When Did the ‘F*ck Your Feelings’ Crowd Get So Triggered?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
When Did the ‘F*ck Your Feelings’ Crowd Get So Triggered?
MAGA types love to mock the “triggered” liberal masses, yet it sure seems like the only people throwing tantrums these days are conservatives.
Being a conservative these days sounds emotionally exhausting.
At any given moment, you might find out, for instance, that your favorite light beer sent a brew to a transgendered influencer and get so mad about it you have to film yourself using that beer for target practice . Or you might discover— gasp! —that Target is selling T-shirts with little rainbows on them for Pride Month and simply have no choice but drive to the nearest Target, threaten employees with violence , write a song about it , and whine that the song is being censored . Perhaps your precious children are being exposed to a poem about unity , or a movie about a mythical creature that isn't white , so you do whatever it takes to shield them from these horrors. Maybe you heard someone say their pronouns and subsequently fainted in the middle of a PTA meeting.
That’s just how it goes in the United States of Wokemerica. Another day, another space that is not safe.
Lately, it seems that many of the same MAGA Republicans who once wore “ Fuck Your Feelings ” T-shirts to Trump rallies now exist in a perpetual state of emotional outpouring. Everywhere conservatives have looked over the past few years, they’ve glimpsed something they didn’t like, had an apoplectic outburst or two, and then tried to legally ban it— sometimes with success . Incredibly, the very people who seem to find it tragic that “you couldn’t make Animal House today” are busy ensuring that no local theater company can perform Shakespeare in Tennessee the way actors did in Elizabethan England, because it would require the male cast to be in drag , and children might see them.
Whatever happened to “melting the snowflakes ”? When did being “triggered” go from the most shameful and hilarious thing that could happen to a person, in the eyes of Sean Hannity stans, to conservatives’ default mode of existence?
At the dawn of the Trump era, Republican policy was roundly replaced by trolling. Anything that outraged progressives, like installing far-right svengali Steve Bannon in the White House, was a victory merely because it provoked outrage, regardless of any additional outcome. Liberals at the time would wake up one day to find the president had, say, abruptly implemented a travel ban for Muslim-majority countries , and get mad about it online—only to find Twitter users with Pepe the Frog avatars replying, “Uh, triggered much?” Never mind the fact that conservatives at the time would fully lose their minds if you didn’t use their favorite greeting in late December.
The focus on triggering the libs was meant to suggest a powerful truth about the world order—that people so sensitive and volatile were unfit to hold the majority in a tough world that demands a thicker skin. Reacting in any way to a cruel provocation designed explicitly to incite extreme reactions was perceived as weakness, hysteria, virtue signaling, or—paradoxically—all of the above. The term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” eventually emerged to describe the lib-who-cried-wolf types who panicked over everything. But nothing was considered appropriately triggering. No matter what liberals were upset about, the standard response was to act as if the outrage was due to Hillary Clinton’s face not yet being emblazoned on the dollar bill.
It’s hard to pin down exactly when this dynamic changed. The Trump administration didn’t exactly run like a fine-tuned machine , so election-triumphant MAGA trolls quickly found themselves on the defensive and stayed there. When a Turning Point USA activist walked around a college campus wearing a diaper , ostensibly to show libs what babies they are, the broader lib-triggering posture curdled into caricature. And though prominent MAGA players like CPAC chair Matt Schlapp would later go on to crack weird jokes about Nancy Pelosi’s husband getting attacked with a hammer, back then they made a huge deal about the line-crossing incivility of a comedian being too mean to Trump’s press secretary . Not exactly alpha behavior.
The true end of the “melting the snowflakes” moment arrived with the Jan. 6 insurrection, one of the most triggered displays in American history. The still-persistent belief that Trump was cheated out of a second term may have been driven by disinformation, but it’s mainly fueled by feelings. A pollster explaining why 68 percent of Republicans still believe the 2020 election was stolen wrote in The Atlantic last year: “As a woman from Wisconsin told me, ‘I can’t really put my finger on it, but something just doesn’t feel right.’” Jan. 6 proved once and for all that “Fuck Your Feelings” never meant that feelings themselves were frivolous signs of weakness, only that yours are. My feelings, however—as a MAGA Republican—are sacrosanct pillars of strength.
The years since the insurrection have seen conservatives retreat into constant, shrieking victimhood. They wailed and virtue-signaled when the Dr. Seuss estate stopped publishing six of its titles, bemoaned the green M&M becoming slightly less fuckable , and worked themselves into a frothy lather over both the fictional threat of banning red meat and the merely floated possibility of phasing out gas stoves.
If they seem to consider their anger infallible, perhaps it’s because the right-wing media ecosystem assures them it is. For instance, when mainstream media outlets noticed conservatives’ fury-panic around gas stoves earlier this year, Fox News responded with a story about liberal media maliciously casting their outrage in a negative light. These red-blooded Americans weren’t triggered by an idea regarding stoves—they were righteously resistant!
The main reason conservatives are mad these days, however, seems to be that their children are in grave danger. Every day is a gauntlet of terrors for our nation’s young. If left in untrustworthy hands, they might accidentally see a drag queen read a book, hear that one of their teachers is gay, lose to a trans girl in soccer, or find out why Martin Luther King, Jr. existed, apart from that one quote conservatives love to misinterpret . The source of all this peril? One word: wokeness.
The most lasting legacy of the 2020 uprising has been the word “woke” transforming into an all-purpose demonizing adjective. Right-wingers of all stripes have lately coalesced around wokeness as the archenemy of their cause, stretching its original meaning—awareness of systemic racism—to cover a vast variety of things they deplore. It’s now essentially synonymous with “Radical Marxist Commie Socialist,” although it also enfolds each individual idea Radical Marxist Commie Socialists, aka Biden voters, generally support.
The more nebulous the term “woke” became—even people who’ve written books about it can’t seem to define it —the more concepts it turned into inherent evils. Gradually, over the last three years, defining anything as “woke” created a permission structure for losing one’s entire shit about it at the drop of a hat.
Maybe it’s because so many things are now considered woke that conservatives are getting triggered by them more often. The weight afforded that term makes everything seem like it’s part of some nefarious agenda that, for some reason, endangers children. Brands have been cravenly pandering to underserved demographics they don’t give a damn about for ages, but when they do so now, right-wingers call it woke indoctrination . This way, when they throw a temper tantrum because a company wasn’t pandering to them for two seconds, they can frame it as fighting the good fight.
Just as conservatives coined Trump Derangement Syndrome to describe people who got too upset about the cruel and unnecessary chaos Trump wrought, rather than those who unreservedly supported it, they have now invented another disease—the “ woke mind virus ”—which is directed not at the people routinely flipping out about pride flags , but their supposed tormentors.
While some of the people pegged as having TDS did occasionally jump to World War III conclusions when just an eye-roll would do, much of their outrage concerned policy decisions about healthcare and immigrants that would, and did, actually affect people’s lives. Much of the outrage around wokeness comes down to rote business decisions and people living their lives. It’s just disguised as “protecting children” from wokeness. That framework is even more confounding, though, when taking into account how little conservatives seem concerned with protecting children from being slaughtered in schools or molested in church .
If you think the greatest threat facing your children today is finding out how Jackie Robinson was treated when he became the first Black baseball pro, I just have to ask: What must you think of your child? That if they learn unfortunate history lessons, it will render them too riddled with guilt to function? That they are such mindless automatons that meeting one trans person will rewire their entire gender identity? That seeing a rainbow shirt at Target will make them decide to turn gay? Because Target said it was OK ? If my parents thought so little of me that they tried to ban those things in order to protect me from them, I would be furious. I would also likely grow up coddled, sheltered, and completely unprepared for a tough and challenging world.
It’s hard to believe that conservatives actually do feel so strongly about all these things and aren’t just semi-reluctantly going through the motions. If they really do feel that way, though, to be honest: Fuck their feelings.
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I find most of these boycotts silly yet amusing regardless if the focus is Target or Chick-fil-A.
It also amuses me had the two extremes have switched sides, progressives used to attack big corporate businesses while hard righters defended them, now that's reversed.
It's a mixed up, muddled up and shook up world.
Except for Lola..........L O L A Lola, la la la la Lolaaa
It's all very simple.
When you demand that other people change behavior because of your feelings and then assault their character when they disagree, it pisses people off.
When you do it often enough for long enough, pissed off becomes a habit.
mmmm....because liberals never have their character attacked on NT, do they?
Are they constantly called Fascists, racists, misogynists, homophobes, thumpers, or any of the other endearing terms we see DAILY here used on conservatives?
I'm not talking about NT specifically, but your point agrees with mine.
You'll also notice my statement was not specific to liberals.
For centuries, the primary perpetrator of enforced feelings was organized religion, and they attempted to impose conservative restrictions. These people invented and perfected cancel culture over thousands of years.
So to merge your point and mine, describe your reaction to religious conservatives trying to control your behavior and then assaulting your character when you resist.
We're talking about the same idea being enacted by opposing groups of busybody religious zealots.
If the shoe fits................
I do at times question the intelligence and wisdom of some of the liberals hereabouts, but never their character.
Thank you for making his point,
See, there is the problem.
It doesn't fit but that doesn't seem to stop the fine folks here from using the terms constantly and incorrectly.
In fact, I believe I have pointed out this to you personally before regarding the word fascist. Don't you remember?
I don't like being called immoral or an indecent person because I hold no religious views or being told I'm indecent or immoral because I support the right to choose. Certain people here think one is immoral or indecent because they hold a more liberal world view than them. If you wish to think that about me, fine, but if you go spewing it in my face don't expect me to roll over and take it.
You don't do those things, Jack. For the most part we hold different views but you don't have a tendency to attack someone's character....many here do even if they say they don't
You probably could have stopped the sentence right here. Almost nobody likes being called immoral or indecent, no matter the situation. The more often it happens the more negativity it generates.
You have expertly encapsulated exactly how Donald Trump was elected. Trump supporters are not generally overly eloquent, so they don't generally articulate it like you have, but you have described exactly how the majority of them feel and what motivated them to vote the way they did.
yeah but certain people think you can't be a moral person without a religious foundation which is why I carried on to my conclusion
I need clarification on your last paragraph. What exactly motivated them to vote the way they did? Was it because Hillary called them deplorables? That was wrong of her. And now I understand why they voted the way they did if that was the reason
If it (they)were just religious zealots I would have substantially less problems than with politicians trying to push their views into the force of law.
The problem was not that she said it. The problem was that it had been a core belief of a huge number of liberals for decades and they never even tried to hide it.
Her saying it was just a formal admission of the obvious, but it probably did cause some number of people to decide they'd had quite enough and weren't going to roll over and take it anymore.
Meh. Surely you realize that religious zealotry always descends into politicians trying to push their views into the force of law. That's been going on for thousands of years.
And it's still happening right now, on both sides of the aisle.
But what we experience today is several orders of magnitude less acute than almost any other time in history. The Spanish Inquisition is gone. There are no witch trials. The Pope can't depose a government. We don't imprison homosexuals anymore. Hell, you can buy marijuana in Oklahoma now.
And as much as the lunatic fringe of liberalism bears a distinct resemblance to a religion, we're not in any real danger of them making much headway, either. They are not going to be able to force the rest of us to pay off their loans or buy their health insurance. They're not going to be able to outlaw guns or make it a crime to misgender someone. We'll still be driving internal combustion cars for another few decades, and the rest of life is going to proceed much like it always has.
The American system is designed in such a way that cooler, saner, more rational heads prevail. I don't see that changing any time soon.
Nope not even close to the same but they will continue to say that it is. Because in their minds, a lie told enough times becomes the truth.
Yes, but that doesn't mean that it somehow becomes less important to push back at this clear misuse of public authority.
So that makes it all better when someone tries to discriminate against a class of people just because they are a little different from societal norms? Just because we as a people, a culture, say that "you are wrong" to behave in this way that harms no-one, we therefore have the right and authority to regulate their existence above and beyond any of the holy crowd? "Ahhh, we're not burning 'em. We're jus' having a li'l righteous fun!"
Fuck that.
It isn't the lunatic fringe of liberalism that I am worried about. It is the people making specious arguments about "protecting children" and "parental rights" to whip up a frenzy of action that do. I really don't care what anybody does as long as they are not hurting anyone. And the type of people that are pushing those laws are pushing them because they will hurt people. That's what the laws are designed to do. They are not designed to protect children. I can say with a fair degree of confidence that the children don't care. Some of their parent's do, most don't ,and some vehemently reject these attempts to protect the status quo, because they aren't the status quo. They are, however, people with all of the rights and responsibilities of every other person in the country who are actively being denied the opportunity to just go about their lives like everybody else.
Fuck that.
Are we going to push back on both wings of this batshittery or just the one you don't agree with?
Describe the specific "discrimination" in question. Lots of people claim "discrimination" when there isn't any. And no, it's not "all better", but yes, it's a shitload better than torturing people. Let's keep some perspective.
People never worry about the familiar lunatics.
Which laws are we talking about?
Sounds like someone we all know? I will let our readers decide.
I'm certainly happy that I have feelings, those devoid of feeling are likely to have a mental disorder.
Yeah...that other thing....like being "woke" is supposed to be wrong? Why? Because I care about other people and what kind of legacy I will leave this world?
And, Trout - I'm gonna stretch your comment to cover something is continually being bashed in our faces - specifically on NT.
MAGA - Make America Great Again. No, that's not a political party or a think-tank or a corporation. It's an idea that many, many people have and strongly believe in of wanting to have America be the America that most of us grew up in - the playing outside when the street lights came on - drinking water from the garden hose - walking from your friend's home back to yours before dinner is on the table - riding bicycles without helmets or chain guards - climbing trees - going swimming in the local watering hole - playing "hide'n'seek" outside, in the dark - sandlot baseball/football games - pajama parties - and more.
I would love to Make America Great Again - the America I spent 27 months in a sweltering, raining, horrendously humid country dodging bullets, eating "C" rats five days outta seven, hoping like hell I'd get some mail or a CARE PACKAGE, fighting for the ideology of the day of freedom by, for and of the people waiting back home for us/me.
But - things have changed and attitudes of the 70's/80's/90's/00's have gone through tremendous upheaval - getting away from the "Us" and the flag wavers to becoming the "Me/Me/Me" and flag burners - the MAGA's and the WOKE's.
MAGA folks are also of the opinion that they can care about other people and leave a much better legacy to this world. At least they are on both sides of my family.
I don't have a friggin' clue as to what a "woke" person is "supposed to be". Are they supposed to be slandered/laughed at/spit on/buried while alive and be treated as total trash?
WHY????
Same question regarding what a "MAGA" person is "supposed to be". Are they supposed to be slandered/laughed at/spit on/buried while alive and be treated as total trash?
WHY????
There are some on NT - and other places - who get great joy outta putting others down and they have adopted the phrases MAGA and WOKE to add to their chortle powers and "Slam Dunks" against folks with differing ideologies/beliefs.
Here's where I stand - as do many others -
I will honor and respect all who will, at least, put forth an effort to do the same with me. I admire your desires, wishes and goals of caring for others and, Ma'am, that is one hell of a legacy to leave as an example of how to live and give.
thank-you
Excellent post 1st.
Outstanding!
So wishing to return to what you experienced in your growing up years is what you want to return to? We are close to the same age but seem to have experienced a whole different world. You didn't experience being called a ''red nigger'' or not being able to sit in the school bus or even attend a ''white'' school? Were you not chased out of stores because you were scum? No memory of ''Indian Boarding School''? No memory of having to fight every day to avoid being beaten up just for the fun of ''rolling an Indian''. That seems to be a great place to grow up, where was that 1st? What part of America did I miss?
I remember that county as well, 24 months 2 weeks and 2 days there trying to stay alive and slowly learning that it had nothing to do with freedom for America, but an ill-conceived killing machine that ate young Americans and spit them out. Part of me survived and part didn't do I thank Uncle Sam for that or do I look at it realistically and know that America made a huge mistake that cost us over 58,000 lives not counting those that have walked on since from Agent Orange, various wounds or suicide. That America?
Yes, we have gone through tremendous upheaval, and IMO for the better, do you think that the civil rights era was me/me/me? Do you think that getting equal treatment was me/me/me? I certainly look at it differently. I see an America that was/is changing for the better, not stuck in the past.
When I see America I see a country with unlimited potential and a history of having done some great things and also have done some awful things. It is facing and acknowledging those awful things and moving to change them while continuing to do great things that will make us a great nation with unlimited potential.
When groups try to take away my rights by telling me what books I can read, and what entertainment I can have that isn't America, that is the same old BS that we experienced in the past and fought to conquer.
I vividly remember the oppressive racial segregation of the 50s and early '60s in rural Oklahoma. Even as a child the cruelty of such rank inequality was shocking. Maybe those growing up in some early suburban enclaves were blithely unaware but America got better since then. White people were mad as hell when restaurants and schools and retail store were integrated. They shut down our city pool and the last movie theater rather than share with non-whites. Farm mechanization, herbicides and pesticides resulted in the depopulation of much of the rural South and most former farm workers moved to the cities but those were not "Great Times" for many many Americans, in the light of all reality...
Unfortunately, much of the conservative brand has devolved into scapegoating coupled with victimhood. Rather than present a platform that solves important problems, it’s all about protecting “good people” from the “weirdos.” Trump, DeSantis, and even Nikki Haley (who once seemed reasonable by comparison) spend much of their time talking about the evils of LGBT people and anyone who might be nice to them.
When they aren’t doing that, they’re accusing teachers of supporting pedophilia, and grooming the children for some nefarious life of sexual deviancy. Or accusing the same of hating America because they want to teach real history that includes actual important facts about slavery and racism in this country.
The gloves are off for women, as well. Instead of rushing to revitalize the economy, develop infrastructure, fight crime, or any of a dozen other legislative agendas they could pursue, we have a flood of highly restrictive abortion laws that are actually putting the lives of women in jeopardy.
They insist on parental rights for vaccines and school instruction - but if your kid might be trans, you get no parental rights. The state will tell you how to handle your kid.
They’re so deeply into freak-out mode over things that don’t even concern them, but it’s not enough to have an opinion and move on with your life, or even just mind your own business in the first place. No, they actually are passing laws to restrict the actions and expression of people they don’t like because they’re all just so dangerous. The party that likes to read the Constitution in the House of Representatives has set aside that posturing in favor of - figuratively - lighting the Constitution on fire and dancing on its ashes.
And if you point out that they’re governing from prejudice and bigotry, they whine and cry about their feelings, rather than examine their actual motives - all while restricting the rights and liberty of others.
Somehow calling someone like that a bigot is a thousand times worse than them calling someone else a perverted groomer of children or a sexual predator.
And here’s the thing about that for me. I’m not interested in calling people names, but if you are doing unto others because of unfair prejudice, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you prefer to be a person who is fair and respects the rights of others? Don’t you want that to describe our country? Maybe you have a prejudice and you haven’t even considered it.
There is far too much political energy being directed at certain groups of people. That, alone, should be a red flag that should inspire a dose of thoughtfulness instead of the rage and fear we see.
Tacos! Well said.