It's Not Cool To Be A Democrat. Elon Musk Likes It That Way.

No matter how unpopular the president gets and no matter how monstrous Republicans make their policies and no matter how much vitriol there is for the American right wing, it's never cool to be a Democrat.

It's one of the most dependable aspects of an otherwise fragmented and often-indecipherable political landscape over this past decade: You might support a Democrat for Congress or the presidency or local office, but being a Democrat – supporting Democrats – is not cool. It is the opposite of cool, in fact. In recent years it has been cool, even edgy, to back Republicans and to adopt their bad-faith stances on war and free speech and women's sports. It's a big draw for young men who want nothing more than to trigger their lib parents.

Some of this – maybe much of it – has to do with the bloodless, technocratic, focus group-centric approach many mainline Democrats have taken during this awful era. As fellow citizens are being murdered by the president's personal paramilitary force, elected Dems are posting about the price of avocados or whatever (they do this for a reason, by the way).

But a lot of this phenomenon – despising Democrats no matter what they say or do – stems from an intentionally poisoned information environment designed to turn people against pro-democracy policies and ideas and keep liberals permanently on their back foot.

Research released this week on social media trends since 2020 illustrate why, for one, Elon Musk bought Twitter (to take away a powerful communications tool from the left that probably swung the 2020 presidential election). Among the many shifts on the fascism machine formerly known as Twitter, researchers found a through line: "The more you hate Democrats, the more you post and visit X," and the more likely you are to have your posts seen by others being trained to hate liberals.

This might not matter much to you if, like me, you have happily left Musk's toxic swamp of open naziism for social media platforms that don't inject fascist unreality into people's brains every second of every day. It does matter though. It matters a lot. Because journalists are still hooked by the brain stem to Musk's fascist algorithm; their reality is shaped by the content he puts before them every day (it's why Hasan Piker, who no one knows about, dominates major media headlines).

That, naturally, includes an intense and sustained propaganda campaign against pro-democracy forces as out of touch, elitist, and part of an international conspiracy against aggrieved and persecuted white people.

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This in turn means nothing Democrats say or do can be cool. Being "woke" can't be cool. In fact, being liberal or woke or whatever you want to call it is something we see longtime Trump opponents dismiss. Because, you see, this is simply not cool on Musk's platform. Being woke carries no social purchase on the fascist internet. This is – as I talked about on today's BFT podcast – a structural disadvantage that must be remedied in the coming years if Democrats are to beat back the right's massive social media propaganda advantage.

On today's BFT pod, I talked about this Democratic disadvantage and the need to make elected Republicans feel excruciating political pain if they are to ever play by the rules and (maybe) rethink their stance on gerrymandering. Republicans collectively squealed this week when Virginians approved Democrats' extreme gerrymander of the state.

We need more of that. Much more.

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