Hot Take from Sean McElwee


I don’t know who he is, but this tweet was hella righteous:


Sean McElwee on Twitter:

“every republican who wins an election meaningfully increases the chance that you or someone you love will die. from guns, from war, from pollution, from childbirth, from lack of health insurance, from a militarized police state. the republican party is a party of death.”

Seems like McElwee is a kind of journalist I can’t handle on the daily. He often speaks in mantras and laments that “no one cares” about this or that important progressive issue. It’s guilt tripping and I feel bad enough just living through this political climate without someone hammering my frayed nerves.

But other than that, word to my brother. Fight on, dude. This was a perfect encapsulation of where we’re at, what’s going wrong with the world. A lot of centrists and moderates just seem to have no earthly idea why things are going so badly.

Politics is just about opinions, maaan, and you should be nicer to your Aunt Sally! No, politics has direct impact on lives, and every position the GOP holds most dear is deadly as fuck.

Anyhow, Fuck any and all conservatives everywhere forever. Long live the fighters.

Comments

  1. says

    Upon a slightly deeper skim and no, I will not let the comment through. Kid, I’m not banning you either. I understand taking this stuff super seriously and feeling the need to expound. I got myself a platform for that kind of reason. Also, I understand politics ain’t a game and it’s meant to be heavy.

    But despite that, you have to try to keep your participation at a sensible level. Your comment is massively longer than the longest article I’ve ever posted here. You talk at length about your personal travails and sense of isolation, dipping a bit into suicidal feelings.

    I don’t even know what to say to that. A comment on a post here should be something that can be engaged with, that someone can respond to in brief. What you expressed would be better suited to a private session with a counselor.

    Even neurotypical people like me only have so much personal care and attention to give and mine is used up by the relationships I’m already in. No more room in my headspace for helping other people with their heavy feelings, except insofar as it’s possible to do so with a light touch.

    And I’m *really* fucking bad at talking to people regarding suicide, because I’m more or less a nihilist. I don’t believe there is a point to life and to suffering. I’ve had hours-long sessions with suicidal friends where they’re sad at me and I can’t think of a goddamn thing to say, except “uhh, don’t?” I called the suicide hotline on one of those occasions and the person on the other end of the line, bless their heart, didn’t have shit to say either. You can’t logic your way past suicidal reasoning because logically, it doesn’t matter in the slightest if and when we live and die.

    And that sucks a lot. It also sucks to feel very emotionally and socially isolated, the thing you spent the most time on. I know you have difficulty gauging what’s appropriate as a way to interact with people, but you may be able to practice your way past that. Basically, fake like you have that neurotypical ability by emulating the communication style of others – post length, number of subjects they approach, how they handle asides and tangents, etc.

    Prioritize the things you want to communicate and leave out the bottom 95% of it for the sake of making yourself accessible to others. If you get people interacting with you, maybe you’ll get a chance to mention some of the other things on your list.

    The other thing about social isolation is this: We’re all alone. My life is completely full with the people I have in it, but I still have thoughts and feelings and experiences no one else will know in the way I do, a distance between myself and my closest friends that can’t be bridged because actual psychic powers don’t exist. We’re all alone within ourselves from the cradle to the grave.

    Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe from your place of isolation you can make a masterpiece of Dargeresque proportions that will be discovered and felt and understood by exactly one person, and that’ll be something?

    Good luck, and if you figure out how to comment with a lighter touch, maybe I’ll let that happen here.

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