• poor leftists talk about poverty, labor aristocrats get uncomfortable and insist that sociological classes aren’t materialist. “all that matters is that we’re working class - we’re all in this together”

  • black leftists talk about racism, whites get uncomfortable and insist that they’re not personally part of the problem. “we mustn’t allow the bourgeois to divide the proletariat along racial lines - we’re all in this together”

  • female leftists talk about patriarchy, men get uncomfortable and insist that it hurts them too. “this men vs women stuff is reductive anyway - we’re all in this together”

  • third world leftists talk about imperialism, americoids get uncomfortable and insist that red white and blue lives matter too. “what happened to the international working class - we’re all in this together”

you don’t have to invite yourself to every form and experience of oppression. anyone with a baby’s consciousness of intersectionality ought to be capable of admitting when they have privilege

  • ped_xing [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    8·
    10 months ago

    Kicking a lot of mentally ill people out onto the streets was an atrocity, no argument from me there.

    I’m arguing that Hotel California being about mental hospitals doesn’t make sense. There are so many lines that run counter to that interpretation:

    There she stood in the doorway

    The . . . intake nurse?

    Her mind is Tiffany-twisted/She got the Mercedes Benz

    Even if the staff can afford some luxuries, it doesn’t seem like something they’d discuss with a patient.

    They livin’ it up at the Hotel California

    Said nobody about an inpatient mental health facility ever

    Mirrors on the ceiling/The pink champagne on ice

    A hazard and contraband that would be immediately removed

    And the part that might work,

    You can check out any time you like/But you can never leave

    really only half works. The “never leave” part works, sure, it was involuntary hospitalization, but how can you explain “check out any time you like?” Letting patients fake a check-out just seems like torture.

    • TankieCatgirl [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      I always thought it was about drug addiction, specifically in the music industry, which lines up a bit more with the things you pointed out imo. And I heard that checking out was a euphemism for suicide.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      I’m not 100% certain on my take, but some of your attempts to shoot it down are kind of Reddit-tier pedantic. “They livin’ it up” can definitely be sarcastic or even medicated altered states of being, for example.

        • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          I already gave the example of “livin’ it up” being taken so directly and literally that there’s a willing refusal to see the possible interpretations of the line as sarcasm regarding the conditions of the people mentioned, or as an altered state of consciousness from psych medications.

          • TankieCatgirl [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            Or, he could be neurodivergent and tends to take things literally. Just because someone interprets something different than you (particularly something as subjective as song lyrics) doesn’t mean you have to go straight to insults.

            • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              I had no such intention and I find it a stretch to see pedantic behavior as fundamentally neurodivergent.

              Saying that saying someone is being pedantic is ableist but then giving a pass to what I said supposedly “not making sense” sounds selective to me, like you already had a chip on your shoulder about this.

              This is becoming too heated for me to meaningfully continue it so I need to stop here. It’s not worth it over song interpretation.

              • TankieCatgirl [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                1·
                10 months ago

                I’m sorry if I came off as aggressive, it wasn’t intended that way. I myself have been accused of being pedantic about things because of my autistic perspective, but I can agree that being pedantic isn’t inherently a neurodivergent thing, I was just trying to give a different perspective. I do have to disagree that saying someone is being “reddit-level pedantic” is comparable to someone saying something doesn’t make sense, though.

                • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  2·
                  10 months ago

                  I appreciate your reply here; I do think the argument about the song lyrics was getting overwhelming for me anyway. I looked up what even the band thought about their own song and the takes are contradictory and even seem to shift a little over time. “It’s about dangerous women in weird times,” “it’s about drugs,” and yes, one even suggested it was about a temporary but scary stay one of them had in a mental hospital often associated with the song even if it may not be a perfect fit.

                  I will reconsider how I phrase that in the future, because I myself don’t like when I receive ableistic feedback to something I say, whether it’s well intentioned but poorly worded, or just “you are mentally ill” accusations from wreckers and chuds, implying that neurodiversity means inherent badness and contemptible opinions.