Like, hate me by all means, but at least know what it is you hate. Don’t say “antifa are the real fascists”. Don’t call me a “socialist liberal anarchist tankie”. For fucks sake, Marxism isn’t “forcing people to wear a mask”. This shit makes me wanna warp to another galaxy.
Yesterday I was watching a protest stream and they had a young child on the mic saying "black lives matter."
And I won't lie it gave me pause. Because "leave the children out of politics" is a common reaction and one that I tend to agree with. But then it made me realize that a child saying "black lives matter" is not political. They're not saying "defund the police," "tax billionaires" or "keep Roe v Wade".
But few conservatives will give a shit. They will chalk it up to manipulation. Because to them they cannot even come to grips that it truly and honestly is about just saying the words "black lives matter."
politicizing children is good if you ask me. yes, good when we do it and bad when the right does, as with most other things, because we have different goals and values
Politicizing children is the mission of the state, and of right wing fundamentalists. It should be our mission to inoculate them against this propaganda by telling them the truth about the reality we live in. To people who disagree with us, this is indoctrination.
children cannot understand politics. It's just indoctrination that you agree with. That's why I think there needs to be a line between what is political (and therefore indoctrination) and what is just basic human rights (black lives matter; feed the poor; take care of each other; give everyone healthcare) -- those are the things that children can understand.
They don't know how to run a society they barely know how a family society operates
They don’t know how to run a society
Counterpoint: Adults don't know how to run a society. A child knows to share, knows that everyone ought to have a place to live and food to eat, and given the levers of power would say something childish like "okay, now it is illegal to deny medical care" and that would be that.
On the other hand, adults give us "realistic" policy that denies all the basic things we teach children are correct. Politics is complex because the ruling class made it complex, in order to mystify the common man.
Me: "Children don't know how to do calculus."
You: "Counterpoint: Adults don't know how to do calculus."
A child would say something equally childish like "okay no one can wear red today" and that would be that.
Children don't know how to do calculus because we don't teach it to them. We do teach them how to operate as ethical beings. It is only in approaching adulthood that we teach the former and also that "pragmatism" is a suitable substitute for the latter.
You don’t get the choice to not indoctrinate your children. Society will indoctrinate them either way.
This is not good imo. It just normalizes indoctrination (i.e., accepting beliefs uncritically). When children should be taught to criticize beliefs.
You still have a choice whether to indoctrinate your children. And you can also choose to set them up to be less likely to be indoctrinated by society.
Children do well when you treat mature topics maturely and don’t talk down to them
Yes agreed 100%. You can believe this and believe that there are complex systems that children are not capable of understanding.
They don’t know how to run a society they barely know how a family society operates
Kids IRL are way better at this than you're giving them credit for
Are children unaffected by politics? Why should they be left out? Do cops not kill kids? Do billionaires not starve kids? Are kids unaffected by abortion access?
I draw my line at ~12, obviously under that I assume they were trained, if possibly a teenager I can believe they formed their own opinion, and we should absolutely encourage teens who care to get involved with the political ASAP so they can realize the bullshit before adulthood crushes their curiosity.
12 is about where I would agree too. It depends on the topic and the scale, as well as the specific child.
I also think "indoctrinated" is the literal correct term, rather than trained
Hmm...so I think most political 16 year old's are indoctrinated too. I say trained with young kids as they have no idea what they're saying, it is just works they've been conditioned to repeat. But absolutely, being conditioned to repeat dogma is one of the earliest steps of indoctrination. It's like the Pledge of Allegiance. We were all (in the US) trained to say it, but it never indoctrinated me with actually believing those words once I was old enough to understand.
Why should they be left out?
"affected" should not be a sufficient condition to entry. They should be left out because politics are complex concepts. Of course the more you define "politics" to include basic human rights, these lines will be blurred. That's why I used concepts like abortion and funding in my comment. Kids saying "everyone should have healthcare" is not political either imo.
The statement "everyone should have healthcare" is absolutely a political statement, as it relates to the way we structure society. Because we don't live in a world in which everyone has healthcare, or even one in which everyone agrees that everyone should have it, it's even a controversial political statement.
And in what world are human rights not a political matter?
When thinking of politics as who is it ok to be violent toward, who deserves resources, and who deserves status in society, saying the words “black lives matter” is absolutely a political statement. As I’m sure you know it implies that black lives aren’t as deserving of the level of material positions that white people in general enjoy under the current status quo. Everything is political. Saying that certain statements are not political, but are “just true” or whatever is neoliberal brain rot. Not trying to call you out here, just thought it was worth saying.
Everything is political.
I prefer a term that has bounds, but feel free to just throw it out if you want. I don't think everything is political. Political to me is how we run the public affairs of our society. I don't think children have a sufficient understanding of those structures to be able to form an opinion that should be included in that discourse.
I don't ask my 3 year old if my wife and I should file jointly or separately on our taxes. I will ask him his thoughts on what ice cream flavor we purchase.
Obviously not literally everything is political. The mass of the sun isn't a political matter. The sequence of all prime numbers isn't political. So the term very much has bounds. But as far as aspects of human interaction are concerned, in that realm everything is political. Politics isn't just the exact structures and variables of our current society, it's also the fundamental attitudes that determine which structures even exist. Much of which even a child can understand and have an informed opinion about.
I agree with you. If I had a child I would not involve them at all.
keep politics out of politics smh stupid leftist capital communist tankie anarchist!!!!!!
Them calling Obama a socialist probably did more than anything to desensitize people to the word socialism. If Biden wins, they will do the same for Marxist and Communist
Well they used to say race mixing was communism
http://www.renegadetribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/race_mixing_communism2.jpeg
I am sure it is cynically being wielded like you say; but I'm of the opinion that we're witnessing the terminal stages of like, mass psychosis. Kind of like if there was an epidemic of Pathological Narcissism. The brutal alienating nature of capital is driving us further and further apart into our isolated caves. With more and more social interactions happening exclusively in the metaphysical realm of "online" it becomes easier and easier to gate-keep the perceptions of people who do or do not see the same shadows on the cave wall. So, rather than having a great unifying delusion like Religion or Chauvinism we have atomized and alienated personal delusions. It gets more and more difficult to rationalize our perceptions against the perceptions of others to synthesize "truth." So, things don't mean things anymore. We can think "Well, this is what this means to me" without taking into account the fact that "truth" is not subjective or defined by any individual's perception.
...Or I'm even more cracked than Christman and I need to log off.
Edit: I would like to rationalize this perception against the perception of my fellow shadow-watchers, please let me know if you think this sounds cracked.
Thank you for saying so. I am still trying to learn how to wrangle the stuff pinging around the inside of my skull into things others can see, and wasn't exactly confident about this one.
I most certainly will, do you think Society of the Spectacle and Capitalism and Schizophrenia are good places to start?
Then those are where I will start, thank you for the recommendation.
Shout out to Biden losing the radical left during the debate
This annoys me a lot too OP. I just use words the way I see fit. If someone asks, I explain it to them, if not then not
