I was listening to Harry McClintock's "Big Rock Candy Mountain" from the O Brother soundtrack. It's a funny description of what hobo heaven would be like. (Rivers of whisky etc) What would a shit-lib heaven be like? I'm thinking of UK libs heaven having means tested genital inspections. Everyone else here is way funnier than I am, what you got?
It's just Hogwarts ain't it? You are told you are very special boy/girl, get sorted arbitrarily with your peers into brave/smart/hardworking and evil and you can be very adult about systematic slavery, see the big picture.
Liberals can’t imagine heaven, they can only imagine a hell in which they get to be the demons rather than the damned
I think conservatives would still be in power in liberal heaven. They could forever be outraged and hold people accountable on twitter.
It's interesting because SF is usually where people post their utopian fiction, and I honestly can't think of any major literary works that describe Lib Utopia.
So I'm gonna say Star Trek Picard, where everything should be a Socialist utopia but it's made subtly shit so libs can feel morally superior about others.
In fact, I'd go as far as to say that Liberalism is the denial that the human condition can improve in any major way.
A liberal utopia is one where there's still class divide but no REAL poverty, like "poverty" is having to share your childhood bedroom with like one sibling maybe. The middle class is massive and very diverse, and the rich are all super public facing figures who actually do the kind of cool shit Elon Musk claims he's going to do, plus they generally treat their workers well so they're beloved figures in society. Nothing is free but there's lot of ways to make means of social mobility really cheap, like college is never 100% free but if you were one of those kids who had to share a room with your sister you can get scholarships out the ass, but you still gotta pay for your dorm room or whatever, so every smart person in the poor-but-not-really-poor-poor class can filter up into the hip cool diverse middle class can become graphic designers for taco truck chains or whatever.
They basically want the entire world to be a Euro social democracy but with the culture of an idealized East Coast US City. They want every city to be a NYC in the 90s with a Swedish SuccDem econ policy. And the thing is as an ML I actually don't find this idea aesthetically repulsing, I mean living in a socialist multicultural city were I can rid the super clean subway to my job at the artisanal cabinet workshop before taking lunch at the park where there's like 20 food trucks of various cusines does sound pretty alright. Thing is Libs are delusional about how achievable this would be on a global scale. Achieving anything approaching this kind of lifestyle for the entire planet in a way that would be sustainable long term would require a MASSIVE restructuring of the entire world economy, probably a pretty violent and dramatic one. Commies are just honest about this while liberals think they can pull it off with some policy wonkery over the next 100-200 years or so.
I remember liberal rag New Statesmen defending Coalition government for tripling university fees because at least it gets forgiven after a decade. I don't think a lib heaven would have university scholarships but progressive loans.
This is basically lib heaven, everything still has a cost, but it’s “fairer”. They’re very wedded to the Protestant work ethic, nothing can ever be truly free, you always have to kind of pay for it, but if you have a disadvantage we should maybe tweak the rules a bit to help you out.
It’s why they twist themselves into pretzels on why free college would be a bad thing actually. Yes poor and minority people have a hard time getting into college but clearly just making it free would violate some profound capitalist ethic, we just need some complex network of public and private funds that disadvantaged people can jerk off to get enough money to go. We’ll help you out but you have to demonstrate your worthiness.
It’s why their obsessed with means testing even in situations where pro-capitalist economists are actively telling them universal programs would work better.
Pretty sure that's what liberals think the real world is though
Big rock candy mountain was also biting socialist satire. McClintock's a real one.
I thought it was funny how hobo heaven would still have jail, but easy to escape
Giving rousing speeches to convince their enemies about something and getting bilateral standing ovations over and over again forever
Literally the Hunger Games Capitol.
Absolute poverty and suffering all around the periphery to keep the treats in, with some districts to show off as "on your side" and "they actually like being under our control! :so-true:", but urban paradise in the middle with all the individual freedom you could ask (except the freedom to question the government but who needs that?) and a strong autocrat in charge who presents himself as benevolent and lovable and knowledgeable and strategic because it's better that way than letting all the "unwashed masses" vote.
Like, literal vomitoriums in the sense that people usually mean it because there's so much food, while everybody else starves, and there's a slave class with tongues cut out so you don't have to talk to them or acknowledge their presence (the logical endpoint of the increasingly large servant class of food delivery workers and Uber and all that) because it only makes you feel guilty, and that's basically the worst emotion you've ever felt because you're so sheltered from the world outside.
literal vomitoriums
Those were actually exit points in coliseum and theaters in ancient Rome.
I know, I was referring to the common misconception of them, and I think the author might have known that too maybe, to drive home the idea that "even the Romans at their height weren't this decadent"; perhaps I should have used a different word than "literal" but it made sense to me at the time
Bruh we are fucking living in it. “Rich man’s heaven is poor man’s hell.”
Marvel releases a new movie every month. Five-over-ones are the dominant form of housing. Drake has an entire radio station. Faux-rustic cafés and bars line entire streets. Safety regulations force every car to be an electric SUV that could kill a pedestrian simply by nudging them. Patterned carpets, blankets, and cloths are fully phased out, replaced by abstract geometry. All clothes are blindingly bright. Attempted murders are expected to be thwarted by rational discussion in the free marketplace of ideas.
I was thinking something Marvel related too, and specifically the "Ruthkanda Forever" tweet. The lib heaven would maintain a hierarchy of meritocratic achievers (like RBG) who are more cultured than the rabble, as well as a dynastic impulse, like those bumper stickers predicting the presidencies of Chelsea and Malia
Every Marvel movie will have billionaire cameos like modern simpsons episodes
A nice caste system is built in so they don't have to question issues of inequality in heaven. There would be Hogwarts houses. They'd use them as a justification for avoiding cultures they don't like.
I watched some of the Newsroom. I think that's Sorkin series too right? I couldn't do it.
