#but they've been there longer than my grandma can remember. used to be for rich folks working there

[transvampireboyfriend]

ever since i was a little girl, i've wanted to be a guy living in a haunted house

[miazeklos]

I have no problem with (American) celebrities talking about politics, mostly because I don't think it's my place to tell anyone what they should talk about. What I take issue with is the condescending tone some liberal celebrities use when talking about voters from the other side. And the reason for that is, they don't know what they're talking about. A celebrity who is worth millions can't understand what a single mother who lives in a trailer park is going through. Or what a 20-year-old going to community college is going through. So why do celebrities get on TV and start shaming those who voted differently from them? Most of the time it doesn't even matter since the problems of us normies don't affect them. And the proof of that is that they've been travelling like crazy during this pandemic while we're supposed to feel ashamed for wanting to go see grandma after almost a year. This shaming of conservative/republican voters by celebrities like Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Elliot (previously Ellen) Page and so on needs to stop.

(Warning in advance: this kind of struck my blue collar nerve, so apologies for the essay you got as a result. TLDR is you’re right and you should say it, and this is a damaging stereotype that has grown particularly dangerous during the pandemic.)

100% agree. And this is universal internationally, imo, or at least in North America/Europe, from what I’ve seen - even if places outside of the USA aren’t quite as divided politically, the pandemic and everything to go with it has just elevated the tension everywhere. People in general are going to vote for the person that promises them the slightest bit of relief of the absolute nightmare that the last year had been and shaming them for that is definitely a case of misplaced self-righteousness.

One thing that really has been making me increasingly irritated about this is the ‘wEaR a MaSk’ celebrity gang (coincidentally almost always the same people who cried in their mansions about how bored they were and decided to encourage people by singing Imagine of all things - no, I haven’t forgotten) when the majority of people didn’t actually protest masks - they protested lockdowns, when they stretched out for months and it was clear that governments would offer no relief to small business owners. At this point, ‘conservative’ and ‘anti-mask’ had become somewhat of a synonym, and everyone seemed to forget that it was barely about the masks to begin with.

I’m bringing this up because it was exactly the condescension that you’re talking about being displayed from everywhere when people started getting angry. 'Just stay home, how bad can it be’, ‘don’t be selfish’, ‘wear your mask, that’s all that’s asked of you’ became the main leading point of liberalism and it was extensively successful in reducing people’s very genuine fears to some petty protesting over masks. Not saying that didn’t happen - there were definitely people flat out refusing to wear those - but it was never about the masks. What about the people who would not have a home to stay in by the end of the month when the last salary they’d had before being sent on who knows how long unpaid leave ran out? If the preventive measures had been limited to wearing masks and standing 2m away from each other, we would be in a better place as a species than we currently are.

And this isn’t even coming only from proper-rich people (last week I saw a tweet that went along the lines of, ‘I haven’t been living in fear, I’ve been staying in the comfort of my own home for months’ and I swear I nearly saw red because it’s just! good for you! last march I had to open a ko-fi page because my salary wouldn’t come in and I had to scrap together food for three people out of spare change while the multibillion dollar company I worked for decided whether they’d deign us with money we’d worked for during a pandemic! glad you’re having a good time, though!) but it’s even worse specifically from them. I distinctly remember Katherine McNamara’s whole ‘teehee just stay home I know it’s boring but you can do it’ shtick, occasionally interrupted by her taking photos on yachts and the realisation that I couldn’t stand it a moment longer before I unfollowed her, and that was so prevalent when it came to - largely liberal - celebrities that I can see why it straight up radicalised a lot of people.

Obviously all politicians lie for their own gain. I’m not saying that the conservative ones were in any way better than their liberal counterparts, but they have rarely been much worse, internationally speaking. And let me tell you - when you don’t know if you’re going to eat tomorrow, when you’re not sure if you’ll even have a job next month because of the measures tightening further, when you’re looking for literally any port in a storm, you’re going to latch on to the people who offer the way out.

Open up [insert country here] in the name of freedom resonated with people because it meant getting their jobs and their security and, again, in some much harsher cases, their homes, back. A family-owned business going under knocks your entire life off-balance - trust me, I would know, because it happened to my family. It was two years ago, nothing to do with covid, but it was largely due to much bigger chain stores in the vicinity. This happens constantly to people all over the world because while small businesses were closed and fined to hell and back for daring to open up shop, the Walmarts and Lidls and Tescos and Billas of the world profited off of people’s desperation for goods that, at the beginning of the pandemic and the delays in international transports, were scarce. The regional managers at my workplace (it was H&M, I’m no longer under contract so I don’t give a shit) fought tooth and nail to open every street location store (such as the one I worked in) while small clothing shops stayed closed for at least two more months, or were open under severe restrictions about how many people could come in at a time, which, obviously, affected them tremendously.

About two weeks ago, a friend told me about a bakery near his place that he really loves. Everyone loved it - up to and including the kids in the nearby school, who would come in during recess - and understandably, people were worried when all sorts of eating-related places were closed, because this was a family business and the family’s only income. Eventually, the schools opened for a bit last year and so did restaurants, but the bakery didn’t, so my friend called the owner to check up on them and the woman just burst into tears on the other side of the line and told him that they hadn’t made it. He asked her if there was still a chance they’d pull through - with a loan or something, at first - and she told him, ‘No, we’re in too deep.’

I barely remember being as angry as I was then. That’s one entire family’s livelihood, destroyed. In this country alone, she’s one of thousands. Worldwide, she’s one of millions. And, just... I’ve been poor all my life. I feel no shame in saying that. For my entire childhood, everything we had or didn’t have depended on how much money my parents’s shop had made on any given day. I started working as soon as I could; I put myself through university. I’ve struggled all the way through. I still struggle now, every month, whenever bills come into the equation, but we manage. We were one of the lucky ones. Stories of people who weren’t are countless, and they break my heart. The notion of some dumbass celebrity talking about how frivolous and ridiculous and uninformed it is to want to open up countries just because it’s mainly conservative politicians tooting that horn fills me with a rare amount of rage.

So, yeah. Elections are coming in my country. Both parliamentary and presidential. And this year I don’t feel like voting for anyone conservative or liberal; I’m just going to vote for whoever either gives people money or allows them to work for it. It feels like at this point, we’ve all been boiled down to that.