Paul Campos reflects on a leftist friend who is slowly drifting into Trumpistan. This is part of the psychology of politics that has become a field recently. Basically, your psychological profile can help determine your politics. Are you open to new people and experiences? You're a liberal. Do those things scare or repel you? You're a conservative. Is everything fucking awful and we need to burn it all to the ground? You're a leftist OR a reactionary.
Doomerism is terrible for any number of reasons. It's not true, in that so much of the world is so much better than it has been in the past. But it also breeds either complacency or a dangerous preference for extreme solutions.
There were a bunch of pro-Palestinian protestors marching through New Years Eve celebrations in NYC last night, setting off smoke bombs and shit. That's going to convince exactly no one that Palestinians are being treated horrifically. It could engender a backlash that will bring about a revolution or some such shit. That is the logical pretzel of "heightening the contradictions" from Lenin. It's bullshit, but saying, "Trump is so bad he will bring about the revolution that I've always craved and waited for" is the default for a certain type of radical.
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