WatDabney

And it all clicks into place.

It's a thing I hadn't really thought about before, but as I was writing that, I was thinking how many times I'd written similar things in the past - about heavy metal music, comic books, dungeons and dragons, violent video games...

And it struck me that that was too consistent to be coincidental - that there had to be some basic failure at work there.

And thinking sbout it more - it's at least broadly the same dynamic as the endless loop of class- and race-based bigotry. Systems are established by which members of a particular class or race (or ethnic group or gender or sexual persuasion or...) are disadvantaged - poorer nutrition, less stable housing, poorer education, fewer opportunities, etc. - then point to the ignorance, frustration and antisocial tendencies that triggers as nominal evidence of their inherent inferiority, by which they're rightly denied equal treatment.

I'm willing to bet that there's a significant body of work out there on this topic

I'm reasonably certain that it would be much more accurate to say that people who are prone to depression, paranoia, suicidal thoughts, self-injury and digital self-harm are more likely to use the dark web.

Broadly, this isn't the first time that it's struck me that pedantic moralizing often relies on reversing cause and effect...

The broligarchs must be positively giddy at the prospect of a generation of Americans who are entirely unable to even form a coherent thought.

Why muck about with all the complications of trying to force people into the peasant role of neo-feudalism when you can just destroy public education and gatekeep knowledge and create a populace too dull-witted to envision anything else?

And they mean exactly what they say.

The class war is already underway - the financial elite are actively fighting it, and winning by forfeit because the rest of us are mostly split into those who don't see the attacks and those who see them but misassign the blame for them.

I am too.

On the one hand, it's a pretty simple and obvious principled stance. But on the other hand, the Democrats haven't shown much in the way of principles in quite some time.

Who'd've guessed the Democrats would refuse to vote in favor of cutting health insurance subsidies for millions of poor Americans in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires?

"I don't know what's wrong with them. All they have to do is agree to let us cut funding so that millions of poor Americans won't be able to afford health insurance. All they have to do is say, 'Let's go! Let's fuck over poor Americans to fund tax breaks for billionaires!'"

Um... no. I'm an anarchist.

And you sound like a helicopter parent who's balanced on that fine line between hysterical tears and explosive rage because somebody at the playground said something mean about their darling USSR.

Funny that this is the exact same "logic" the libs use to try to defend running a pro-zionist, pro-corporate, pro-billionaire slimeball in the last US presidential election - "But Trump was worse!"