• yumpsuit@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Glad to. I think the more valuable story to tell people is about the thread connecting deaths of despair, and it’s the story that will be resisted. Shitty liberal tendencies will tend to tell the easier story as a way to obscure the hard one, and they’ll tell it louder if you call them out on their hypocrisy. This is not to say mental health awareness is an easier conversation at all, but the wider concept of “deaths of despair” touches it and ties it to something bigger, and is the more potent thought to leave people with.

    The Occupy Wall Street movement had problems with staying on message and not making concrete demands, among other critiques folks to their left might make. However, they introduced the powerful concept that 1% of Americans control more than a third of American wealth, and the idea of “the 1%” does tremendous good and will long outlive the other conversations within that movement.

    A major value of online discourse is to teach ourselves to perceive deeper threads in situations like what I’ve mentioned, and to obliterate our own blind spots when they stand in the way. That is what I was trying to say, and thank you sincerely for being an engaged discussion partner!