I mean, I don’t know that that changes my point at all, but if you’d really like me to rephrase it:
I don’t Google every item in my suitcase to make sure the the type of cotton my socks are made of won’t get me immediately deported and fined $10,000 that I don’t have.
I mean, that headline implies intentionality, no? I doubt the guy knew that his lunch would get him slapped with a $10k fine.
I know I don’t Google every single item in my bag to make sure that something like the type of cotton my socks are made of doesn’t get me thrown in jail.
Fair. Ngl, I just pulled up a map of Israel. Kinda surprised how much bigger the West Bank is than Gaza. My Middle Eastern geography isn’t exactly stellar.
Fair point though. It’s not exactly near the heart of the issue in Gaza. If the majority of the Israeli retaliation is there, it makes sense the West Bank should have little to no casualties.
Can you source most Americans working 2-4 jobs? I tried Googling around, and it seems the actual number of Americans with 2+ jobs was about 8mil, or 5%.
One out of twenty Americans is a far cry from “the average American.” But I’m open to being wrong. Just couldn’t find anything supporting that claim.
I think you’re misunderstanding me, willfully or unwillfully.
It’s not about treating serious things seriously. It’s the understanding that when someone says “let’s not talk politics at the dinner table,” they don’t mean to not talk about distorted pictures of Luigi.
Words have meanings. Sometimes multiple meanings. But we have to share a common understanding of what a word means to have meaningful conversation. All the arguments about the Luigi image are as much “politics” as a chef boyardee ravioli is a “sandwich.” Which is to say, probably arguably so, but people will think you’re stupid if you make the argument in all seriousness.
As for roe v wade, it depends on what you mean. I’m not on the supreme court, so I certainly didn’t repeal it myself. I didn’t vote for Trump, so I didn’t repeal it in that manner either. But I didn’t campaign for it. I didn’t call anyone or post angry messages online. I think it was ruled the wrong way, but it also isn’t an issue that directly affects my life.
And that’s my point. If you spent emotional energy on every miscarriage of justice, you wouldn’t have time to live your life. Are you equally mad about every dictator in Africa or the middle east? Did you buy products from companies that take part in deforestation? Do you eat meat? Follow every single local election closely and have deep opinions about the two people running for the children’s court judge position? Do you have opinions about the people running for president in the Philippines? In Canada? Mexico? If you don’t actively care about all of those things, then you’re the one “standing still and reinforcing the status quo” on all those issues.
It’s okay to not let every issue dominate your life.
But I do agree I got bored with this exchange 2 messages ago, and am mostly responding on autopilot. Happy to call it here if you’d like to. No worries either way.
Hope life is treating you well, and you’re having a restful weekend my guy.
The issue then is one of definitions. 99% of people would say that the OP image of a distorted Luigi is, in fact, apolitical.
While you can argue that it’s political, it cheapens the word.
If, on a spectrum from 1-10, with Rosa Parks being a 10, this is, well, I suppose I can’t say a number lower than one.
The colloquial understanding of the word political then, is one not just of kind but severity. There is some severity threshold of “abstract political-ness” of a thing that, below that said threshold, would not be considered “political” in the colloquial sense.
The issue is that, when you assert that “no, those things are political,” you are elevating them in severity above that threshold. To the average listener, you are likening our distorted Luigi friend to Rosa Parks, and that is offensive.
That’s why I’m pushing back on the all things are political position.
The issue with the latter point is that you’re painting a false dichotomy.
We are not in fact on a moving train, we are living life where we find ourselves.
Yes, society moves forward, but it isn’t a monolith. Some parts move faster, and others slower. There are 10,000 different cultural fronts, and on some you are extremely progressive, and on some you are “standing still” or “normal” as it were. It’s impossible to devote the emotional/mental bandwidth to be on the bleeding edge of every front.
And standing still isn’t the same as advocating that where you’re standing is where everyone else should stand. It’s more than possible to live a “normal” life without “coercing” other people to do the same.
I think the differentiator here is “a” moral good vs “the” moral good. I think it’s more than reasonable to see unity and peace as worthy goals to strive for, and to know when to pick your battles on any given issue. That compromise can be preferable to chaos for all reasonable parties.
Which is not to say there aren’t hard limits. Compromise of human life and dignity are clearly unacceptable. But the idea that someone is willing to not build their identity around political issues (which is to say, those that rise above the political severity level to make them so in our current cultural zeitgeist), and to live in peace among those with whom they disagree. That doesn’t seem so bad to me.
The issue I have is that when you say that “trans people deserve equal rights,” and “I prefer my toast with butter on it” are equally political, I can’t take that position seriously. You might as well be saying they are equally “clifnibble” for all the meaning of has.
What you’re doing here is an “everything is a sandwich” type thing. Taco, sandwich. Ravioli, sandwich. The planet earth, basically a ravioli, so sandwich.
While that’s a fun thought experiment, and maybe technically true depending on how you define the word, if someone started trying to eat dirt because they said they wanted a sandwich, I’d call them nuts.
Yes, all things are political, if you define the word political that way. But when you start spouting off about how someone butters their toast being political, you’re reducing issues that actually matter down to that level.
And look, I do understand what you’re driving at. You are pushing back against people who don’t want to involve themselves “in politics.” I think it’s horribly reductive to paint them all as wanting to go back to the 1950s. I think most are probably fine with the LGBTQ+ community, and aren’t looking to go back to some racist “utopia.”
I think most just want to live their lives. They have families and jobs and parents with failing health and financial pressures. There are thousands of marginalized groups. They would happily throw a dollar in a donation tin for them, but they don’t have the emotional bandwidth or time to travel to DC and stand in protest, or argue with strangers on the Internet over it.
They’re not scared to rock the boat, they just have shit to do that has a far more immediate impact on their life and mental/physical health.
It’s true that where there’s disagreement there’s politics. It’s also true that where there’s agreement there’s politics. There’s politics in Mariah’s B-sides and A-sides and in the font chosen in the album cover. The material the disc is made out of is politics, and so is the air that transmits the sound waves to your ears.
My point is that if everything is political, then calling something political loses all meaning. The term political is, then, useless.
I think the issue with this interpretation is the word “inherently” in the original post. It implies there is some intrinsic value to the art that makes it political.
While it’s true that all art can be interpreted politically, it’s no more or less true than “all food can be interpreted politically” or “all cats can be interpreted politically.” I can understand absolutely anything you want in a “political frame of reference.”
When a definition is that broad, it becomes useless.