Clapping for Brandon Johnson because he said something you agreed with probably felt like progress, Chicago, but in fact it's meaningless

wut?

Also, I'm probably speaking for a lot of people who'll read this when I ask what exactly Brandon said that triggered you into making this post...and do you feel like you've done something with this post, in a comedy podcast subreddit, that's more meaningful than the things you're criticising as hollow slacktivism & meaningless feel-good bullshit?

Some of your post feels contradictory, iirc in an earlier ep Brandon made a very similar point to yours about crowd sourced ideas & (iirc) he was even talking about public education. I don't get how you can be so critical of Brandon in r/harmontown, it's a podcast built on the ramblings of a comedy writer & an improv comedian that people have always applauded in the name of feel-good progressivism. IMHO Brandon has brought a lot more to the table than others when recently recurring topics have come up. --- I wasn't a fan of Brandon until he engaged in the discussions of recent episodes, he seems a lot more knowledgeable of politics & recent political history (how politics has translated into the real world) than a shitload of other people who've been on the podcast with strong opinions, especially the regulars who've been preaching "voting doesn't matter/both sides are the same" apathy up until ~6 months ago. Like 2 months ago we all listened to Dan & Jeff talk about being in a protest that they accidentally walked off a plane into & we only know they were accidentally there because an audience member said so

Also (and maybe you didn't mean it the way it reads) your point about reading Marx & Chomsky comes off as very obnoxious. If we ever build a moon colony from scratch, yea, get as many political philosophy experts as you can up there...but that stuff counts for nothing in the real world compared to experience, where you have to navigate within the current reality of past generations fuck ups.

We're living in real-world America where some liberal shit works & doesn't work, same with some conservative shit. Successful police commissioners & defense lawyers with real-world experience will be 1,000,000X more useful for justice reform than people who've read every justice reform book in existence. The same with any issue. There's never going to be any all-encompassing progressive neo-jesus leaders that you seem to be describing & nobody should have to strive to be one -- The way I see it America's current "left" vs "right" = "our current basic society" vs "a cultish fanaticism of christianity, Ayn Rand worship, & white supremacy". What's truly meaningless is dealing with that dichotomy by feeling proactive with complaining about how the current "A" we actually live in & have to deal with is worse than some hypothetical abstract "B" with no realistically "A"-based ideas on how to get from A to B, but maybe we agree on that