
The Social-Distancing Culture War Has Begun - eplanit
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/social-distancing-culture/609019/
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justwalt
I have a friend who lives in Texas. He’s back at his parent’s house after
schools closed, and says that his mother is making a point to go to the
grocery store every day, bringing her 74 year old mother with her. He says
that his mother often used to complain about having to grocery shop before
this whole thing started.

I don’t see the perceived endgame. Very few people stand to profit from this
whole thing, and at the cost of killing the economy for a long while.

~~~
trianglem
A certain segment of republicans has been primed for decades now to accept
haphazardly put together straw men and run with it as a push back against
progressive culture. Unfortunately this sort of thinking applied to anything
but the political sphere can be devastating.

~~~
krapp
>Unfortunately this sort of thinking applied to anything but the political
sphere can be devastating.

It's wrecked the political sphere pretty badly, too, ever since they memed a
president into office.

~~~
lonelappde
That's an inaccurate and narrow view of the President's source of votes.

Trump was widely known and popular with his supporters before the "memes".

~~~
krapp
He was considered a joke candidate, and not only by the mainstream media. He
was a has-been celebrity host of a reality show best known for playing
parodies of himself on TV and for his obnoxious attitude.

His quotability and memeability got him far more media coverage both in the
mainstream and online than any of his colleagues, and one of the most
devastating hits to Hillary Clinton's campaign was the result of well-
poisoning efforts by his online supporters to push a viral conspiracy theory
and implicate her in vague wrongdoings through the email leaks. Her own
campaign even stated those efforts proved impossible to recover from.

It may be true that the "memes" weren't entirely responsible but I would
disagree that their effect wasn't significant.

------
_bxg1
My intuition is that this stems from a trust vs distrust of experts, which was
already a major political articulation point in 2020 America, depressingly.

It's a twisted sort of fascinating to see just how far these political limbs
reach these days. I heard someone the other day call Whole Foods/Central
Market the "liberal/progressive grocery stores". _Whatever that means._ But
anecdotally, the correlation is real. If I had to guess, it's something like
"spending more on less-basal pleasures is a left-leaning thing because you're
constructing artificial 'intellectual' layers on top of fundamental human
enjoyment something something intelligencia".

Anyway. It's all very stupid and distressing, but as it becomes more pervasive
I think it's getting more and more important for us to step back and start
trying to understand it.

