man, this really hit home for me, so well done and on point (cue Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly"):
"I am so tired of being lied to. I am so tired of being expected to join in with the liars and echo and the lies - or else. My curiosity as a flawed but well-meaning and truth-seeking human being is offended at this lockstep deceit and refusal to have adult discussions about complex and difficult issues of great public import."
I am also a former lifelong liberal who is exhausted with the constant emotional blackmail and moral bullying and the endless bigotry accusations of the modern Left. I haven't lost any friends (yet) because I bite my tongue and because whenever politics comes up I just yell "A pox on both their houses!" and change the subject.
But this inability to have adult discussions about complex issues, to take a step back and detach yourself from your political opinions instead of being on a hair-trigger alert for a wrong word, just this entire cynical weaponization of thought where any good-faith disagreement has to be about "privilege" or "racism"--not only is it stupid and hateful, it's become standard M.O. for the people who consider themselves the educated, enlightened, tolerant defenders of democracy!
I think Twitter then Trump then Floyd broke liberals' brains and I don't see them recovering anytime soon.
I agree with most of what you say, except that I question whether it was Trump (and his mean tweets) or the media hype about Trump that contibuted to breaking liberals' brains. I suspect it was the latter. Looking back at my own long history of being a liberal, I realize, reluctantly, that for many years I was a member of a Dem cult who believed we were the good people. For me the shock came in 2017 when I and my closest friends, all of us judges, were discussing Russiagate, and I dared ask why everyone was so quick to accept the narrative of the Clinton campaign when the FBI wasn't even given access to the DNC's server. I said I didn't know what the truth was, but I couldn't think of any circumstance where someone could even be tried for an alleged crime, without law enforcement gaining access to the alleged weapon and investigating the crime scene. I still recall the looks on my friends' faces: their eyes went cold and their voices clipped. I had done the unthinkable: I had questioned a narrative that they knew was unsupported by evidence, and in doing that, I had demonstrated that I was no longer a true believer.
Hey, whether it was Trump or the political/media class' massive hysterical allergic reaction to his victory, either way here we are. I am in the same boat as you and find it very sad, disorienting and infuriating.
My lifelong friends who were always cynical libertines are now all transformed into pious scolds! Is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers!
I can only hope the fever passes soon...keep on growlin'!
It's social media, the algorithms pushing outrage to trigger engagement in pursuit of profit. Trump just leveraged the new tech, but the underlying problem is social media.
man, this really hit home for me, so well done and on point (cue Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly"):
"I am so tired of being lied to. I am so tired of being expected to join in with the liars and echo and the lies - or else. My curiosity as a flawed but well-meaning and truth-seeking human being is offended at this lockstep deceit and refusal to have adult discussions about complex and difficult issues of great public import."
I am also a former lifelong liberal who is exhausted with the constant emotional blackmail and moral bullying and the endless bigotry accusations of the modern Left. I haven't lost any friends (yet) because I bite my tongue and because whenever politics comes up I just yell "A pox on both their houses!" and change the subject.
But this inability to have adult discussions about complex issues, to take a step back and detach yourself from your political opinions instead of being on a hair-trigger alert for a wrong word, just this entire cynical weaponization of thought where any good-faith disagreement has to be about "privilege" or "racism"--not only is it stupid and hateful, it's become standard M.O. for the people who consider themselves the educated, enlightened, tolerant defenders of democracy!
I think Twitter then Trump then Floyd broke liberals' brains and I don't see them recovering anytime soon.
I agree with most of what you say, except that I question whether it was Trump (and his mean tweets) or the media hype about Trump that contibuted to breaking liberals' brains. I suspect it was the latter. Looking back at my own long history of being a liberal, I realize, reluctantly, that for many years I was a member of a Dem cult who believed we were the good people. For me the shock came in 2017 when I and my closest friends, all of us judges, were discussing Russiagate, and I dared ask why everyone was so quick to accept the narrative of the Clinton campaign when the FBI wasn't even given access to the DNC's server. I said I didn't know what the truth was, but I couldn't think of any circumstance where someone could even be tried for an alleged crime, without law enforcement gaining access to the alleged weapon and investigating the crime scene. I still recall the looks on my friends' faces: their eyes went cold and their voices clipped. I had done the unthinkable: I had questioned a narrative that they knew was unsupported by evidence, and in doing that, I had demonstrated that I was no longer a true believer.
Hey, whether it was Trump or the political/media class' massive hysterical allergic reaction to his victory, either way here we are. I am in the same boat as you and find it very sad, disorienting and infuriating.
My lifelong friends who were always cynical libertines are now all transformed into pious scolds! Is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers!
I can only hope the fever passes soon...keep on growlin'!
It's social media, the algorithms pushing outrage to trigger engagement in pursuit of profit. Trump just leveraged the new tech, but the underlying problem is social media.