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Notes -
This
is just blatantly uncharitable.
And it isn't nice from your behalf to be calling right wingers who aren't abandoning anything remotely conservative being the most bellgerent men to walk the face of the earth, and so what you demand as right wingers to behave like, comes off as an attempt to control them.
The rationalist crowd is not substantially different from the Romney who was a BLM supporter, uniparty perspective. Nor are they, and associated figures like Hanania, and Yglesias above and beyond behaving rather uncivilly. There are people who fail to be nice honest and objective.
The reality is that liberals, including those who have been annoyed by some of the bad behavior of their side start from a conclusion that condemns the right, because they are against it an d want to control it. At such, the right will never be good enough.
In terms of the right, it isn't true that there isn't space in between. Rather what is happening is an inability and unwillingness to render to Ceasar what is Ceasar's and to admit the legitimate and good points made by rightists, because they are inherently against the points and the people making them.
Never will any political coalition even on the issues they are mostly correct on, will not avoid in focusing on areas that are more doubtful too, when making their points. Part of treating political discourse accurately would then be to not miss the forest of the trees, and prioritise things accurately.
This tweet makes some good points on this issue:
https://x.com/hpmcd1/status/1834339581220606449
However, Trump can be directionally wrong on some issues too and this tweet underestimates the dishonesty of Harris side on the migration and various debates.
In terms of what is happening in Springfield Ohio there isn't an equivalency between the two sides. The one that brought 20000+ Haitians, and funds it through NGO networks, and is trying to replace Americans, and the side that opposes it.
When Ed Yudkowsky for example agreed with an ex reddit admin that right wingers have been banned more so by reddit mods because they break the rules more, and not because they have been targeted for their ideology, he was engaging in dishonesty that gets more plausible deniability.
Another relevant issue in regards to the norms discussion and the behavior of lib/rationalist space is that righteous anger that is proportionate is also necessary and good in politics, while uncontrolled and irrational rage is bad as is irrational indifference. When I see angry relatives of a murdered son, wife, demanding justice, that is an example of indignation that leads to justice and much better than indifference, or excuses. So there is a problem with the righteous anger from the right being pathologized by people who are unrightfully hateful towards those having a proportionate response to genuine injustices at their expense. Another problem that goes along is n trying to censor them. And this being conflated with people who complain about fake injustices, and in doing so commit genuine injustices. It is actually good to be tolerant of people having legitimate gripes and be intolerant towards those who are promoting unreasonable bs, to screw over the first.
There are no centrist liberals/supposed moderates as a sizable faction who prioritize objectivity and being nice here to save people. That space doesn't exist as a sizable faction, and the faction that paints itself in such colors they have their obvious biases and hostility towards right wingers, on areas the rightists are correct about.
When it comes to the uniparty vs dissident right conflict, on various issues people like Romney who are nice to leftists but cruel to rightists, can have a more unhinged view. Take for example warmongering. Trump can also share this issue, like for example with his comments about the Democrats being insufficiently supportive of Israel, which is completely wrong, not just an exaggeration but a big lie directionally.
There are issues that right wingers are going to have both a correct and a nicer position that takes in consideration important values and facts disregarded by people who market themselves falsely as prioritizing, objectivity, or virtue. They can be politically incorrect and not nice towards sacred cows even if nicer in general, and step over hysterical demands to censor and gatekeep. To give an example,
The secret of much of politics is that people are on an article of faith acting as anti right wing oppositional force without evaluating things. They start from the conclusion and are unwilling to do things otherwise.
The liberal/"ex" liberal, con inc (though in practice not as ex as it potrays itself) space complaining about the genuine right is incapable and unwilling of recognizing these areas and separating reasonable from unreasonable which also exists. Too much resentment and hostility and seeing right wingers as the opposing tribe. Too much ideological hostility and having themselves unreasonable values they are unwilling to tolerate challenge. Some of them use the pretense of opposing tribalism as an excuse to censor and defame and narrow the intellectual space. Even edgier figures also get things right that liberals oppose. There are a few exceptions that also are atypical, like Michael Tracy and that space do manage to get some important things right on foreign policy of Trump and making critiques that deserve acknowledgement.
For the most part, the more moderate dissident rightists are among the few having some success at separating reasonable from unreasonable, and not purity spiraling. And they are hated too by the Gatekeepers who have failed themselves not to purity spiral. Ironically, not being constrained by the weights of the censorious and authoritarian liberal (including con inc, neocon, etc) gatekeepers is actually a necessity. Even though the bad faith censors pretend their censorship is for the greater good and the epitome of being nice and keeping bad culture warriors down. In actuality it is about stopping and defaming opposition and narrowing intellectual space, condemning what is correct and necessary.
Edited to add: https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1834926318883852543 https://christopherrufo.com/p/the-cat-eaters-of-ohio
Christopher Rufo brings evidence of African migrants eating cats in a neighboring town.
This reinforces the perspective that plenty of people are inclined to jump to the gun to signal how rightists are getting things wrong, because of having a liberal oppositional anti-right wing ideology.
I mean, I'm neither going to pretend to be one of the 'nice' people, nor claiming that the 'nice' people are actually nice -- Romney's my central example in the above post because he's particularly two-faced about it in a single book and a single article, but if you want one of my rants about David French I've got a pretty wide variety to choose from! And there's definitely a tendency for a Russell Conjugation of politeness, demanding carefully-drawn borders of acceptable discourse that one would never be tempted to overstep, while calling people they don't like as acting moronic.
There's some fun debates about whether the belligerent assholes or the 'nice' hegimonizing swarm are more directionally correct, but I'm willing to assume for the sake of this discussion that the assholes are at least a little more honest, or at least make finding the truth more likely in the end. My problem is that even at the most charitable, being just a little more honest than the 'nice' hegimonizing swarm is damning with extremely faint praise.
Like, for your specific example, progressive are and always were also going to quibble about Springfield vs Dayton and Haiti versus Africa, or whether one example is enough, but they can also now deflect because there weren't any dogs involved. There's actually a decent number of social and structural reasons that dogs are particularly unlikely, but even without them there's just the bit where it wasn't even on the twitter radar pre-debate. It's possible Trump had some external information otherwise. There's reason his advocates have mostly dropped it, though.
It's not that this is necessarily 'more' lying. I'd quibble with MacDougald a lot, here: as much as Trump is a bullshitter, you can absolutely find a ton of examples of just straightforward lies from the 'Nice' people, including many in last week's debate. My complaint is that if we belligerent assholes are advertising ourselves as talking about the truth, it'd be nice if belligerent assholes were actually doing that.
((Just as my complaint over at theschism is that it'd be nice if the 'Nice' people weren't talking about how they should metaphorically punch and literally remove from public discussion the people they disagree with.))
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