An antisocial mood has swept across the country, and is especially evident on the political Left.

This prevailing antisocial attitude is dangerous. It risks reproducing, or even accelerating, all sorts of social dysfunction. From loneliness to sexlessness, from drug abuse to murder, many on the Left find themselves excusing or ignoring the steady rise of collective antisocial behavior. Some progressives have unwittingly advocated the institutionalization of loneliness through the extreme extension of pandemic policies, and others increasingly view antisocial behavior in public life as in some way virtuous. Still more choose to ignore the worst effects of social alienation—mass drug abuse and murder. This kind of abandonment of the Social Question will only help to harden public demoralization, making the prospects for political renewal especially dim.

The roots of the antisocial attitude run deep. They find their origin in all the structural features of our society that are ambivalent or antagonistic toward our greater social impulses: the creep of market logic into even the most private parts of our lives, the drive to privatize everything that was once public, and, of course, the tendency for work-life to devour the rest of life. Since at least the middle of the last century we’ve witnessed the decline of participation in team sports, voluntary associations, labor unions, social clubs, political organizations, and charitable causes. The march toward social isolation has been a long one.

  • blight [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    What fucking lockdowns is he even referring to? Extremely :sus: article in general, not sure if a mere contrarian or just bad faith

    • MaoistLandlord [he/him]
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      edit-2
      2 years ago

      This guy is just insane. He complains about random people and articles saying inflammatory things, acts as if asexuality is mainstream and that younger people celebrate not having sex, Onlyfans causing people to care less about physical sex and relationships, that safe injection sites are all over the country and encourages people to shoot up heroin, and that working from home is a large factor in causing isolation and loneliness. Just absolute brain worms.

      in reality policing, alongside every other public good, is underdeveloped and underfunded.

      To say to the poor who live in fear, amid the daily rising death toll of friends and family, that the bare minimum of protection afforded to them by the publicly funded police should be defunded, just like their schools and hospitals were, is perverse. Real solutions will be much harder to come by—outside the cities restricting gun sales is no easy political sell, and urban Americans are perhaps equally suspicious of appeals to fully-fund and reform policing. These policies in tandem could go a long way to saving lives. Still, the only way to really fix the social unraveling in our cities is through the pursuit of the abolition of poverty—not the police.

      Surely the cops getting billions of free money and military weapons = defunding and not contributing to poverty. No siree.

      These annoying fucks literally get EVEYRTHING that they want, then still fucking complain because someone on twitter complains about it or they realize the shit they want doesn’t fix anything. They act as if “progressives” have any say in how anything is funded.