It makes partisans and other tribalists nuts that my positions are based in principles and probable results rather than tribe-membership & “sending messages”. That’s why they (idiotically) try to shame me out of my positions instead of intellectually challenging them; no sooner do they think they “have my number” than I say, write or tweet something that the partisan brain is unable to process. See, all tribalists have a blind spot: they assume their own tribe, group, party, sect, etc is good and right and can be trusted with power, while their designated “them” group is wholly and completely bad and wrong and in need of Punishment. So if I tweet about LGBT rights, but then say I think it’s wrong (not to mention a fucking waste of everyone’s time) to use the power of the state to destroy an anti-queer bigot, some people are completely unable to comprehend why I don’t see a cake-baker in Colorado as the Second Coming of Hitler. The other day there was a big hulabaloo about that rich kid who didn’t get to go to Harvard because he made racist tweets a year and a half ago, and once again the partisans were confused that I retweeted tweets mocking the situation; tweets pointing out the incredible hypocrisy of politicians for saying “Should someone’s mistake at 16 destroy his whole future?” while also thinking it’s hunky-dory to put 14-year-olds on trial as adults; and tweets saying it’s a bit creepy that people now go trolling through others’ social media histories for the express purpose of ruining the target’s life, and institutions eagerly oblige the snitch. Partisans don’t see the principles at stake here; all they see is a reprehensible person that they want to see hurt, so they completely forget that a weapon once given to the state can never be taken away. Someone argued that in the kid’s case, the comments were made only 18 months ago and were therefore basically the present. I replied, “If you think it’ll stop at 18 months, 18 years or even 18 decades, you haven’t been paying attention.” Also: I’m quite sure a prosecutor wouldn’t accept, “But she would’ve been of age in 18 months!” as a defense. Either people below the magic Instant of Shazam are helpless, incompetent “children” incapable of decision-making, or they aren’t; you can’t have it both ways without hypocrisy. If it’s wrong for Christian bigots to use government violence against LGBT people, it’s also wrong for vengeful LGBT people to use government violence against Christian bigots. But people don’t see it this way; oh, everybody tells their kids “two wrongs don’t make a right”, but they don’t really believe it. What they believe in is us vs. them, and that it’s perfectly OK to use state violence against “them”…regardless of the consequences to everyone.
Blind Spot
June 20, 2019 by Maggie McNeill
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Or worse, that issues like this could be taken on a case-by-case basis with each case being judged on its particular issues and merits. From the context of the Harvard kid’s tweets he was a White kid trying to be cool by calling his friends his “ni**as,” and he probably just needed a little life experience to see why that was a problem… there are real racists out there who shouldn’t go to Harvard, but from what I’ve read he wasn’t one of them.
This is the kind of intellectualism that is sorely needed. Not that phony Noam Chomsky, Molly Ivins, Sirkowski bullshit.
They never question whether their in-group may be wrong or the “others” may be right. They take the stance of their in-group as obvious truth. That has nothing to do with rationality. It is basically the stance that the “others” should be killed (ideally), because they are the “others”. What that makes these people is dangerous fanatics. If you have too many dangerous fanatics, a society fractures. The whole thing also comes with stagnation or worse, because no ideas from the outside can get in.
The fascinating thing is that you find these nil-whit fanatics everywhere and fighting for every possible cause. Of course, they are a far more serious problem than any actual cause ever could be and associating with them because they seem to be on the same side as you is a very bad idea.
In that sense, that cake-baker is a curiosity, he is not important. But the people that do a crusade against him are dangerous and they are important in a very negative sense.
This is how political parties drift. What was once worthy of whole hearted support, is now a call for complete opposition. There are no clearly articulated principles used to guide consideration of any particular event. It’s just a matter of checking which direction the political wind is blowing in whichever tribe and getting on board with the group-think. The truly scary thing though is that it has been proven time and again how people can commit the most horrible acts when they go along with the group. The larger the group, the worse it gets.