#anyways this was so bad and i cant ve bothered to proofread

[birthisacurse-and]

Something mildly random, but it really bothers me how online politics has warped our discussion and understanding of many political and social issues. On one hand, it is a net positive that the American media and most of Gen Z and Millenials in the US seem to believe and espouse left-leaning talking points, but on the other, they do so on such a superficial level that it had rendered us so, completely unequipped to justly address counter-arguments.

Everything is so superficially understood by these people. Like, the tweet I just read that said, "the rich don't play by the same rule as us. they don't go to jail." I understand the need to water down the very broad concept of wealth inequality translating into carceral injustice, but the concise version has been repeated and taught so, so often that now, many of us truly don't understand what it means, and so, we can't counter when someone is like, "that's stupid because rich people do go to jail. No one is above the law. It's up to if you're guilty or not." Like the real statement should be, "when someone gets charged with a crime, they are significantly less likely to lose their case if they can pay for an expensive legal team than if they have a public defender, because of how police investigations/manipulation, bias in the courtroom, and the whole process of discovery and argumentation works in court." But that is too long, and it cannot be efficiently taught or spread on social media or online forums if it isn't cut down. Which is okay, it makes sense and is necessary, but it necessitates people who learn the shortened version eventually going, "please elaborate" or "I wanna learn more". Once they are hooked and introduced, they should then learn the long version, to truly understand. But they don't. We don't. And now, so many of us that hold leftist views, unless we specifically devote our studies or careers to political, sociological, or anthropological research, go around trying to convince others that these are truths, and we have no fucking arguments when someone is like "well actually-". And it's a disservice to us, and to the oppressed people leftists supposedly try to protect or seek justice for.

The right teaches its teenagers and young adults and fucking children, here's the foundation for why you should believe this. Here are all the processes that have led to the current reality. The alt-right online doesn't just go "whites are getting replaced", the alt-right online is like, "here are the 'scientific studies' that prove mongrel DNA (or whatever its called), and here are the statistics of how the US's demographics are changing, and here are full-fledged theories and philosophies that explain and provide context for the supposition of white supremacy, and here are videos of POC being bad or cringe or violent or dangerous. Finally, here is the conclusion: whites are being replaced, so we must fight to stop it." Like, that's how the very pipeline works. The pipeline is structured in such a manner that methodically equips future right-wingers with the rhetorical tools they need to eventually continue spreading their rhetoric. They aren't drawn in with the concise version and then pushed to learn; they are taught the whole story, and then given the one-liner.

Anyways, this makes it so a lot of the things leftists say, to the politically unequipped, seem totally out there and strange and crazy. They seem unsubstantiated. We make bold claims, but we don't ease people into them. Today in class, I said, "the problem with Rosalia is that, by singing with and using Latin music genres, she is taking the place of another potential Latin artist." To me, as someone who studied politics for 3 years, I thought all the underlying truths went unsaid. I thought I didn't need to elaborate. To me, I understand how race and culture are these tenuous, hypothetical spaces. I understand that, under capitalism, industries that require mass approval such as music, are always competitions, even if they don't seem like it. Under this system, there is a very fine limit on the amount of attention one can amass, and popularity is a scarce currency, not infinite. This means that, when one artist fades out of the periphery of an audiencemember, another artist will replace them. But there is a finite amount of attention each audiencemember can give, and there is a finite number of audiencemembers. When you bring race into the mix, and consider that Rosalia, by being born in a first-world, European country, and by having an amount of wealth that might not have made her family rich in Spain, but would have made her rich in most of Latin America, you realize that she always had a step up. She can approximate the Latin aesthetic, because she is tan and speaks Spanish and has the same hair and facial features that Spaniards passed on to Latinos centuries ago. But she will always be a misrepresentation of a culture she did not entrench herself in from birth, and someone whose very distance from that culture allowed her the success she currently enjoys, that many prospective Latin artists will never come close to. SO, when I said that in class, I said with all this background knowledge, with the assumption that everyone else in class would, too. And then I had the nerve to be confused and annoyed when someone responded, "I don't think Rosalia is taking the place of a potential Latin artist. I don't think if she wasn't a singer, a Latin artist would have taken her place." But I'm an idiot, because of course my classmates understood my statement as me literally saying, if Rosalia was taking outta the equation, fucking Maria Hernandez from Honduras would have been the Rosalia of our time, winning all the awards and amassing all the wealth. But that's not what I meant. That's never what we really mean, when we try to pass on these statements, these one-liners, these aesthetic little epiphanies fit for an Instagram infographic or a college Spanish class. But this is what we give, it is what people take away, and anyone in my class who went away with, "Rosalia is taking the place of another, actual Latin artist", without already knowing all the nuance and context I just explained... well, I did a disservice to them by not really teaching.

The left does not teach, nowadays. We may in classrooms in very prestigious colleges. But that's about it. In our social, daily lives, we do not teach our followers or coworkers or family members. We repeat. We parrot. Or, even if we ourselves understand, we still only give others lines to parrot. The right is the teacher. For the right wing in America today, Prager U is the norm. It is the universal strategy. And that's why they're winning.