OK, I realize this is the first time I've seen you use this, and so what I'm about to say may not apply to you personally.
But I'm getting really tired of other people who, whenever they hear any criticism of the left and the right, throw out 'bothsideism' or 'false equivalence' as if that was a magical error handkerchief on the ground.
OK, I realize this is the first time I've seen you use this, and so what I'm about to say may not apply to you personally.
But I'm getting really tired of other people who, whenever they hear any criticism of the left and the right, throw out 'bothsideism' or 'false equivalence' as if that was a magical error handkerchief on the ground.
Typically, I'm not even trying to say which side is worse nor that they are the same (for reasons noted below), but they imagine I'm trying to say both sides are exactly the same, and they use that like a strawman, distracting from my real points. I want to save society from the excesses of both, not to referee a moral p*ssing match between left and right.
Both sides are dangerous in different ways which are like apples and oranges. Trying to weigh in about who is worse is usually a way to distract from looking at something uncomfortable. "Well, the other side is worse, so shut up". I don't really care about weighing apples and oranges, I want to understand the different pitfalls of each side.
The right, today, is closer to violence, albeit not likely on a large scale. The left may be closer to soft fascism through control of institutions, and could well become violent in the future (they might use proxies to commit the violence of course). The dangers are different but neither becomes less dangerous because the other side is dangerous too!
Both sides have authoritarian tendencies, but the neo-progressive left's has in my opinion more proclivity towards totalitarianism - not just wanting power to enrich some elite at the expense of the neglected poor, but wanting to control every human interaction at a granular level. Pronouns, vocabulary, attitudes - stamping out all wrongthink. At least today, the right doesn't seem likely to want political commisars everywhere to make sure everybody thinks the right thoughts, but I do see the seeds of that kind of control on the left (only for the most noble of purposes of course).
So I'm very willing to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of extremists on both sides as separate issues.
And we need to pay attention to the way that the extremes on one side both inflame and justify the extremes on the other. These two sides bring out the worst on the other side. It's too common to hear "why are you criticising a tiny number of crazies on our side when the other side has more and worse crazies'. And the other side uses the same tactics. We have to break that cycle if we want to regain a sane society.
And in most cases, the characterization of 'bothsidesism' and the accusations of 'false equivalence' have been, at least in my experience, PART of that unconscious attempt to shield one dysfunction by pointing at the other.
I pretty much agree with a lot of what you say, and I guess I only part ways, slightly, with the notion that we shouldn't point out what's going wrong on the *other* side - which in my case is pointing out what's wrong on my own, the left. Just as the right is wrong in thinking that everything wrong with America is the left, the left likewise points fingers and wallows in its own self-righteousness. I don't tend much toward criticizing the right because it's rather a lot like fish in a barrel, and everyone else is doing, most people much better. I criticized the right more when I still lived in the States, stuck with Reaganism/Bushism.
However the left needs to be reminded of its own imperfections, and they need to hear it from one of their own, which is why I liked writing for Medium. Lots more extremists there to challenge - the man-haters (I was big on challenging victim feminism), the whitey-haters, the virtue signallers. Challenging the deeply flawed and scientifically-challenged trans movement is what ultimately, I believe, got me kicked off, although I can't swear antiracist snowflakes didn't have a hand in it.
That's where I think I have something more original to add - not bashing Trump, or COVIDiots, or MAGAt terrorists, but in pointing out how the left contributes to political/social divisiveness and how we need to get over some of our conceits, like that we don't have elements every bit as subject to ludicrously unscientific arguments (like that biological sex means nothing and that you can declare yourself one or t'other based on the way you 'feel') and that we don't subscribe to dumbass conspiracy theories either (plenty of stupid-ass anti-vaccine arguments swallowed uncritically on the left, including in the black community, which is why, when some elements complain about the lopsided effect COVID infections and deaths have on the black community, and healthcare irregularities and disparities and yadda yadda yadda (all valid) I pop up to say something annoying like, "Well, could y'all please knock it off with the damn Tuskegee experiments crap? NO BLACK PERSON IS DYING OF COVID WHILE VAXXED UNLESS THEY HAVE SOME CO-MORBIDITY OR OTHERWISE COMPROMISING HEALTH PROBLEM!"
It's too easy to think of your own side as holy and forget, or just blithely ignore, overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I'm not much for Christianity these days but I thought Jesus put it very well about removing the log from one's own eye first.
Actually, we are pretty much on the same page, and I agree with all that you have said.
I did not mean to give any impression that "we shouldn't point out what's going wrong on the *other* side". It was more about the tendency to avoid consideration of one's own side by changing the subject to the more comfortable topic of the other side's faults.
I am today somewhat of a rogue progressive liberal, who strongly dissents from the direction that neo-progressives have taken the movement. And I direct a lot of my critical thinking at the neo-progressive left ("woke", "successor ideology", "PC", "the elect"), because as you say, there is more need for it, at least where I live. Critiques of the right (even exaggerated critiques) are the water we swim in here. Voices from the left or center, with measured criticism of the neo-progressive ideology (or religion as McWhorter frames it) are in serious undersupply by comparison. Also, having been on the progressive left for half a century, I know the roots of this subculture, and hope to be able to speak to it.
I sense a substantial authoritarian undercurrent to the current neo-progressive approach, so I am concerned about where that is leading if they get and use more power to remake the world in their vision. But I also fear that they are going to trigger an over-reaction which brings right wing authoritarianism into power. If voices more in the middle cannot bring the neo-progressives into more sanity, then force from much further to the right may do so. Or the attempt from the right will trigger & justify the latent authoritarianism of the left.
So I agree about the need to pay attention to the log in our own eye, not just the mote in the eye of the other. (Except I'd say they are both logs, albeit differently shaped ones).
I will note that in addition to citing the long ago Tuskegee experiment as a reason to avoid medical care today, another supposed gross injustice often cited in the same breath is the case of Henrietta Lacks. She was not publicly credited as the cell donor from whom a line of research cell cultures was derived, and she herself did not give permission nor receive compensation (other than free health care). But that's hardly a logical reason to not get vaccinated! She was not harmed in any way, and did not receive bad care.
I used to be very much in favor of digging out "the seamy underside of democracy" and exposing every historical injustice, with the belief that this would help us improve the future. I am coming to doubt that it's having a net positive effect, because every example is being exaggerated and weaponized to support a narrative of perpetual oppression; it's not used to rebalance and reflect, but to gain power and twist the popular understanding, albeit in a different direction. I think that I may be another in the long list of casualties from failed expectations of rationality.
OK, I realize this is the first time I've seen you use this, and so what I'm about to say may not apply to you personally.
But I'm getting really tired of other people who, whenever they hear any criticism of the left and the right, throw out 'bothsideism' or 'false equivalence' as if that was a magical error handkerchief on the ground.
Typically, I'm not even trying to say which side is worse nor that they are the same (for reasons noted below), but they imagine I'm trying to say both sides are exactly the same, and they use that like a strawman, distracting from my real points. I want to save society from the excesses of both, not to referee a moral p*ssing match between left and right.
Both sides are dangerous in different ways which are like apples and oranges. Trying to weigh in about who is worse is usually a way to distract from looking at something uncomfortable. "Well, the other side is worse, so shut up". I don't really care about weighing apples and oranges, I want to understand the different pitfalls of each side.
The right, today, is closer to violence, albeit not likely on a large scale. The left may be closer to soft fascism through control of institutions, and could well become violent in the future (they might use proxies to commit the violence of course). The dangers are different but neither becomes less dangerous because the other side is dangerous too!
Both sides have authoritarian tendencies, but the neo-progressive left's has in my opinion more proclivity towards totalitarianism - not just wanting power to enrich some elite at the expense of the neglected poor, but wanting to control every human interaction at a granular level. Pronouns, vocabulary, attitudes - stamping out all wrongthink. At least today, the right doesn't seem likely to want political commisars everywhere to make sure everybody thinks the right thoughts, but I do see the seeds of that kind of control on the left (only for the most noble of purposes of course).
So I'm very willing to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of extremists on both sides as separate issues.
And we need to pay attention to the way that the extremes on one side both inflame and justify the extremes on the other. These two sides bring out the worst on the other side. It's too common to hear "why are you criticising a tiny number of crazies on our side when the other side has more and worse crazies'. And the other side uses the same tactics. We have to break that cycle if we want to regain a sane society.
And in most cases, the characterization of 'bothsidesism' and the accusations of 'false equivalence' have been, at least in my experience, PART of that unconscious attempt to shield one dysfunction by pointing at the other.
Let's stop that.
I pretty much agree with a lot of what you say, and I guess I only part ways, slightly, with the notion that we shouldn't point out what's going wrong on the *other* side - which in my case is pointing out what's wrong on my own, the left. Just as the right is wrong in thinking that everything wrong with America is the left, the left likewise points fingers and wallows in its own self-righteousness. I don't tend much toward criticizing the right because it's rather a lot like fish in a barrel, and everyone else is doing, most people much better. I criticized the right more when I still lived in the States, stuck with Reaganism/Bushism.
However the left needs to be reminded of its own imperfections, and they need to hear it from one of their own, which is why I liked writing for Medium. Lots more extremists there to challenge - the man-haters (I was big on challenging victim feminism), the whitey-haters, the virtue signallers. Challenging the deeply flawed and scientifically-challenged trans movement is what ultimately, I believe, got me kicked off, although I can't swear antiracist snowflakes didn't have a hand in it.
That's where I think I have something more original to add - not bashing Trump, or COVIDiots, or MAGAt terrorists, but in pointing out how the left contributes to political/social divisiveness and how we need to get over some of our conceits, like that we don't have elements every bit as subject to ludicrously unscientific arguments (like that biological sex means nothing and that you can declare yourself one or t'other based on the way you 'feel') and that we don't subscribe to dumbass conspiracy theories either (plenty of stupid-ass anti-vaccine arguments swallowed uncritically on the left, including in the black community, which is why, when some elements complain about the lopsided effect COVID infections and deaths have on the black community, and healthcare irregularities and disparities and yadda yadda yadda (all valid) I pop up to say something annoying like, "Well, could y'all please knock it off with the damn Tuskegee experiments crap? NO BLACK PERSON IS DYING OF COVID WHILE VAXXED UNLESS THEY HAVE SOME CO-MORBIDITY OR OTHERWISE COMPROMISING HEALTH PROBLEM!"
It's too easy to think of your own side as holy and forget, or just blithely ignore, overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I'm not much for Christianity these days but I thought Jesus put it very well about removing the log from one's own eye first.
Actually, we are pretty much on the same page, and I agree with all that you have said.
I did not mean to give any impression that "we shouldn't point out what's going wrong on the *other* side". It was more about the tendency to avoid consideration of one's own side by changing the subject to the more comfortable topic of the other side's faults.
I am today somewhat of a rogue progressive liberal, who strongly dissents from the direction that neo-progressives have taken the movement. And I direct a lot of my critical thinking at the neo-progressive left ("woke", "successor ideology", "PC", "the elect"), because as you say, there is more need for it, at least where I live. Critiques of the right (even exaggerated critiques) are the water we swim in here. Voices from the left or center, with measured criticism of the neo-progressive ideology (or religion as McWhorter frames it) are in serious undersupply by comparison. Also, having been on the progressive left for half a century, I know the roots of this subculture, and hope to be able to speak to it.
I sense a substantial authoritarian undercurrent to the current neo-progressive approach, so I am concerned about where that is leading if they get and use more power to remake the world in their vision. But I also fear that they are going to trigger an over-reaction which brings right wing authoritarianism into power. If voices more in the middle cannot bring the neo-progressives into more sanity, then force from much further to the right may do so. Or the attempt from the right will trigger & justify the latent authoritarianism of the left.
So I agree about the need to pay attention to the log in our own eye, not just the mote in the eye of the other. (Except I'd say they are both logs, albeit differently shaped ones).
I will note that in addition to citing the long ago Tuskegee experiment as a reason to avoid medical care today, another supposed gross injustice often cited in the same breath is the case of Henrietta Lacks. She was not publicly credited as the cell donor from whom a line of research cell cultures was derived, and she herself did not give permission nor receive compensation (other than free health care). But that's hardly a logical reason to not get vaccinated! She was not harmed in any way, and did not receive bad care.
I used to be very much in favor of digging out "the seamy underside of democracy" and exposing every historical injustice, with the belief that this would help us improve the future. I am coming to doubt that it's having a net positive effect, because every example is being exaggerated and weaponized to support a narrative of perpetual oppression; it's not used to rebalance and reflect, but to gain power and twist the popular understanding, albeit in a different direction. I think that I may be another in the long list of casualties from failed expectations of rationality.