I honestly believe our most powerful position in a toxic time that feeds on cynicism, apathy,& despair is to genuinely care and act for a better world.
Cynicism is our enemy. We should check it, incl. on the left. It’s not intellectually superior. It’s the virus they’re trying to infect us with. NO
31.01.2025 19:04 — 👍 146732 🔁 24315 💬 4213 📌 1480
Bar chart from Gallup showing initial job approval ratings for each newly elected president from Donald Trump back to Dwight Eisenhower.
New from Gallup: "At 47%, President Donald Trump's initial job approval rating for his second term is similar to the inaugural 45% reading during his first term, again placing him below all other elected presidents dating back to 1953." news.gallup.com/poll/655955/...
29.01.2025 23:12 — 👍 313 🔁 94 💬 21 📌 39
Declassified CIA Guide to Sabotaging Fascism Is Suddenly Viral
The World War II-era "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" is full of steps that office workers can take to resist leadership.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a declassified World War II-era CIA guide to sabotaging fascism in the workplace has become one of the most popular free ebooks on the internet:
www.404media.co/declassified...
29.01.2025 20:53 — 👍 67335 🔁 27627 💬 1226 📌 1896
“weaponized incuriosity” gets right at the heart of it
29.01.2025 19:22 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
ynicism is first of all a style of presenting oneself, and it takes pride more than anything in not being fooled and not being foolish. But in the forms in which I encounter it, cynicism is frequently both these things. That the attitude that prides itself on world-weary experience is often so naïve says much about the triumph of style over substance, attitude over analysis.
Maybe it also says something about the tendency to oversimplify. If simplification means reducing things to their essentials, oversimplification tosses aside the essential as well. It is a relentless pursuit of certainty and clarity in a world that generally offers neither, a desire to shove nuances and complexities into clear-cut binaries. Naïve cynicism concerns me because it flattens out the past and the future, and because it reduces the motivation to participate in public life, public discourse, and even intelligent conversation that distinguishes shades of gray, ambiguities and ambivalences, uncertainties, unknowns, and opportunities. Instead, we conduct our conversations like wars, and the heavy artillery of grim confidence is the weapon many reach for.
I'm exhausted by all the people out there who are trying to prove they're each the most cynical world-weary disillusioned person who's not gonna ever do a fucking thing ever except dump on everything and expect to be admired for that. Wrote about that in 2016:
28.01.2025 17:09 — 👍 1756 🔁 361 💬 5 📌 59
