The Muscular Compassion of "Paper Girl"
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
There are a elections coming up in a few weeks, maybe we'll get an idea of where the wind is blowing, especially in NJ and VA.
So we will probably see more of the same. There will be a hard swing to the left + more radicalism in response. This is the best we could hope for I think.
The big milestones in the death of a town are when the high school closes, and, finally, when the post office closes.
Some years ago I was on a goth bulletin board, and a teenager was moaning about how his town sucked. Most of us thought teen angst. Then I looked up the stats on his town. Average age 55+. All factories closed. Primary revenue stream Social Security and various welfare programs. Most stores closed. High school still operating for a few students but teachers commute from elsewhere. The kid started to get advice on how to get out of that "Paper Girl" situation.
You're not obligated to go down with the ship.
Japan is much better at winding down towns. It helps that all infrastructure and education is supported by national taxes. Except for Tokyo and Osaka, everything is losing population. [1] 9 million empty houses.
[1] https://thedailyguardian.com/world/japan/japans-vanishing-fu...
Coming from a non-wealthy, very religious, partly-conservative upbringing, I turned out to identify as very liberal-progressive. (My parents grew up in rural areas, my mom had a huge wood Reagan campaign sign in our yard, they were big on responsibility, and we weren't allowed to ever miss a single blessed Sunday of church nor religious extracurricular. Yet they were also epitomes of Christian charity, kept us in the city even when my dad's job tried to relocate him, and switched us to a noteworthy progressive church parish.)
As a liberal-progressive with this background, I've had a mix of pride and concern, over the years, about how my current socioeconomic peers have supported some good causes, but also let huge swaths of the nation be thrown under the bus.
There's some truth to the stereotype of the techbro "left" glamorizing greed and exploitation, and focusing on a narrow set of fashionable social issues to support, while ignoring the plights of most people.
This began before "dialogue" "on both sides" devolved into scoring points against the enemy team. Now --especially with the overt rise of the fascist right (and a lot of ears-covering cancel culture on the left), and other intellectual dumbing-down of the citizenry (partly created by techbros) -- it will be much harder to find sympathy, and to reconcile.
But I suppose one of the first steps is for people on "sides" to start understanding the other, including by reading some of these stories about the experiences of others.
I think that’s why Sanders and Mamdani have found success - they focus on kitchen table issues, and don’t let themselves get caught in culture war crap that just pisses everyone off.
Climate change isn't supposed to be a cultural issue. It's a question of science, and that's the problem. Every area where Republicans disagree with Democrats is defined to be a "cultural issue".
Democrats do have cultural issues, but so do Republicans. For some reason only Democrats get the blame for it.
The problem is when they are in office the economic policies are immediately tossed aside in favor of social issues and then even those issues become a struggle and we end up with virtue signaling. Voters can only take enough failures until the Democratic "brand" is destroyed among a generation.
>Democrats have long campaigned on raising the minimum wage.
Ok lets take this as an example.
Biden campaigned on it in 2020:
[0]: https://x.com/JoeBiden/status/1303056694360944640 [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6BmQU9ZwlY
Early 2021: Democrats tried to attach a $15 minimum wage to the COVID relief bill (the American Rescue Plan) using the budget reconciliation process.
Feb. 25, 2021: The Senate parliamentarian ruled the $15 provision violated the Byrd Rule so it cant be included in reconciliation
Mar. 5, 2021: Sanders offered an amendment to put $15 back in -> failed with 8 Senate Democrats joining Republicans to block it.
At that point, Biden did not try to overrule the parliamentarian and the Senate did not change the filibuster to pass a standalone wage bill.
So...what ~4 months into office the pledge was tossed in the trash?
I guess Trump has them beat this term in tossing pledges in to the trash but in Trump's first term he actually threw some of his voters a bone and got things done (repealed roe v wade, tried to build the wall etc.)...actually now that I think about it, he is actually making his most vile voters happy (deportations and increased problems for his voters enemies I guess?) but the "America first" stuff hasn't panned out yet...those voters are unhappy.
When it came time to raise the debt ceiling during Biden's term(ie. to help the donor class), all of a sudden there is no problem whatsoever.
Repeat this over decades and for every issue that could help normal Americans boom you end up where we are.
I see a significant asymmetry in the sides’ understandings of one another. The right are typically able to articulate the left’s views reasonably well, but the left operates with caricatures — the aforementioned irresponsible accusations included.
We’re barely a month past Charlie Kirk being gunned down in cold blood on a college campus, and not a hit carried out by any sort of right winger. The piece’s handwringing over radicalization on the right comes across as the left failing to understand the other side and refusing to look in a mirror. Radicalization on the left is an enormous problem.
All the Charlie Kirk apologists have "selective" memory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le...
And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Pennsylvania_Governor's_R...
All this year. Two murdered, two shot, and an arson in an attempted murder by immolation. But sure, do go on about Kirk and all the leftist political violence.
Edit: to add, the crooks running this nation into the ground didn't even bother lowering flags to half staff after the murders. But a big outpouring of crocodile tears for Kirk who wasn't even a politician.
How can you live through Reagan and can say this with a straight face? I remember 25% unemployment rates (see: Johnstown, PA). I remember Reagan specifically breaking the unions which were the only bulwark against getting ground to dust. Reagan threw the Rust belt under the bus, let the companies loot the pension systems, and transferred vast amounts of money into defense contractors on the West Coast.
I also remember the equivalent of MAGA from back then cheering while this happened. This is not new. The "I'm okay being miserable as long as you're more miserable" crowd has always had a strong showing in this country.
This was also not US specific. Things seemed to be even worse under Thatcher in the UK.
Did the Democrats make anything better? No. The unions screamed about NAFTA (signed by Clinton, but started back with Reagan ... see a trend?), but nobody listened.
However, where is the accountability for Republicans and the policies they voted for? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills, but the memory hole isn't new either (dates to 2004):
"Remembering Reagan" by Kirk Anderson: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg...
If the choices are "I am miserable whilst my enemies are happy" and "I am miserable whilst my enemies are even more miserable", I know what I would choose.
A person discovers a genie in a bottle, and is given 3 wishes, but with the condition that their worst enemy will receive double the wish.
"For my first wish, I would like a billion dollars"
Genie nods. Person is surrounded by stacks of dollars and gold. "Your enemy gets two billion."
"For my second wish, I would like a mansion."
Genie nods. Person is transported to a beautiful mansion. "Done. Your enemy gets two mansions."
"Now beat me half to death."
THOSE ARE NOT ALL THE DAMN CHOICES!
How about we try: "make everybody less miserable". Could we please try voting for that? Maybe?
And who the fuck are your "enemies"? The poor people down the street? The poor people in the rural areas? The poor people in the cities? What the hell did they do to YOU, PERSONALLY to warrant being your "enemy"?
Cries in Vonnegut.
Exactly.
Which is related to why I said "my current socioeconomic peers [...] let huge swaths of the nation be thrown under the bus" with a straight face.
> How can you live through Reagan and can say this with a straight face?
I don't understand the relevance.
Also, as a kid, I wasn't aware of what was going on during the Reagan years.
Which is another reason why we should be reading about the experiences of people who are not us.
> "Remembering Reagan" by Kirk Anderson:
That's a great comic. And probably we should understand how the support for Reagan happened, and how other personalities seized power, so that maybe we can prevent it from happening again and again.
look no further than the weaponization of ignorance in places like this.
All that is required is voting not according to manufactured cultural issues, but in accord with widely shared values and common interests.
We can have and used to have a capitalism which self-moderated, and with sufficient surplus as in the post-WWII years, gains were widely shared.
Society wasn't perfect but shit was moving in the right direction.
Then came Reagan, deregulation, and the decades-long project by the right of fomenting ignorance and maintaining it through unchecked propoganda.
Today, under surveillance capitalism, all the tools are in place to continue driving ignorance and weaponizing it against those responsible for the loss of prosperity, opportunity, social welfare net, and common infrastructure, that were considered the definition of the American Dream.
People have been made ignorant, encourage to be righteous, made fearful and angry, and it's worked.
Bw, the reason Meta can pay so well is that it's been uniquely successful in accelerating and profiteering off this dystopian nightmare. Don't kid yourself if you work there what you're contributing to.