Portrait of the most average, most well meaning, fairly intelligent, well-intentioned, non-narcissistic, sweet-natured, curious, mostly mainstream educated American . Her name is Elisabeth. Lizzy. Highschool teacher. For the tiktok era she’s quite well-read. Here are some of Lizzy’s opinions:

  • the Demcrats aren’t perfect, but they’re the only ones who can save America. From what exactly isn’t clear. The question ‘saved from whom?’ would surprise her, since all agree that America is in need of saving. If you push her she might say: racism, bigotry, the patriarchat, lobbyists, climate change, the widening wealth gap, the faillure of educational institution or she might say ‘get money out of politics’ or inflation or student debt. Don’t ask her what causes inflation. In fact, unless you enjoy confusing her or making her feel you are being needlessly adversarial, don’t ask her questions.
  • of all political disasters Trump is the worst one ever. His style, the constant puffed up massacring of facts, the lack of manners, the outrageous statements, the sometimes not so subtle hints he’s thinking about being a dicator, it’s all highly disturbing to her. Because she only knows the more famous presidents and all in a mainstream light she genuinely doesn’t know there were other US president who were just as rough, some of them hard drinkers (Trump doesn’t drink, though he seems to binge eat), just as anti-social and pro big capital as Trump. There certainly have been presidents who were much more gifted, educated, morally sophistaced, thoughtful and less narcissistic, but if you could bring all previous presidents into one room together with Trump, some might outdo him in shameless self-promotion.
  • she’s sure there’s child labor in Africa to get the stuff that becomes her smartphone in China, and she finds this enraging and sad. Nothing in her behaviour shows that she cares much beyond that
  • she thinks Israel has gone too far and that the number of Palestinian children killed is ‘excessive’ or that the number is unacceptable. If you ask her what number of horrifically maimed children would be acceptable to her, like 5, or 30, or 200 or 5,000 or 20,000, she says you are making fun of her and refuses to answer
  • she thinks most drugs should stay illegal, cause drugs are bad, very bad. If you ask her if drug lords would be happy or unhappy if all drugs were legalized, at least decriminalized, some available on prescription, some distributed to users in state funded clinics and some regulated and available in stores, she says a lot of people would start using and that it’s a bad idea. If you ask if her upbringing is speaking or her deep research on the effects of decriminalizing drugs she feels attacked and made fun of.
  • she finds abortion a right as long as the baby isn’t x months old. She’s against euthanasia though, especially if physically healthy people can also apply for it. Lizzy has a lot of clear convictions about when a human life can be terminated and when not
  • she secretly, very secretly, thinks homeless people should just try harder. Quite often she does give coins to beggars, or to avoid that they buy alcohol she buys them food. Lizzy is ok with alcohol, but she doesn’t know that she only finds it unacceptable when minors, pregnant women, the homeless consume it. She’s not very happy about her boyfriend’s drinking either. And dad’s drinking? Bad, but still, dad isn’t homeless. He always provided for her, he has earned his right to pass out on the regular.
  • she has ‘feminist’ in all her online bios and daily fantasizes about an extremely confident rich man (sometimes woman) essentially enslaving her with her consent and using her with almost no limits. In real life she’s offended when men look at her, cause it’s never the kind of guy from her fantasies. S ex with her boyfriend feels like having a heavy blanket move up and down on her body for a good three minutes, sometimes five.
  • she finds reading books extremely important and last year she read one NYT bestseller ‘you are the soulmate you’ve been waiting for’ and bought 20 others, plus three classics. If anyone asks she’s reading either Murakami or Harari. Whatever name ends in -i will do
  • she genuinely thinks AI will make everyone unemployed and she would ban some AI if she could. Do NOT ask her what a Luddite is. Stop making fun of Lizzy.
  • she thinks Ukraine is the last bulwark against the mongolian, no, the Russian horde
  • she’s sure that if only she ever got to live in Italy all her problems would go away and the real Lizzy would finally emerge
  • Lizzy is on a diet (she isn’t) and is very much against the objectification of women while smearing expensive creams that claim to combat cellulitis on her legs and doing whatever other beauty nonsense that is fashionable these days
  • Lizzy goes to the gym. This is factually true. Lizzy will never tell you what she really does at the gym. But her fingers work out a lot while scrolling through her workout playlists. Nobody can deny that. If selecting music standing next to an exercise machine would be an olympic discipline she’d be killing it, even faster than the IDF kills an unarmed teenager
  • Lizzy’s strongest opinion is that she is a good person, and that all her opinions are rooted in research (sometimes over half of a wikipedia entry and two questions to chatgpt to see if chatgpt agrees with her) and rationality
  • Lizzy truly wants to see a better world, but she can’t define that better world, she does know it would be better without people who disagree with her (all the uneducated deplorables) and other than getting all worked up for 45 seconds when her social media feed shows her a dead child or a n unhinged speech by some politician, until she sees a dog carrying ducklets across a street or a female astronaut who overcame cancer and now climbed Mont Blanc on her knees, she does remarkably little, not even for herself

If the few truly evil energetic people and the low energy minions who support them mess up this world more than the many, many variants of Lizzy is still debatable.

It could be 50-50.

Lizzy is sure that if everyone woke up with Lizzy’s attitudes, temperament and opinions tomorrow there would be world peace by the time of the evening news.

And that is one of her most unassailable positions.

In a world of only Lizzies there would be no wars.

But in a world with a lot of Lizzies and an political, economic, social system that requires a deep, very carefully considered overhaul to make the system work for all, the minority of people that enjoys war, exploitation, dominance, killing for money and influence, in short those who live to extract as much as possible from others and giving back as little as possible, that minority will always.

That was kinda depressing.

Listen to Dizzy Miss Lizzy by the Beatles to cheer yourself up.

You’re not Lizzy.

Lizzy’s feed is not as alternative as yours.