Good post, I agree for the most part. I think you can break people down into two camps:
Camp 1: The system is inherently broken, we need to do something about people in power. Current institutions cannot be reformed, and must be either replaced or eliminated.
Camp 2: The system is working mostly as intended, we can't afford to make any non-incremental change. Current institutions must be protected, we can maybe reform them somewhat.
I personally think camp 2 is a pretty privileged group, whether on the right or left. People in camp 1 tend to have more skin in the game, and are more passionate about politics (beyond just putting their boots on the necks of people who can't afford to ride out the status quo).
I agree with the two camps you roughly divide people into, but I think you're off by 180 degrees on where the privilege and skin-in-the-game lies. The people I see in Camp 2 are the people who have families, institutions they care about, and real concern about the future. Where the people in Camp 1 are either so privileged that they can't imagine that tearing down our society could hurt them personally, or don't think they have anything to lose either due to lack of empathy and social ties. or very real desperate financial circumstances.
I feel for that last group the most. There are far too many of our fellow citizens and fellow human beings who are suffering, and who don't need to be. But I don't think tearing everything down makes it better for them, and I'm skeptical that it would be a just trade even if it did. What I think Camp 1 gets you in practice is someone like Donald Trump (on the right or from the left, it doesn't really matter) tweeting idiocy while hundreds of thousands of people die and the rich get richer, faster while our civilization speeds towards its destruction.
I guess that all puts me in Camp 2, even though I think I'm pretty far left on a lot of issues, and I do think are current systems are badly broken. To use an analogy, yeah, our house is falling apart and we're not able to fix it. We need to build a new house. And while I don't trust the current landlord to rebuild, I trust the pyromaniacs who want to burn it down with people still inside even less. The least-bad solution I can see is the Fabian one: try to keep things working (and reforming) as best we can, and hope that circumstances change to allow us to make things better in ways we can't right now. I fear we're headed for The Jackpot or worse, but I'm not aware of any better, workable solutions.
You don’t think the jackpot ending might mean less to lose and might open more people up to Edgelordism that were initially invested in the system?
