As for why I was listening to conservative talk radio (🤢) in the first place, that’s all the play at my job. I usually tune it out but can’t use earbuds for safety reasons and I’m not high enough on the totem pole to change the station. I won’t specifiy the exact program because I believe it’s regional.
I’ve been excited for Alex Garland’s Civil War for months now. A24’s been killing their drama films recently and it’s been refreshing having what I thought was an unapologetically left-leaning major media studio who’s found success through authentic, grassroots support. After hearing what felt like four ad reads for the movie in an hour and knowing that means A24 paid money - gave direct financial support - to a show that, amongst other things, spends hours a day promoting bigotry, Russian propaganda, and J6 apologetism, has ruined it for me.
Am I just overreacting here?
No, I think conservatives who think they want to cosplay as soldiers are exactly the people who need to see what their fantasies would really look like, if brought to fruition. I think the ad placement was deliberate and the movie is intended to be a shock lesson for all people, but especially these ones.
Genuine question, is this what you actually think will happen, or just a fantasy about what you want? Those types are so galvanized from a decade plus of online echo chambers that I doubt any of that shock would get through to them. Meanwhile, the harm A24 is doing by funding (through ad placements) conservative commentators is very real and very immediate.
As a former conservative republican turned socialist, I’ll say that it can happen. Certainly some will never change their minds or see the world any other way.
But some of us will. And some of us only will if we are exposed to thoughts and viewpoints outside our usual echo chamber.
I agree that I’d rather A24 wasn’t offering any financial boost to extreme conservative viewpoints. But I am hopeful that at least a few people in those audiences will be drawn to watch and that it will make them ask questions they never thought about before.
Do you remember some things that got you to move from a conservative Republican to a socialist?
It was definitely a journey and I know lots of things had an influence. Probably some that I didn’t even recognize were impacting me in the moment.
I can tell you that friends made a large difference. No one has more influence on you than someone that actually cares about you. So having several friends that cared about me despite my warped viewpoint was probably a fundamental fulcrum for shifting my views.
I also had the opportunity to befriend a lot of people who are often “othered” in conservative circles. It becomes a lot harder to accept someone painting a group in a negative light, when you actually know people that clearly don’t fit that narrative. It forced me to question the narrative.
Finally though, I think it was me starting to recognize the hypocrisy. An obvious one is that Christianity is strongly tied into the culture, but nothing about modern conservatism exemplifies “love your neighbor as yourself”. Another big point of hypocrisy for me was when Trump was made the candidate in 2016. I’m old enough to remember that one of the large talking points made against Bill Clinton in the 1992 election was a lack of character. And I just couldn’t comprehend how character was so important to the Republicans then, but clearly wasn’t an issue for their current candidate. Character and integrity are important attributes to me, and in retrospect Trump’s candidacy was really a final straw for me.
As for why I moved towards socialism specifically? Largely because I don’t believe capitalism scales well, and the free market leads to too many competing priorities that basically boil down to the Prisoner’s Dilemma (the best outcome for the individual versus the best outcome for the group). I think there has to be an authority external to the market who can intervene when advancements are clearly coming at the expense of the society.
Of course it’s a fantasy about what I want. Everything that ever happens in the world starts out as a fantasy of what some people want.
I think there are more cracks in that galvanizing than you think. Overturning Roe is not turning out to be the grand success they’d hoped. Yes, it’s because people who vote conservative require the truth to impact them personally and emotionally before they get the point. Yes, that’s fucked. But it’s the sad reality we’re dealing with here.
I don’t expect people to flip full socialist LGBT ally overnight. But if someone starts suggesting we take up arms against our fellow residents of the US, a depiction of reality might cause enough people to pause and think, “You know, maybe let’s not.”
Don’t act like fictional depictions have no impact on real opinions.
Like this article “How Sci-Fi Like ‘WarGames’ Led to Real Policy During the Reagan Administration” points out.