Thursday, December 09, 2021

Meanwhile, On the Road to Damascus...

 You don’t get to be “against the rich” if the richest people in the country fund your party in order to preserve their government-sponsored monopolies. You are not “a supporter of free speech” if you oppose free speech for people who disagree with you. You are not “for the people” if you pit most of them against each other based on the color of their skin, or force them out of their jobs because of personal choices related to their bodies. You are not “serious about economic inequality” when you happily order from Amazon without caring much for the devastating impact your purchases have on the small businesses that increasingly are either subjugated by Jeff Bezos’ behemoth or crushed by it altogether. You are not “for science” if you refuse to consider hypotheses that don’t conform to your political convictions and then try to ban critical thought and inquiry from the internet. You are not an “anti-racist” if you label—and sort!—people by race. You are not “against conformism” when you scare people out of voicing dissenting opinions. [More]

Agreed. Now let's talk guns...

[Via Roger J]

2 comments:

Henry said...

"Not being a left-wing racist or police state fan doesn’t make you a white supremacist or a Trump worshipper, either. Only small children, machines, and religious fanatics think in binaries."
I guess nobody has yet told Liel that the trauma of The Turn is always immediately followed by years of philosophical discomfort and bloating. Coherent worldviews coalesce for a reason, and cognitive dissonance is never a workable substitute for them.

Anonymous said...

"And then came The Turn. If you’ve lived through it yourself, you know that The Turn doesn’t happen overnight, that it isn’t easily distilled into one dramatic breakdown moment, that it happens hazily and over time—first a twitch, then a few more, stretching into a gnawing discomfort and then, eventually, a sense of panic."

It has been said that a young man who is not a liberal has no heart while an old man who is not a conservative has no brain. That would imply a change somewhere in the middle. And like "Mal de Mer" that change can be anywhere from uncomfortable to nauseating. I guess "The Turn" is as good a label as any.