What the FUCK

Seriously, thank you. Those who are puzzled why everyday middle class Americans aren’t rushing to join an anarchist revolution ought to look at how the resistance is has been going in Iran this year, even before the US attacked.

Middle class Americans may struggle to afford the things they had a few decades ago, but they’re still a long way from willing to risk sniper fire in the day and bombings at night.

A good friend of mine is Palestinian and he spent time in Syria during the war. He told me what it was like to have bombs going off near his house. To have pieces of shrapnel fly past his face and embed themselves into the wall. He lives here in Canada now. He wants nothing to do with fighting in wars. He just wants to make a life for himself and his family.

There's a selection bias in effect, on several fronts.

• People who want a fight may not actually know who they are fighting or why. Consequently, you get a bunch of idiots and assholes piling into ICE or enlisting in the US military, because they've been pickled on reactionary propaganda and convinced this will liberate them from the Liberal Fascism that Jonah Goldberg told them they were living under.

• People who fight and lose aren't around to keep fighting. They end up in prisons or hospitals or broke or dead. You don't see them doing anything to fight actively anymore.

• Tons of resistance efforts and opposition organizing goes totally unreported. In part this is a form of government/corporate censorship, shaped by the priorities of reactionary national media. In part, there simply isn't anything "newsworthy" to report. Who is going to tune into the "Minutes of the most recent Food Not Bombs" organizing event? Who is going to subscribe to a newspaper dedicated to covering street-corner protests and the sermons of local church groups and the odd Facebook meetup of twelve enthusiastic but aimless wanna-be activists?

• Opposition is expensive and not terribly profitable. Getting a higher profile requires materials and labor. If you don't have them, we don't see you. By contrast, going with the establishment (or the Loyal Opposition) can be both lucrative and status-raising. Easier to be a Megan McArdle or Dana Milbank writing for the Liberal Moderate Sensible Resistance than an Ashton P. Woods or Kat Abughazaleh, running outsider campaigns entirely on local profiles and raw charisma.

In the end, its easy to assume opposition organizations and activists don't exist simply because you're not in a position to see them. It's easy to feel like you're part of an organization that's operating as a lonely last hold out, because you're in a dark forest of misinformation and occluded dissent.

Part of finding like-minded people has to be getting yourself out there to be seen. Going to rallies and mingling with people, going to large public events and keeping your eyes/ears open. Going to fucking Church - I know you're going to say you hate it but I'm sorry, that's where a lot of organizing has always happened in this country and still does. A lot of it just means going out and meeting more people and making more friends.

Shit is happening you can't see. Shit is happening that you'll never know about. That's the nature of any resistance movement. The French Resistance wasn't doing block walks and Pride Parades in the middle of the German Occupation. The NAACP spent a long time organizing in basements before it became a cohesive national group. We've still got a significant portion of our LGBTQ population that has to "come out of the closet", because it's extremely hazardous to your physical, mental, and financial well-being to be queer before you turn 30.

If you, the author, fuck up, yes. But characters fuck up all the time and shows are extremely popular as a result. Look at Breaking Bad!

I just wish more people understood that.

Right. Forming a decision or reaching a conclusion about real-life events while basing and/or relating part of that assessment on similar fictional events, is the appeal to fiction. Fiction and non-fiction are fundamentally separate, and needs be considered separately. That distinction is important especially when making comparisons.

The lack of nuance, openness to interpretation and fundamental disconnect which an appeal to fiction inherently carries with it is a large part of what you're describing in the second part of your reply. (IE right-wing "blue pillers" with its relation to The Matrix)

People naturally desire and seek out narratives which align with their views or beliefs. This also makes it entirely too easy for them to mold or fracture parts of fictional themes to fit those beliefs while discarding parts that don't: Writers be damned. It isn't JUST intellectual dishonestly that you are observing here, as convenient as that conclusion would be. This is a basic part of human nature. It will happen every time. I promise you that right wingers are sharing this exact meme and making the same statements about us.

The classic court room example of this would be when an attorney argued that a FED, CIA, or LEO's actions were justified because they closely resembled or even exactly mirrored the actions taken by Jack Bauer in the TV series 24. Even if the events, character, and outcomes of these two scenarios (fiction vs non-fiction) were literally identical in every conceivable way: It would not then be rational, relevant, appropriate nor admissible in any way for the attorney to then pose to the jury that, "When Jack Bauer did this, you clearly understood the necessity and moral justification. But you're refusing to see it in the reality of what our Officer did" - To relate as closely as I can to the meme above.

Parable, metaphor and simile can often serve as convenient didactic tools when introducing complex messages to the otherwise uninformed. Like a professor using a cheeky pop-culture reference in the opening slide of a presentation. It's a very imperfect tool; useful, perhaps, as a narrative hook. The important divergence here is that this brief messaging then leads into the real and nuanced discussion about non-fiction or fiction and where they relate separately without conflating the two.

This is something which brief, easily sharable memes and political cartoons don't do by their nature, leaving only the fallacy.

You need to read/watch Star Wars & The Matrix again. The majority democratically elected a tyrant with thunderous applause.

Where are you living where you believe yourself to be living under a democracy?