Oh, do I have so many choice colorful words I would love to yell at in Vietnamese.
What’s funny is that she’s right. He wasn’t political. He was just a normal decent person. He didn’t talk about Republicans (which I believe he himself was) or Democrats. So in that sense, yeah, he wasn’t political.
Really? But he was such a normal decent person? I assumed he was liberal or progressive or socialist because he valued empathy and niceness. He did not look down on people for their race, class, religion or abilities. He valued education. He genuinely cared for people.
The lesson I take from this is republicans used to not be sociopaths
In the 80s and 90s it was possible to have faith in the country. That the current administration was just a bad actor and we’d get it right next time. That we all kinda wanted the same thing, a functioning government and to lead our lives happily and privately.
Maybe it was true then. Maybe Fox News actually did poison the well, and people who once were rational are no longer so. Fear and hate blight rationality and the media cycle feeds on it. The more angry we are, the more we engage with social media. The more ads we’re served.
It’s wild that we’ll have to explain around campfires and cook stoves in the aftermath to whatever generation follows us that this was all in pursuit of ad revenue.
Politics in the US used to be divided along a lot more lines than just socially progressive vs socially conservative. You had a lot of people voting in ways that would surprise people these days, which was totally normal and reasonable, as the reaction to hearing people voted differently to you wasn’t outrage like it is now. It’s really hard to go back to that though, as now it’s been sorted down pretty much exclusively one very emotional axis being the whole identity of the parties, everyone infers a lot more about people based on who they vote for.
Fred was woke as fuck
the most radical thing about this in it’s context is that in the moment there is no discussion about this being a radical act. in the moment, on the show, Fred Rogers simply says “isn’t it nice to soak your feet after a long day” and then him and the mailman (i forget his name) just soak their feet and speak as equals about how their day is going and how nice it feels to be neighborly to each other.
the most radical acts of defiance don’t look like defiance at all. they look like a friend being a friend. ultimately, that’s all solidarity is. a willingness to make friends with people who are different from you
Folks see this or Uhura/Chekov on Star Trek and completely lack the contextual understanding behind just how woke (For the time) it is.
See parallels w/AIDS fears & Princess Di shaking hands? But contrasts of course
Man, I wish we lived in a world where being kind and treating everyone equally wasn’t somehow political.
In a normal democracy it isn’t, but fascists aren’t democratic people. By definition.
they’re also barely people
dehumanization is the easy and wrong way out. it’s human to have the capacity for infinite cruelty. change the material circumstances and you too might be cruel.
Right on. It’s so deeply human that no other animal has been observed to be as cruel as we are to each other and our environment.
You’ll lose that opinion real fast if you learn about chimps, dolphins, or even lions.
No chimp has performed a holocaust. I don’t know about the dolphins though; who knows what goes on beneath the waves…
Chimps massacre and cannibalize rival tribes on the regular.
I don’t. Politics is the greatest strength of the human species. Ants and wolves and elephants are pretty political compared to snakes or rats, but humans are the most political animal by several orders of magnitude. It’s their capacity for political organising that made the Pyramids, and Bioshock, and put a man on the moon, and created Avatar
Lol I feel like our greatest strength could be defined in a better way, particularly considering what “politics” has gotten us in pretty much every single civilization… Collapse
Politics also made all those civilisations.
When a society all agrees not to eat all the potatoes now, but to plant some underground and wait for them to grow more potatoes, that’s politics.
When an artist and a programmer agree to divide responsibilities and make a video game together, that’s politics.
When a discord moderator decides to force everyone to agree to a no politics rule, that’s politics.
I’m disagreeing with you, fundamentally:
spirituality & religion ( those are separate dimensions ) & secular-projects & other motivations are real: it isn’t all politics.
Political-motivation is a dimension, but an aweful lot of human action isn’t politically-motivated.
Some people can’t tolerate that to be even-possible, of course…
Planning isn’t self-inherently political.
< shruggeth >
Some ideologues won’t ever allow that any human meaning exists outside of their ideology’s framing, & that’s that, though.
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He’s nice and not racist. Pfff woke.
No, love. He did something far more important than entertain them. He raised them to be decent people. Apparently you didn’t pay attention, but even Mr. Rogers can only do so much, and you were evidently always beyond help.
May 1st, 1969. Fred Rodgers testifies before the Senate in favor of PBS Funding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKy7ljRr0AA
Presbyterians don’t have canonized saints but if they did, The Reverend Fred Rogers would almost certainly be #1 on the list. He believed in the importance of teaching kids to love their neighbors and themselves. And he found an incredibly effective way to do it that basically no one else has been able to match.
Too bad Meghan McCain was apparently watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on mute the entire time.
the bit that I always am happy to know is that through his entire show, he never appeared to be outwardly religious.
he said be kind, because it’s good to do, not because god said.
he said love one another, because it’s wonderful to be loved back, not because it was in some book.
that he was able to preach without the stigma of religion gave the enormous reach across cultures that his program had.
He showed, he didn’t tell.
He demonstrated, he didn’t preach.
He did it right.
Had more spine than many, among our world…
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This dumbfuck is who DNC toured with during the brief Harris Presidential campaign last year. Yeah, the party that pretends to be accepting and kind to all people like Fred Rogers was, paraded someone that thinks being accepting and nice is entertaining around like we’d all be good friends
Don’t forget that dumbfuck also sold out her own sister to advance her political career. I have absolutely no doubt that she’s only on the outs with MAGA because she called the “wrong” play after Jan 6.
Are you confusing her with a Cheney daughter?
Yep. Dang it. You’re right.
I totally did. In my defense they are similar in appearance and notable conservative family members. And Megan endorsed Harris during her first presidential campaign (which was also brief)
That kind of was the point — he taught values without turning childhood into a debate. That’s why he still resonates.
