Quote:
|
You and I may disagree about what makes someone conservative. To me, the fundamental thing that unifies conservatives is reaction to the mainstream/left.
|
The left yes, not the mainstream. The mainstream of the country is centrist. I don't think conservatives dislike centrists.
Quote:
|
As you keep saying in different ways, you are viscerally irritated by progressives.
|
I'm viscerally irritated by people stating things that are factually dubious, or frivolous, and then using narrative technique to fraudulently assert they are facts, or science.
Quote:
|
You understand intellectually that people on the right do many of the same things that you say irritate you about progressives, but they don't bother you.
|
Because no one takes them seriously. I'm also situational. People here embrace left silliness, but not right silliness.
If I'm listening to right wing friends, it's a different conversation. I can just say, "That's untrue... Total bullshit." If they persist in saying, say, that the election was rigged, I can just laugh.
Quote:
|
You scorn them, but you don't really care. [eta: For example, you listed yourself as "anti-wokeism" but didn't say anything about anti-racism. I have no doubt that if you were asked, you would say you are anti-racist, but clearly racism doesn't push the same buttons that "wokeism" does for you.
|
I'm anti-racist in the sense that I am against racism. I am not anti-racist as Kendri has defined that adjective.
Quote:
|
Likewise, you were just complaining about how progressives are largely performative, but you don't complain about performative conservatives. That doesn't mean you support them. It means you just don't care about them in the same way.]
|
Fish in a barrel. Most of them are absurd. But when they aren't absurd -- when they're clever and dangerous in use of narrative to overcome fact such as in the run-up to the Iraq War, the record here speaks for how much I care about them. I doubt I've ever written as bitterly as I did in regard to the Bush Administration's campaign of lies.
Quote:
|
The thing that keeps you from being truly conservative is that you have this conviction -- faith, let's call it -- that there is a center and that you are a part of it.
|
No. I'm all over the place. Left on this, right on that. I go issue by issue.
Quote:
|
This keeps you from feeling the sort of alienation and grievance that are so integral for conservatives. As much as you inflate the importance of the progressives you complain about, you don't think they are the mainstream.
|
They aren't. Progressives are the fringe. A growing fringe, but still fringe.
Quote:
|
Agree that Wilkerson's piece is longer than it needs to be -- that's what happens when journalists go on Substack and no longer have editors or need to worry about driving traffic.
|
That's what happens when the media becomes a self-censoring circular firing squad of scared editors and corporate lackeys cowering from Twitter mobs.
I'm still amazed Twitter has so much power. These corporate types are so clueless. They could easily break the power of Twitter by simply ignoring it. It's not even really a mob. It's a small cabal of malcontents and professional whiners. Who cares what Twitter thinks about anything?
