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Well, what's true is, 'arguments as soldiers' is partially an inevitable result of our two-party system, and in some cases is actually a sadly effective and pragmatic tactic that you're sort of forced to play into if you don't want the other side to beat you with it.
To whit: You can say that the Red/Blue team dichotomy is artificial, but the Democrats/Republicans dichotomy is not. People trying to have political stances and agendas that don't fall along that dichotomy may be perfectly valid and reasonable and good, but they're also in a very real way irrelevant to teh exercise of power. The person appointing the next Supreme Court Justice is going to have either a (D) or an (R) next to his name, and that's what will determine how the game of politics cashes out in actually affecting people's lives for the next 50 years.
So: Sure, Moms for Liberty and the Ron Desantis (or whoever else you want to use as a stand-in for the 'teachers are groomers' movement) are different people with different personal politics, so to an extent it's not surprising or scandalous at all if their rhetoric disagrees with each other in fundamentally contradictory ways.
ON THE OTHER HAND: They are both republican-aligned movements that are trying to promote Republican policies and put more (R)s next to more names in government.
If the broader republican movement is trying to convince us they're right using two different arguments, and those two arguments directly contradict each other, doesn't that mean that there must be some flaw in their platform, the the broader ideology overall is inconsistent and misleading in some way, that something is rotten in Denmark, and anyone who is on the R side should be noticing that some of their soldiers are pointing their guns the wrong way and get confused and self-reflective about it?
Even if the two arguments are reasonable on their own and are aligned with the ideology of the individual person making them, the fact that both are then being taken up and spun into the larger Republican narrative alongside each other, indicates a flaw in that platform.
(and, I shouldn't even have to say this, but obviously this all applies ceteris parabis to Democrats and the left, this is a general problems with politics)
You misunderstand -- I'm saying that this is not an issue that cuts cleanly across party lines. There are many left-ish people who are not comfortable with the orthodoxy vis a vis trans issues, and there are Republicans (I'm thinking fiscally conservative urban types) who are probably fine with it.
For most of these people it is not important enough to impact their vote, so long as it stays off their lawn -- but putting it into schools plants it squarely on the lawn of every parent. So we shouldn't be at all surprised if the opposition does not fulfill the classic grumpy church-mom stereotype that is typically in the drivers' seat at socially conservative organizations. (say, anti abortion ones)
Well yeah, because these are liberal organizations in opposition, not traditionalist ones (who look like that) or progressive ones (who also look like that, except with an unnatural hair color).
In this case, the liberals have finally started to notice just how rotten the skin suit of sex-positivity progressives are currently wearing is. (30 years too late, but better late than never.) And while they're still kind of stupid- the ultimate way to defend their "we're banning these books from the library" is to argue from slave morality and insist that they actually be good enough to justify their content (1984 wouldn't be the same commentary it is without the depictions of sex therein; if you think they're either gratuitous or disrespectful to women, then you
are part of the problemdon't understand Orwell)- I'm not surprised that a faction that's been taking its victory a little too much for granted hasn't put on its best face yet (not that it can; liberals don't believe in best faces).More options
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