SJ Longthorne

Populism works in the face of what is rational. It’s part of why a mobile game I’ve seen that offers the choice to uninvitedly sniff a woman’s vagina while she’s doing yoga is a promoted tweet. I bet you that was A/B tested. It seems ludicrous, but it’s working???

We need to seriously consider our rhetoric. The fact that this stuff seems to be working is evidence that we are louder than we are many. And potentially, we’re driving the majority away so hard that what is abhorrent to us becomes attractive.

Trump comes out with his pussy comment. We are horrified. We think that’s it for him — he fucked up. But his popularity skyrockets. Why? Is it possible that it could literally come down to spite, because his words spit in the face of the politics we strive for?

We are not convincing people to our cause. We are silencing them, shaming them. But their silence speaks louder than our quote tweets when Election Day comes. And then who’s really fucked it? Is it possible we’re complicit in our own defeat?

What happens when you accuse someone and set the Twitter hounds on them? Do we think they’ll be sympathetic? Is it possible that we’ve alienated that many people that badly that this crap from Nigel F is actually a rallying cry?

Regardless of whether we’re in ‘the right’, regardless of whether our beliefs are ‘good’, we have become ‘the enemy’ by virtue of our *sometimes* obnoxious moral high ground-taking. We’re the unpopular leader who rules with fear, who everyone plots to usurp, because fear.

Our conviction that we are right, that our beliefs are fundamentally good — which I share — is our downfall. It has made us loud, scornful and dismissive, and that has made us — and our ideologies — hated.

I’m not necessarily sure what the answer is, after all this. But I am sure that we’re less popular than we think. That the hatred for us is wider spread than we think, because sometimes we act hatefully, because we think it’s deserved, and we laugh. And that worries me.