I've definitely turned into the paranoid nutcase within my friend group in recent years, I hate that everything is "smart" nowadays requiring an app/internet connection & account, just to do basic things that didn't require any of that before.
What's some things currently making you ramble like an old man?
Anti-space/science rhetoric on the left.
A lot of it comes from people who are anti-Elon and are against everything he touches. So they become anti SpaceX. Then they become anti-aerospace.
They don't understand, or even want to understand, the science and importance behind it's advances. The thought process just goes Musk Bad>SpaceX Bad>Aerospace Bad.
Remember how in Interstellar, there's that teacher who was casually teaching that the moon landings were fake? Like, society had reached a point where they cared so little for space, that they actively turned a blind eye towards its accomplishments or just straight up dismissed them? I feel like that's the path we're on. Because of people's blind hatred towards a rich douche, an entire EXTREMELY IMPORTANT industry is becoming reviled through sheer ignorance.
Depending on what you mean by "left", i think its more of a "whitey's on the moon" position, than Musk. Space exploration has led to many scientific advances, the USSR's space program and the modern day PRC's shows the left has been and still is commited to space exploration.
But in the US in particular its another example of money going to anything but dealing with the ravages of capitalism in the population: homelessness, hunger, lack of medical care, poor education, etc.
We're going to make ourselves go extinct, outer space exploration fantasies can go on hold.
No, they are making us go extinct (while ironically living their outer space exploration fantasies)
Communists love tech, Soviet culture was dominated by futurists and despite being destroyed 3 decades ago still hold the world record for most space launches.
The disgust towards SpaceX is also based on a love of technology. Mediocre Internet isn't worth rendering our observatories useless and polluting prime orbital lanes.
Chinese socialism is also obsessed with tech, megaprojects everywhere, highly resilient public GMO crops massive investments in green energy and novel production techniques. Most of the CPC leadership have engineering degrees. Xi specifically engineered an off-grid bioreactor for winter heating (using animal waste no less) during his volunteer service at the countryside, he was in his 20s and almost got blown up while repairing it.
For anyone here looking for "anti-Musks", here's a list:
-Zhang Kejian: the current directior of China's National Space Administration
Li Yue: The president of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation
Xi Jinping to some extent, who's trained as a chemical engineer
Lê Thị Thu Thuỷ: CEO of the Vietnamese EV company VinFast
Chemical Engineer is the new poet in terms of world leadership lol Merkel was a research chemist.
I don't think it's just Musk, there was a lot of pushback towards the moon landings in the 1960s-70s as well. People then felt that funds used in these programs would have been better spent on stuff like social programs and improving infrastructure, criticisms that fit pretty well today too. But we could probably have been to mars and back twice if NASA had like even a quarter of the military's budget too 💀
Whitey on the moon
This is also the root of why leftists hate bazinga solutions for climate change, it's seen as a dead end and the obvious fix is at the production level, the root cause of climate change. Communists have a focus on means of production, the hammer and sickle right on the flags are means of production.
Drives me wild that all these lefties have those dumb signs that say "I believe in science" but balk when the science doesn't agree with whatever political slogan they parrot around says.
If you believe in science, it means you believe in the process of science, and are open minded enough to change your ideas or beliefs if the science goes against that. It also means it's possible for current results to be proven otherwise in the future
I have a feeling the "lefties" you're talking about aren't actually leftists in any real sense.
Who knows anymore. Everyone uses the same words and mean completely different things.
Anyone who supports capitalism is not left, it’s pretty simple
What "political slogan" might you be talking about? You a climate change denier or an "only 2 gender" transphobe? Because odds are that you are based on your rhetoric.
Neither. Climate change is real and gender and sex are two different things.
I think there's (at least) two factors here: the first being that western leftists in general (it's not even necessarily based on sect, I've seen this in most major tendencies) still have brainworms from the (capital-L) Liberal society they grew up in and so have weird views on certain issues (I won't even deny that I don't still). I mean, truthfully, most leftists around the world have weird views on certain subjects, not just western ones, but the West has absolutely astounding propaganda networks and techniques, so much so that most don't even think that they could be propagandized - that's a thing that non-democratic countries do, and we live in democracies!
And second, there's can be a tightrope to walk on some scientific issues. Like, take the coronavirus vaccines for instance - there are people who argued, from the left, that because all these massive pharmaceutical industries are only interested in profit and not really for curing anybody of anything, that we therefore should oppose the vaccines. This is obviously a harmful, crank belief, but one can see how by opposing everything a giant corporation and the imperialist and racist etc American government tells you to do, that you might consider yourself "more of a leftist" regardless of what that thing actually is. In that case, you might even try and adopt crank scientific positions by only paying attention to papers that suggest that vaccines don't do anything, or even harm people, while ignoring the vast majority that correctly claim that they are beneficial to take and that people should take them. If you're that person, you might think "Oh, I believe the scientists on all these other issues, but on THIS one I think the influence by X corporation is just so high that all of these papers are biased in favor of vaccines; if anything, I'M the one who's more strictly obeying the scientific method!" Again, they're obviously wrong, but if you already disregard (as many of us should) the findings of very official-sounding thinktanks that are actually funded and staffed by capitalist ghouls, then disregarding actual science might be an easy jump to make for some "leftists".