The Adjusted Normal, 26. Polarity.
Last night, perusing Facebook, I was surprised to see an acquaintance change their profile picture to one of them in Santiago, standing with the leader of Vox. My thumb was arrested in its scrolling, and I slowly groaned, "nooooo."
The acquaintance in question is young, around my daughter's age. They are a blue-collar worker, when they have the luck to have a job, and is married and has a child. They are intelligent, but did not attend higher schooling beyond high school, and I believe reading is not their forte. When I checked their page, I found other nudges suggesting what their politics are, but I had never paid much mind to them, and the change in profile picture caught me by surprise.
I noticed who had responded with a heart, followed the fake name, and found the person's sibling. They, too, attended the meeting and basked in the light of the true believers of Vox. And so did their progenitor, from a picture the sibling posted. Heartbreak.
I would understand a conservative person siding with Vox. Someone who is religious, is suspicious of all foreigners, has wealth they don't want to lose to benefit those who "don't want to work," and feel nostalgia for a time they never experienced first hand, not even the last, laxer years.
Generally, those who are poorer and more liberal in their general thinking, turn to Vox because they are tired of shouting their grievances and being ignored. Some of those supporters of Vox have even come from the ranks of Podemos, the far left opposite. They see Vox as a last-ditch to be heard and have government improve their lives. More than anything, they are tired of the bureaucracy, the steps laws have to take, where they may even be rejected, and never set in motion. They want things to change now. Podemos promised change, but when that change was blocked, or introduced through the legal channels, and modified through compromise, that made some people turn against Podemos, seeing them as ineffectual.
Vox has a platform that promises change right now. And if the legal process won't allow speed, they say they will change the legal process. They promise the obliteration of bureaucracy by doing away with the autonomous regions, and having power go through Madrid, to the provinces, to the towns and cities. And people who are immensely fed up with government as usual, are attracted to such proposals, which, in the end, promise to make everyone's life better yesterday, if not today. The implementation of those proposals, however, would mean doing away with the Constitution. These people do not see the immense irony in a political party that defends itself as the only party that is constitutionalist, yet would do away with most of the Consitution to put those proposals to work.
Sometimes, it takes one issue to make a person do an about-face on politics. It happened with some people in the United States. The thorny issue of abortion made some people vote for Trump four years ago. Yet, the rest of their beliefs went against Republican promises. The same here. I noticed that some of the links on one of those Facebook pages referred to one of Vox's pet peeves, the gender law that goes after men who batter women. All of the links referred to how men were maligned by women who falsely denounced abuse.
It pays to check statistics. There are false reports of abuse, but the total of false reports add up to less than one percent of all abuse reports. But I suppose the same happens here as in the United States. You give a Trumper a link to a page that isn't Fox News, or Breitbart, or some other right-wing trumpet, and they say the statistics are manipulated by liberal snowflakes. Here, they might tell you that the National Institute of Statistics (INE) will only publish what the socialist-communist government will tell them to. They will obviate the fact that the statistics back when the conservative government was in power were the same. Fanaticism knows no cold logic.
Life continues.
The acquaintance in question is young, around my daughter's age. They are a blue-collar worker, when they have the luck to have a job, and is married and has a child. They are intelligent, but did not attend higher schooling beyond high school, and I believe reading is not their forte. When I checked their page, I found other nudges suggesting what their politics are, but I had never paid much mind to them, and the change in profile picture caught me by surprise.
I noticed who had responded with a heart, followed the fake name, and found the person's sibling. They, too, attended the meeting and basked in the light of the true believers of Vox. And so did their progenitor, from a picture the sibling posted. Heartbreak.
I would understand a conservative person siding with Vox. Someone who is religious, is suspicious of all foreigners, has wealth they don't want to lose to benefit those who "don't want to work," and feel nostalgia for a time they never experienced first hand, not even the last, laxer years.
Generally, those who are poorer and more liberal in their general thinking, turn to Vox because they are tired of shouting their grievances and being ignored. Some of those supporters of Vox have even come from the ranks of Podemos, the far left opposite. They see Vox as a last-ditch to be heard and have government improve their lives. More than anything, they are tired of the bureaucracy, the steps laws have to take, where they may even be rejected, and never set in motion. They want things to change now. Podemos promised change, but when that change was blocked, or introduced through the legal channels, and modified through compromise, that made some people turn against Podemos, seeing them as ineffectual.
Vox has a platform that promises change right now. And if the legal process won't allow speed, they say they will change the legal process. They promise the obliteration of bureaucracy by doing away with the autonomous regions, and having power go through Madrid, to the provinces, to the towns and cities. And people who are immensely fed up with government as usual, are attracted to such proposals, which, in the end, promise to make everyone's life better yesterday, if not today. The implementation of those proposals, however, would mean doing away with the Constitution. These people do not see the immense irony in a political party that defends itself as the only party that is constitutionalist, yet would do away with most of the Consitution to put those proposals to work.
Sometimes, it takes one issue to make a person do an about-face on politics. It happened with some people in the United States. The thorny issue of abortion made some people vote for Trump four years ago. Yet, the rest of their beliefs went against Republican promises. The same here. I noticed that some of the links on one of those Facebook pages referred to one of Vox's pet peeves, the gender law that goes after men who batter women. All of the links referred to how men were maligned by women who falsely denounced abuse.
It pays to check statistics. There are false reports of abuse, but the total of false reports add up to less than one percent of all abuse reports. But I suppose the same happens here as in the United States. You give a Trumper a link to a page that isn't Fox News, or Breitbart, or some other right-wing trumpet, and they say the statistics are manipulated by liberal snowflakes. Here, they might tell you that the National Institute of Statistics (INE) will only publish what the socialist-communist government will tell them to. They will obviate the fact that the statistics back when the conservative government was in power were the same. Fanaticism knows no cold logic.
Life continues.
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