false. you calmly react to and prepare for eventualities on the horizon and try your best to head them off.

so, the political equivalent of keeping a rotating stockpile of beans rice and clean water, checking everything regularly, keeping your gas mask clean, using it for wildfire smoke and such.

We're just going to have to deal with each thing as it comes and head off the Carl Shmitt stuff as we see it coming down the pipe. Short of killing the bastard, there's no rubicon to cross where you have to go mad max mode on it. we should have already been forming armed community service groups, we should have already been meeting neighbors and ensuring we can count on eachother.

Yes Hollywood we get it, GenZ is the new target audience now and Dad told them they can't even say "butt" until they're 45.