Thread
Far Right/Far Left: A thread
Right vs. Left is about a fundamental trade-off. Both sides have a point. The correct bias depends on the current predicament and topic. Sometimes change ranges from sensible to necessary. Other times it ranges from counterproductive to foolhardy.
Right vs. Left is about a fundamental trade-off. Both sides have a point. The correct bias depends on the current predicament and topic. Sometimes change ranges from sensible to necessary. Other times it ranges from counterproductive to foolhardy.
Some people are prone to see possibilities, missed opportunities, and injustices--and such people are often insensitive to the hazards of change. This is the left/liberal/progressive bias.
Other people see the functionality of the system and are prone to focus on the danger of disrupting it. This is the heart of honorable conservatism.
"Far left" begins with a total failure to appreciate that conservatives have a point, and that good governance emerges from the tension between progressive and conservative impulses. It imagines the system does not work at all, and so the risk of change approaches zero.
The far left accumulates selfish people who imagine they're personally likely to benefit from a radical shuffling of the deck. This bias is selfish because it ignores the net effect of change, and the harm to others, it's born of the (generally false) sense one has little to lose
"Defund the police" is classic far-left BS. We naturally don't see the crime that is prevented by the rule of law. Without seeing it, one can delude one's self into believing most of what cops do is bully innocent people. As police are withdrawn, we find out their true net effect
It's confusing at first to see wealthy elites on the far-left, but it shouldn't be. As a system topples into rent-seeking and runaway unfairness (wealth begets power, begets wealth in the west) it's inevitable that those who can't compete will coalesce into a bloodthirsty revolt
One strategy of rent-seeking elites is to persuade the revolution to move on and target others. We see an arms race amongst people who can't easily explain their wealth--they jockey to lead the parade. Their politics are camouflage, their allyship a fraud
"Far right" begins where responsible conservatism leaves off. It takes a perverse pleasure in the misfortune of the downtrodden, and imagines that those angry people are born losers destined to come up short in a game of merit.
If the reasonable right too easily falls into cynicism about the possibility of progress. The far right is opposed to progress on principle, wishing to role back successful measures if only to strengthen the argument that positive change is a fool's errand.
To dodge responsibility for helping those disadvantaged by circumstance, the far right rushes to genetic explanations for misfortune. It never stops to consider that even if its delusional race-fantasies were correct, it wouldn't lift moral obligation, but would shift it instead
Civilization is hurtling down a curvy mountain road--in the fog. Sometimes we need to correct to the right, other times we need to correct to the left.
Far-left and far-right are failure modes, a cliff on one side and oncoming traffic on the other.
Far-left and far-right are failure modes, a cliff on one side and oncoming traffic on the other.
The tension between right and left--the fundamental course correction--is everything. Those on either left or right who think their side is permanently best have lost the plot. Far left and far right are sirens calling us over the centerline, or into the abyss.
The really confusing thing is the current rush to paint people as suffering from political defects that clearly don't apply to them. Take for example @megynkelly, @jordanbpeterson, @DouglasKMurray, @TuckerCarlson. Each has a conservative bent, a concern about the wisdom of change
Fine. But none of them is reflexively against progress. None deny the substantial defects evident in our system. None seem eager for genetic explanations for success or failure. They are people who want things to be better but fear that trying to improve them will make them worse
It would be lovely, given the balance of this thread so far, if I had a similar list of left-leaning people who were frequently stigmatized by those on the right as being "far left", but I can't think of any. Not even one. It's telling.
What I have instead is a long list of left-of-center people who are regularly demonized by those on the "left" as being on the far-right. The pattern is really obvious when you try to fill in these categories. And it fits with @SwipeWright's cartoon RTd by @elonmusk yesterday.
There is something wildly distorted about our discourse at the moment, but it is almost impossible to be even handed in describing it because the distortion is so one-sided. To be balanced would be to be wildly unfair to one side. And it isn't my native side. I'm a lefty.
The freakout about Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter revealed this asymmetry so beautifully. The intensity of reaction is totally understandable. But the explanation for it is hilarious nonsense. Check out @micsolana's piece on it if you haven't.
www.piratewires.com/p/elon-takes-twitter?s=r
www.piratewires.com/p/elon-takes-twitter?s=r
Team Blue has an incredible weapon stretching from the Whitehouse to Facebook, running through Homeland Security, the CDC and every single university in the country. But SURPRISE, @elonmusk just took over the trigger of the weapon. Of course the end is neigh! Why wouldn't it be?
The hard part is for team blue to explain why it is freaking out as if the end coming when the only end that is really coming is the end of its monopoly on discourse in a country where no one is supposed to have one.
Pay attention to who's freaking out. They're confessing.
Pay attention to who's freaking out. They're confessing.
