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Notes -
This is going to sound harsh, but I do think it's accurate, in that I think there always has been a sense that the best argument actually is "We will have the power". You know...that whole "Right Side of History" thing? And sometimes that "will" in the first phrase gets lost, so it's just "We have the power". And with that comes all sorts of Moral License and all that. In reality, we're talking pure Toxoplasma of Rage.
I really am very progressive myself, as well as liberal. Small-p. But I do think the full-throated embrace and exploitation of post-modernism is worrying for a whole host of reasons. Again, I'm not even opposed to post-modernism in a reflective, sober perspective. But what we're seeing here is something more like a search for power. The further you can go, and get away with if not outright cheered and supported the more pressure it puts on people to adopt your views/join your group.
Note, this applies to parts of the right as well, I think.
I agree.
Right. One of the things I'm thinking about in connection with this case is just... weaponized rage, I guess. Jones is, for whatever reason, a bottomless well of rage, and my instinct is to respond by not talking about her, or others like her. To exercise the virtue of silence, to pursue the ideal embodied in the rules about focusing on the best ideas of those with whom I disagree. But it seems like this might also be a kind of trap, where one side's "righteous anger" is always a straight-faced headline while the other side's "unhinged paranoia" gets a laugh track on the Daily Show.
Meanwhile, there is a victim in this: a child, not yet a teenager, who apparently finds life so burdensome as to plot mass murder, or at least to pretend that he is. Kids say stupid stuff, and I'd like us not to ruin their lives over it. But also, it kind of seems like his mother has already ruined him, in great measure, by being an avatar of the culture wars. Can we talk about that tragedy--and I do think it is a tragedy!--without careening off the culture war angles? I honestly just don't know.
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