I did this steelmanning for decades. Teased out the nuance. Assumed people were coming from the best intent, even if they expressed themselves ham-fistedly. Rol

I did this steelmanning for decades. Teased out the nuance. Assumed people were coming from the best intent, even if they expressed themselves ham-fistedly. Rolled my eyes at friends reflexively shoehorning everything into "racism". Hated the refrain of "dog whistle" rather than addressing the actual point. And so on. At the point when we've got an overtly fascist administration that is ineffective at doing anything but making a show of putting some powerless brown people in concentration camps, yet is still being cheered by a large number of people? I'm coming around to the idea that the underlying hidden variable is really just racism. So I'm done engaging with the dog whistles as rational points, at least until the pendulum starts swinging back. I'm certainly not going to be a useful idiot enabling this shit. (I'm even left wondering if the reactionaries' constant refrain of "California [delenda est]" isn't just a straight up invitation to enter the racism closet. I spent time in LA. The place is a nuthouse. But when I respond to the "California..." narrative with actual sympathetic criticism it's still just crickets like I'm not understanding something)