I’m pretty sure this is common knowledge among Lemmy’s politically engaged userbase, but with this community having been closed for eight months, I’ll try to nail down a (verbose) definition here:
- A person (“the victim”) has been treated cruelly and unjustly.
- The victim directly helped in advancing e.g. a statute, politician, philosophy, or organization (“the leopard(s)”) via endorsement, voting, activism, etc.
- The leopards have substantially harmed a group of people through cruel and unjust actions (“eaten their faces”), and there is a logical throughline from the leopards to the face-eating.
- The victim knew or reasonably should have known that the leopards would eat people’s faces if given the power to. They helped the leopards anyway because they’re indifferent to or actively enjoy this group’s suffering.
- The victim is then shocked to find that the leopards have eaten their face as well (“I didn’t think the leopards would eat MY face!”). Usually, any reasonable outside observer would have concluded that the victim was likely part of the group whose faces the leopards would eat.
- A common element is a lack of an apology to anyone the leopards have hurt, tacitly indicating they haven’t learned any real lesson in empathy and only care that they have now personally had their face eaten.
- Another one is the (incorrect and denialist) belief by the victim that the leopards have simply eaten their face in error and need only be informed of their mistake to make it stop. (E.g. pleading on social media to a politician about their specific case).
A prototypical example:
>Adrian Personson relies on assistance they receive through Social Service. They endorse and vote for the Austerity Party – knowing one of their main promises is to slash spending by making sure Social Service doesn’t go to the people who “don’t deserve it”. The Austerity Party wins against the Social Spending Party and ascends to power. To Adrian’s shock, they receive a letter months later stating they’ve been cut off from Social Service. They take to social media to write an outraged post about how they’re a good, honest person who doesn’t deserve this.
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I’m always reminded of this story when I think of Leopards ate my face
On Monday, the New York Times’s Patricia Mazzei published a dispatch from Marianna, Florida — a small, politically conservative town that depends on jobs from a federal prison and thus has been deeply hurt by the government shutdown. In the piece, Marianna residents grapple with the fact that President Donald Trump, who most residents support, is playing a role in the pain created by lost wages.
Most Marianna residents support Trump’s border wall, his key demand in the shutdown fight, and don’t blame him for the fight. But Crystal Minton, a secretary at the prison who is also a single mother caring for disabled parents, had a somewhat different reaction — one that reveals an essential truth about the core Trump’s political appeal.
“I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” Minton told Mazzei. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
Crystal had her face eaten and I’m partly sad the leopard didn’t keep going because Crystal sounds like she probably deserves it
You seem to have nailed it. I can’t think of anything I’d add. Your prototypical example is perfect.
There’s gonna be soooo much face-eating and finding out going forward from Jan 20, 2025
Question: why is it called “leopards eating a face”? Why is it leopards and not, say, rhinos or dolphins or geese? Why do they only eat faces? Do they not eat the rest of the body?
There’s another origin story that revolves around someone having a pet leopard, got mauled by it, and still refused to see that a leopard is probably a terrible animal for a pet.
