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> But people doing so ought to take a good hard look > at themselves and why they choose to spend their time > and energy on this cause rather than others.
by lhnz 9y ago
> But people doing so ought to take a good hard look
> at themselves and why they choose to spend their time
> and energy on this cause rather than others.
I somewhat agree with this but I think it's generally due to people trying to protect their rights or political position in one area by fighting over another. There are situations where I think it's clear that people have ulterior motives but generally I think what we see are people sparring on political events ill-fit to their particular arguments.
For example, people that dislike the moral righteousness, views and political violence of antifa generally have a similar or greater level of hatred for nazis, but yet when there is a clash between them they are desperate to say "antifa are also terrible". If they don't say this, they feel that it is tacit support for antifa and for political violence. It's the worst time to say this in terms of messaging (serious context/subtext issues), but there is a large audience watching and they feel that they must get their message out.
We're in a strange situation where we have to continually distance ourselves from words and ideas. We can't say "there are two sides to this" because Trump said that and it is 'moral equivocation' [0]. We can't say we're 'centrists' because people call this tacit support of nazis and will point and laugh that we consider ourselves 'radical centrists' (a desperate attempt to seem cool while standing for nothing or whatever biases they are least conscious of).
Pacifism has always been hated. And moderation was never cool. I think we should reclaim these words and perhaps try to convince people to pick their moments better when trying to persuade other people that these things are good. As the saying goes "Is this the hill you want to die on?"
[0] I personally believe that the frame of good/evil is a childish "two-valued orientation" that closes the mind to deeper thinking and to finding a mutual understanding of the world.