"Behind the scenes" hopium peddling needs to stop.

Savior syndrome, normalcy bias, and apocalyptic hopium, it's all a bamboozle.

Dec 02, 2024

Just stop it. Stop wish-casting upon a star - and start writing letters to your representatives in government to pressure them to actually do the jobs we hired them for with elections.

Hoping that “important people” are working on some brilliant solution behind the scenes seems to be a popular theme. It’s a common diversionary trick for climate contrarianism and this has been going on for years of course, especially with pandemic issues and reigning in corruption. This is plain for all to see. But in the last month it’s actually gotten worse. It seems like every time you might think that the hopium should surely crumble, instead of that, people really double down on the hopium, both selling it and buying it.

If you’re waiting for anyone to wake up because enough proof has come along, that’s just not how it works. This is clearly a vicious circle that perpetuates itself. To be effective or get anything done one has to actively choose to deliberately opt out of that, or at least act outside of it.

I don’t know how many ways I can talk about elite panic or accelerationism but I feel compelled to keep doing so. It seems to be central to all our problems. This apocalyptic hopium is a known human cognitive bias weakness that many of us have at times of stress and there are people who know how to take advantage of that for their own reasons. Those reasons could be profit, or it could be political aims. Your adversaries will try to confuse you into inaction. And content creators want to sell you what you want to hear - this is a known sales tactic, and leverage used by con artists. The Internet of Fakes is a real problem, and indirect funding in the gig economy has led to the weaponization of everything.

The people spreading this kind of reality fan fiction, that some savior is coming or that some genius is going to solve something, they just shouldn’t be trusted. And whoever “they” are - they are not coming to save us - in fact often they just want to control us or exploit the situation. In some cases there is manipulation, but it is not toward saving us, but to make us not care.

I’m disturbed when I hear that people think that people are going to learn their lesson now and go running into the arms of… you name it. People across the political spectrum are saying stuff like this in the wake of the 2024 election. I have heard the most astounding and factually wrong and unlikely beliefs being expressed all over the place. People insulting their allies and or believing that their enemies are going to suddenly come running to them.

On the town hall youtube stream of a “progressive” organization one of the presenters actually said that they need to focus on fostering relationships with wealthy supporters, right after mentioning the problem is money in politics. Does everyone just dream of being the beneficiary of some rich tycoon savior? Back in the 1970s my grandpa warned me that tycoons don’t think like the average person so don’t expect them to act like you would, and I see what he means now, but I don’t think most people do. This presenter at this town hall also said they want progressive policies. But then this person also said they’re going to keep using the word “progressive” because: “We are not crazy lefty people.” So wait, so you’re against progressive policies like universal healthcare and paid leave and stuff like that? Because that’s what that means! When people say “crazy lefty people” they mean PROGRESSIVES! Do these people think they’re going to somehow outwit the openly stated plans for right-wing atrocities against “lefty people” with semantics like this to save themselves and sell out the most vulnerable among us? What happened to “First they came for the socialists”? If they meant tankies or some specific issue they were denouncing they could've specified. But insulting 80% of the people most aligned with your own policy preferences seems bonkers. And I got news for them, it’s already been articulated that when the right-wing talks about “the left” - they mean they’re going after progressives as the enemy of Christ! I saw a letter to the editor in my local newspaper to that effect, published on January 6th 2024, they said “The declared enemies of Jesus and his faithful are progressives.” Progressives. They specify progressives. When someone says “crazy lefty people” that’s YOU progressives! It reminds me of the welfare recipients who spout off right-wing nonsense complaining about “moochers and takers” because they never seem to understand that they are “the moochers and takers” being demonized and denigrated and they’re repeating the talking points of the people who are disparaging them. You look like a fool when you fall for this. The right wing doesn’t care about your semantics arguments about how you’re not one of those bad left people - (or one of those bad immigrants, or one of the bad Black people, etc etc.) I just want to say to these people - Do you hear yourselves?? Shit or get off the pot!

On youtube I heard someone who is a former Republican operative and RNC spokesperson who left the Republican party when Trump was nominated the first time. Good for them. This person says they are now a Democrat. Okay fine, welcome aboard I guess. And this person then actually said, literally said, that the Democratic party needs to be “a big tent” so that means Democrats can’t accept people in the movement who are farther left… or woke. Does this person not understand what “big tent” means? Do they know what they signed up for when they registered as a Democrat? Do they know that being against woke means being FOR racism? Do they know that woke is literally in the Democratic party platform? Because it’s civil rights! It means civil rights! That’s what’s considered “far left” by the detractors. Do they not know this?

So many of these people have all fallen hook line and sinker for Christopher Rufo type propaganda narratives, and they have no idea. They look like fools. Someone who cares about these people needs to have a talk with them. And with the people who have been bamboozled by enticing tales of schadenfreude and drawn in by megalomania about their own importance. There’s pluralistic ignorance going both directions. People seem to think wildly popular policy positions are “far left” while meanwhile they think their own individual full set of policy preferences and ideas should be embraced in lockstep groupthink and anyone who disagrees with them on one thing should be called “crazy” as an insult.

I’ve also heard liberals saying that leftists have now learned their lesson that supposedly lefty issues aren’t important to most people, so now the left is finally put in their place. I have also heard of actual marxists and communists saying that progressives and liberals are going to finally wake up now and move further left.

These dreams seems to be fully across the political spectrum, including yes, on the right.

I also have heard right-wingers saying that “it doesn’t matter if you’re pro trump or con trump” - that Democratic party voters are going to wake up and join them in support of Trump’s dealing with “the illegals”. I heard literally that (yes the “pro trump or con trump” specifically) in a conversation taking place on amateur radio here in Pennsylvania. And it’s not unusual. Many Trumpies really claim that liberals are gonna finally “wake up” and realize how great Trump is and turn on “The Democrats” when they come to the realization of Trump’s aims.

And all our problems will be solved if everyone will just stop criticizing Trump, or Elon Musk, or Mark Cuban, or Putin, or the fossil fuel industry, they would save us! If only environmental activists would just shut up and embrace generative AI and crypto tycoons running power plants for no practical purpose, and get on board with the idea that UFOs are going to solve climate change so really we should build out huge data centers for billions of hypothetical future simulated people. This is why UFO truthers are also climate contrarians and covid contrarians, and the issues of tech hype and local environmental concerns intersect. There are so many ways that these people with money pay to propagandize diversions for us so our attention is tricked by a sleight of hand. The opposition want to trick people into being co-opted by their actual opposition.

All of the “behind the scenes” stuff and the “they will learn their FAFO lesson” - it’s all false hope pumped out in enticing stories to divert action that might inconvenience the wealthy and their industries. It’s not politics and it’s not the way toward civic engagement and societal progress. At best it gets clicks and subscribes and drives a lot of traffic to some people who make money on it.

All of this is apocalyptic hopium. And the belief that Trump will usher in some kind of accelerationism that will bring about… What? Your preferred happy ending? By what means? People miraculously coming to their senses to agree exactly with you? The Rapture maybe? Because this sounds like rapture fantasies all the way down.

If you’re thinking like this in any way, you really need to stop yourself. I’m not judging you, because we all will tend to do this. It’s really really alluring to believe that somehow people will suddenly pick up the clue phone and stop being dipshits at least. It’s even more compelling to believe that people will wake up and start thinking the way you do. We really need to accept how unrealistic all that is, and how it’s not actually in line with how reality works. Change happens typically because a small number of people who understand a problem push for solutions that, once implemented, become popular and accepted as a given.

If you understand a problem, you should be writing to your representatives in government about issues you care about, and if possible, your preferred solutions. Find other people to network with who want the same solutions and coordinate if possible. You don’t need some huge organization to do any of this. But that part about wanting the same solutions is important, because a lot of people agree about the existence of some problem, but their solutions are not necessarily what you’d want. Lots of them apparently thought Trump’s solutions sounded good. You can’t assume someone’s an ally because they recognize the same problem you do. Some people have been convinced that some problems, no matter how obvious and troublesome, are just a fact of life, and won’t ever move to demand change. But that shouldn’t stop the rest of us from trying.

"Many people rationalize that if it were really dangerous the government wouldn't let it be advertised. They are wrong in that thinking. It is dangerous and the government does let it be advertised."
— Rick Pollay, Pack of Lies: The Advertising of Tobacco (1992)

“I think, I guess, seem to understand what’s happening and that no one’s coming to save us, but I have to say I’ve seen this again and again. People kind of wake up. They did after Comey was fired, they did after Charlottesville, they did after Helsinki. They’re doing it now with the Barr memo, and then they go back to this comforting illusion that they’ll just get voted out in 2020 or that things will somehow get resolved on their own. That’s just very unlikely to happen, unfortunately.” — Sarah Kendzior, April 19, 2019

Chloe Humbert

Discussion about this post

Chloe Humbert

"Behind the scenes" hopium peddling needs to stop.

Savior syndrome, normalcy bias, and apocalyptic hopium, it's all a bamboozle.

Further reading (and listening)…

Discussion about this post