I need to effortpost this sometime, but I think it's more useful to focus away from the individual liberal and take a Gramscian look at the culture that produces the liberal. A lot of people aren't arguing with you, they are telling you their personal story.

Baudrillard's various works show how the Signifier gradually displaces the Signified, and the manufacture of Signifiers. Zizek's Sublime Object of Ideology shows how these free-floating Signifiers are stitched together to form a personal identity as a story about themselves that they tell themselves. From a certain point of view, the liberal is working exactly as manufactured. People don't lightly let go of their personal narrative. But once you understand this process, you can begin the process of restitching, Symbol by Symbol, a person's personal narrative rather than confronting them about it.

As a personal example, I have openly shown contempt for advertising. I mock them and point out how frequently they show up and/or repeat. Now others around me are repeating a few of the mannerisms. Through this cultural breach another organic and genuine culture of questioning and discussion about advertising is emerging.

Lots of libs are not even spending the four years wondering why things don't get better. They go directly from believing "things will get better when we win the election" to a mixture of "the responsible adult thing to do is to make things worse and you're naive to think that things can ever get better" and "don't believe your lying eyes, things have gotten better because we say so" the moment they win.

Once campaigning season starts again they go back to "things will get better when we win!". There's no object permanence to be seen.

OIh, part of my comment was, because, our extremely online debate pervert counterparts among the libs, they don't actually give a shit about anything. They're fascists, their politics are an aesthetic of politics. They have no interest in any real violence or power as long as there's someone wearing a boring, professional suit with boring, professional hair saying boring, professional buzzwords in front of a podium. That's what they want, and that's what they mostly believe everyone wants. The aesthetic. That's why they can't see beyond Stalin - He's the Commie equivalent of "Light Herself" in their eyes, the aesthetic that they think commies must crave.

And because of that they can't conceptualize why we care about policy or demand policy action from leaders. For them policy is an elaborate ritual of going to meetings with ipads, going in circles for several hours, then going to a chic coffee shop to whine about how pointless your meeting was and how little got done to your bluesky muts. But to them policy got done because policy is a ritual, a magical spell, that they cast by doing their banal office shit. It's not connected to actual goals or wielding power, to them it's thje ritual that matters. As long as they perform the ritual correctly they're doing policy. And they're very mad at us because they see our demands for results and cahnge as inexplicable and irrational - They're already doing policy, so our demands that they actually change something are crazy.

If KKKamala doesn't win they won't be able to do their rituals, they won't be able to perform their weird little religion, and they know that's very bad. And when they see us demanding, like, an actual end to genocide, since they don't care about people or interact with the real world that exists, what they see is people irrationally and inexplicably trying to stop their rituals, fuck up their vibe, screw with their holy objects and shit.

They're not defending any actual political process intended to wield power in the real world. They're defending a religion of politickyness, a set of rituals and practices that they go through that makes them feel like they're doing politics and defines right conduct. To them that is the real world, the endless loop of elections, congressional meandering, platitudes, excuses, marches, and elections. It's the magic, ritual actions that make the sun rise and the rain fall. ANd if they don't do those things they really do think the world will end, right up until it doesn't and the usual "I have recieved a revelation, hte apocalypse is actually next tuesday" bullshit kicks in. (this is the most important election. Okay actually this is the most important election. Okay actually this is the most important election. They're always on the cusp of the apocalypse).

To them politics is this, idk, struggle or performance between the good people who are smart and listen to npr and the bad people who are dumb and poor, and what's important is that the good people are able to do their politcal rituals ever day to, idk, keep... Democracy alive or some shit. And they don't really have a place for us in the good people bad people paradigm because we're insuffereable fucking nerds who challenge them directly with their own language and throw evidence and shit at them. And that's infuriating because for them evidence doesn't matter, that's not the point, that's not why they're doing it, so they think we're just doing it to be assholes. And they lurch right because they don't give a shit about actual policy, actual political action, actual political violence, and they just get madder and madder at us because they can't understand why we're trying to stop them from lurching right,.

IDfk. I need to go t bed./