I am begging everybody, fucking begging them, to slow the fuck down and fucking look things up. Right now, there are a lot of people who are making money off of creating headlines that are meant to make you mad, and it’s going to get worse as we get closer to the election.
If someone tells you that there’s a secret conspiracy to [do a thing you don’t like] and that it’s unique to Biden, you better fucking look that thing up, because chances are you’re going to find that it’s been happening under every administration for the last 50 years. Is that good? No! Should you want to change it? Probably! Is it a unique crime to Biden? Nope!
“Biden said [bad thing] [X] years ago.” Well, this bad thing he said happens to be true, but it looks like it was 45 years ago, and he changed his stance 40 years ago. “Biden said [other bad thing] [Y] years ago.” What’s the source on that? So there’s one person who says he said it? And nobody else who was there has corroborated that account? Who posted the story?
These are all random examples of things I’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, with the details slightly changed from the Tumblr posts and news articles I’ve seen, because the point isn’t the details of the particular story, so I don’t want to get bogged down in particulars that don’t matter to the point I’m making.
The point of this post isn’t the specific things I’m referencing but the fact that in each of these cases, the reality was not what was initially presented. Either the reality was wildly different, or this story can’t be corroborated and was told by someone with a clear and very well-known agenda of their own, which means that at the very least, the story should be treated with extreme suspicion.
And on that note, please don’t believe that because you’re a leftist that you can’t be radicalized in the same way that right-wingers are. You aren’t immune to propaganda either. I’m not saying you have to like, or should like, any particular politician or political entity. I am saying, however, that you should view a lot of the news with a gimlet eye, and that goes double for anything that makes you real fucking mad.
You need - need - to stop and read the whole article and ask yourself if you can verify the claims and who benefits from this making you mad.
Please. For the sake of the people around you who have to patiently explain to you that you’ve gotten fucking bamboozled again by propaganda if for no other reason. We’re all very tired of you thinking that leftists can’t be propagandized.
As an example for that last point: a former beloved mutual of mine who was very active in trans spaces here (and probably followed or was followed by a lot of the people who will see this post from my blog!) began posting a lot of anti-public education a while back. The last I saw of them was a post reblogged from an extremely obvious & blatantly right-wing conservative blog railing against the “inherently abusive nature of schools”, with multiple mentions of how CRT specifically was to blame.
I’m sure they weren’t aware that CRT is short for Critical Race Theory, i.e., the idea that racism exists. But they didn’t even look up this acronym that was cited at least three or four separate times as the titular reason schools are so evil; the post said a bunch of stuff they thought they agreed with, so they reblogged it.
I unfollowed them, I have no idea where they are now, but I think about this literally constantly. Your leftism does not protect you from radicalization. Mine doesn’t, either. We have got to be fucking diligent.
