You know what I’m tried of? Cynicism that blocks honest attempts to improve the situation. People trying to seem soooo “plugged in” and “been around the block” by acting like shock and anger are inappropriate and even childish reactions to deplorable, illegal, and occasionally reprehenisble behaviour. <\/p>\n
I could try to make this thought clear, but since immensely talented writer Emma Bull<\/a> has already done so<\/a>, I’d be gilding the lily.<\/p>\n “Why are you surprised?”<\/p>\n “Did you really think that…?”<\/p>\n “This is old news.”<\/p>\n “It’s just business as usual.”<\/p>\n I’ve been hearing and reading these lines, and others like them, a lot lately. They show up when someone–sometimes me, sometimes someone else–gets angry about the election, about FEMA, about law enforcement, about politicians, about a government agency, and says so. When they do, someone will almost always respond with a variation on one of those lines.<\/p>\n I’d just like to say this to the people who are responding that way:<\/p>\n You’re seriously pissing me off. Shut the fuck up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Go read the rest. <\/p>\n Also, I love the quote Steve puts in the comments:<\/p>\n “That purely individualistic irony which spreads out like a smoke of indifference over the whole effort and intention of mankind, is the worst form of snobbism.” — Trotsky.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You know what I’m tried of? Cynicism that blocks honest attempts to improve the situation. People trying to seem soooo “plugged in” and “been around the block” by acting like shock and anger are inappropriate and even childish reactions to deplorable, illegal, and occasionally reprehenisble behaviour. I could try to make this thought clear, but since immensely talented writer Emma… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[334,245,289,125,157],"class_list":["post-1604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-people-say-smart-things","tag-author","tag-cynicism","tag-emma-bull","tag-quote","tag-smart-things","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-pS","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1604"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1609,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions\/1609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}