There's a thing I keep seeing in discussions of politics and social justice and free speech. When comic book covers get pulled, when things get criticised, when stuff happens that some people don't like. Those people blame someone, sometimes in pejorative terms like 'SJW' and 'feminazi'. And sometimes it escalates into full-blown, paranoid conspiracy. Such as this gem from a Facebook thread:
"So the left excludes, bans, shouts-down, censors, banishes, demonizes, all badthought and badthinkers everywhere they can..."
There was more to it, but the rest is not germane.
I have no doubt that this person feels strongly about this, and from his point of view it may even seem true. Somehow. I don't know, it seems pretty distorted to me. It's like, if anyone was excluded, banned, shouted down or what have you, a lot of the time it's because that person was being an asshole. Not simply because they said stuff that people didn't agree with. Although that may also happen. I dunno, I wasn't there.
Also, censorship? Man, I didn't know the government intervened in stupid Internet squabbles.
But then there's the second part of the scree, "badthought" and "badthinkers". Wrongthink. Groupthink. Whateverthehellthink they lifted from 1984 and Minority Report. The idea that THE ENEMY are marching around jackbooting anyone who isn't 'ideologically pure', who doesn't 'toe the party line'.
Which, again, I don't buy, see point above about being an asshole.
So they lie to themselves about their own behaviour, justify it in their own minds so that it's THE OTHER GUYS that are at fault. But that's not the only lie they're telling themselves.
The other lie is that they don't do it too.
Oh, they (in this case 'the right', right wing, conservatives, etc.) use different words. Libtard, prog, 'cultural marxism'. Statements that the people to the left of them are all programmed drones, all fakers posing for the moral high ground. And so on.
Different words, same thing. Don't toe their party line? Don't match their politics? Say something they deem to be too liberal? BAM.
Not all of them, sure, but it happens. Like so, from earlier tonight:
"Of course it was also specifically chosen to point out that, like the good Prog you are, you would go right for the perceived "injustice" just like you've been programmed to in order to engage in moral status preening."
Yeeeeeah. I'm not the only one who's been programmed, buddy boy. You're basically a wind-up toy with springs made of frustration and anger.
But of course he doesn't see it that way.
People are weird.
Remember that a great deal of that comes from projection. Not just on the Right, tho, it happens on the Left. Happens anywhere with people.
ReplyDeleteIt -feels- to me that the Right projects MORE of their own faults onto the Left, but since I tend to avoid the asshole areas of the Left, and the asshole areas of the Right tend to be IN MY FACE all the damn time, I'm pretty sure that's a bias on my part.
Once I realized that when I argue against someone like that, I'm not defending myself, because it's -not about me-, it became a lot easier to ignore or deal with usefully. No matter how personally insulting they get, unless they have said something that actually functionally connects to what I have actually said or done, it's usually just chaff to ignore. There are whole script-like phrases and screeds that my eye just skates over, not even taking in the words, like a filter to get to the meat of their argument.
Usually, tho, by the time I've sorted out all the chaff, I can't find a grain of wheat to actually use to discuss. Argument by script is not a valid argument!
Ah, good catch! In an earlier iteration of this post, when I was rolling it over in my head, I had meant to cover those exact points, that the Left most likely engages in the same projection, and that I just don't see it because I don't hang out in the asshole areas of the Left. Thanks for making the point for me. :)
ReplyDeleteAs for wheat from chaff, yeah, winnowing's hard sometimes, but there's always something that can be used, even if it's just snarkbait.