I feel like framing the average reopenista’s mentality as being a belief in a death cult of capitalism is a mischaracterization; it’s probably more just hating when people (who aren’t Donald Trump) try to influence their lives in any way

Somewhere along the way, American freedom got reframed as “the freedom to not have my bitch wife ride my ass about how I shouldn’t eat cheese fries for breakfast” and lost any other meaning

I could be wrong, but the sense I get is that our current crop of reactionaries are motivated, at their core, by personal grievances against people they met and didn’t like for one reason or another

I often think of the part of STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND where Hochschild talks to a conservative who hates the government mainly because he has had unpleasant interactions with this one local bureaucrat and then extrapolated; I feel like that’s the essence for a lot of people

Absolutely, but — and this is tricky to prove, of course — I think a lot of people who use that argument aren’t doing so in good faith. I could definitely be wrong! https://twitter.com/perpetua/status/1260547335341342720?s=21 https://twitter.com/perpetua/status/1260547335341342720

I should add that another core motivator for people demanding a reopening of society is an entirely understandable and tragically misguided belief that we have any control over the big dilemmas of our own lives right now

Anyway this thread is starting to blow up and I can see that being a problem for me so I may well delete it soon