I'm an old school Southern Democrat. I'm Progressive and extremely to the left of modern Democrats. I believe that everyone is entitled to a standard of living and that includes a home and a mode of transportation and a mode of communication and a way to provide for themselves. I hate how the New Southern vision was sabotaged by Reagan and the Republican Party. We could've had a more inclusive and diverse South. I'm from the Gulf Coast. When I was growing up the Gulf Coast was the last bastion of Southern Democratic dominance. Republicans have taken over our area and corrupted the minds of our people. Southern Democrats are often seen as a monolith but just like the overall Democratic Party it was a big tent. I believe we can revive the Progressive tradition in the South but it's going to take effort.
I love this comment because you wrote so much and said so little. Your comment proves me to be correct. You have a bunch of tiktoks that say that societal problems such as sexism, racism, etc are caused by moral failure. I pointed out that societal problems are caused by systemic structures.
You could read your entire comment on your local news stations and then go on to run as a Republican, or Democrat. This is because your comment is not a real critique of society, but empty populism.
Americans love performing the role of oppressed peasants while politicians and society placate them, creating a self-perpetuating club of privileged, enabled people who make excuses for one another, validate each other’s entitlement and then treat people experiencing genuine, devastating hardship with condescension and indifference; meanwhile, people like me are expected to endlessly extend them empathy, understanding and grace that they refuse to extend to us, even gaslighting us by insisting we're more privileged than they are, because apparently facing extreme adversity with dignity, strength and personal accountability while having far less than they do somehow convinces them we're doing better than they are, rather than exposing how deeply they've confused privilege with victimhood.
Re-read this quotation in the voice of JD Vance, Marco Rubio, or Stephen Miller. I know you like to do accents, try it out. The quote would still function in exactly the same way, empty populism. Honestly, it sounds like Ben Shapiro. Try Ronald Reagan's voice, who popularized the "welfare queen" narrative. The reason why this works is because the whole paragraph means nothing. It's a fictional story.
38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’
39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.
40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.
Mathew 5:38
I'm not a Christian. I don't follow the bible. I'm using this quote as an example of how "character" is entirely subjective and therefore not a good way to critique society. Some people would say that it is bad character to be petty about how much soda was drank after you offered to share your soda. This bible passage would suggest that if someone drinks your soda, you should offer them more soda. Character is subjective.
Every person believes that they have good character and other people have bad character. Trump believes that he has good character. No person goes around and says "I have bad character and I like to do bad things". If your worldview is "I'm against people who have bad character", then you stand for nothing. That means nothing. "I'm against narcissism" means nothing. It's like people who say "my politics are common sense", it means nothing.
You don't know what is going in other people's minds. You don't know who is a narcissist. Narcissism is immeasurable and immaterial.
My situation is an anomaly, not a universal representation of American life. America is an extraordinarily privileged country by global standards
Your situation is not an anomaly. You exist in a society and you are a product of the society that you exist within. Marx had a concept called 'reserve army of labor', which is how he explained unemployment and underemployment in a capitalist society. The concept is that unemployed people exist as a threat for the capitalist to impose on employed people. The capitalist threaten the worker "If you don't work for less pay, then I'll fire you and you'll end up among the homeless."
US is not just privileged, but imperialist. The reason that the US has more than other countries is because the US takes advantage other countries, something that the Democrat Party has historically enabled. The imperialism created the privilege, the privilege did not create the imperialism. US is an imperialist country but also has exploited underclasses withing it.
Your thinking is all backwards. As I said in my past comment, "The selfishness is the product of the action, not the enabler of the action." Selfishness exists because of capitalism, not capitalism exists because of selfishness.
I like that you have tiktoks that say you are against sexism and toxic masculinity and all that stuff. The anti-drug video was ignorant, drugs are just medication and if you're angry that people self-medicate in a country without access to healthcare, that's just ignorant. It's like you're taking a math test and you somehow arrived at like 80% correct answers but the mathwork that you did to arrive at the answers is all wrong, so the teacher says "see me after class", because it seems like you just copied from someone else instead of arriving at the answers yourself.