One of the most insidious things that has happened over the past few decades is this overarching narrative that the left and right are equally evil and two sides of the same coin. That they are in any way comparable.
It has poisoned literally every aspect of life.
“The left went too far with ‘woke’, but that doesn’t mean we need to go too far in the other direction!”
No. fuck that. Wanting basic human dignity for all people is not comparable to fascism. It’s insane that this even needs to be said.
It’s fucking baked into everything at this point. It is inescapable. I fucking hate it.
If you want to take this one step further, it’s the the inevitable result of identity politics in general.
Once you decide to generalize away per-issue stances just to paint them “left or right”, “red or blue”, “my team your team” then it becomes trivial to make an argument that both sides are the same, or conversely that both sides are polar opposites. Whatever suits you.
Republicans and Democrats both shovelled weapons to Israel. They are thus, as a whole, identical. Indistinguishable. Republicans are erasing reproductive Rights. Democrats are trying to guarantee them. They are thus, as a whole, complete polar opposites.
Generalizing from the specific is a convenient mechanism, but error prone, and it leads to absolute trash discourse… Which in turn leads to a failure of consensus for specific demands to make during a protest.
One of the most insidious things that has happened over the past few decades is this overarching narrative that the left and right are equally evil and two sides of the same coin. That they are in any way comparable.
It has poisoned literally every aspect of life.
“The left went too far with ‘woke’, but that doesn’t mean we need to go too far in the other direction!”
No. fuck that. Wanting basic human dignity for all people is not comparable to fascism. It’s insane that this even needs to be said.
It’s fucking baked into everything at this point. It is inescapable. I fucking hate it.
If you want to take this one step further, it’s the the inevitable result of identity politics in general.
Once you decide to generalize away per-issue stances just to paint them “left or right”, “red or blue”, “my team your team” then it becomes trivial to make an argument that both sides are the same, or conversely that both sides are polar opposites. Whatever suits you.
Republicans and Democrats both shovelled weapons to Israel. They are thus, as a whole, identical. Indistinguishable. Republicans are erasing reproductive Rights. Democrats are trying to guarantee them. They are thus, as a whole, complete polar opposites.
Generalizing from the specific is a convenient mechanism, but error prone, and it leads to absolute trash discourse… Which in turn leads to a failure of consensus for specific demands to make during a protest.
“No Kings” isn’t realistically actionable.