This is not true of liberals. Left-leaning liberals like my sister-in-law (or the people I follow on YouTube) are well-meaning, even if they’re misguided on certain matters of policy. But leftists? More and more, I have seen leftists sanction displays of casual cruelty that are truly appalling.
The latest target: Jordan Peterson.
I’m what you might call a casual fan of Mr. Peterson. I don’t think he has all the answers. Who does? But he strikes me as genuine in his desire to help and in his seeking after truth -- and many of the things he’s said in his public appearances (and in his best-selling book) are, to me, simple common sense. Yes: univariate explanations for observed cross-group disparities do perpetuate bad social science. Yes: there are differences between men and women that can’t be explained by culture. Yes: it is best to think globally but act locally. Yes: an ethic of self-examination and self-improvement is absolutely essential for a good life and should precede attempts to “smash the system.” And yes: no one should be forced to utter something he or she does not personally believe because that way leads to tyranny.
Do Mr. Peterson’s ideas always cohere? No -- but see above regarding my estimate of his sincerity. He certainly doesn’t deserve the frankly pathological hatred that has been lobbed his way ever since he was thrust into the limelight in the run-up to Canada’s passage of Bill C-16. For Christ’s sake, this is a guy who cries whenever he thinks about people suffering. This is a guy who gets visibly overwhelmed every time someone thanks him for his folksy advice. This is a guy who fiercely denied it when Dennis Prager called him a good person in one 2019 interview -- because he's acutely aware of the potential depravity of all mankind.
Overall, whatever one might think about the particulars of his ideas, I think all rational people can agree that Mr. Peterson has generally been a positive force in the world -- especially (but not exclusively) for young men. Yet this gentle, emotional man has become a lightning rod for mockery and unreasoning bile on the left -- to the point that people on Twitter are now celebrating his recent medical crisis.
Honestly, I want to throw up a little just thinking about this. How the eff does anyone think this is okay? How twisted and diabolical do you have to be to allow your ideological commitments to overshadow the universal call to basic human decency?
What’s happening to Jordan Peterson only further solidifies my conviction that people on the radical left don’t just want to defeat me and mine in the political arena. They actually want us dead -- or at least so broken, starved, and bloody that we’re no longer a significant threat to their aims.
They’re monsters, these leftists. Every. Single. One of them.
It is fairly obvious - Leftists view leftism as the essence of "goodness" - it is absolutely central to their conception of themselves as "good" people (and silently...as "superior" people).
ReplyDeleteBut a lot of Leftists are naïve/insulated/shallow/young/etc so they do not critically examine their ideology - they don't think about how it can be gamed, how it leads to perverse incentives, or its historical failures.
It simply sounds good, makes them look good, and makes them feel good about themselves - without really requiring anything other than a very abstract, distant sacrifice - maybe.
So anybody who opposes it is by definition - evil.
Rational argument rarely helps because Leftists mostly do not come to their religion rationally (sounds, looks, feels good) and so they are usually unequipped to seriously defend their ideology.
But that is very unnerving and threatening to their core self-conception. So what you get is violent hate as a defense mechanism.
- Cas127
As Texans say, all hat and no cattle.
ReplyDeleteWe used to laugh at people who believed what leftists believe. Then they took over public institutions. They don't want us normies to laugh at them again, and are disfunctional enough to applaud their efforts to stop us laughing. They are the emperor with no clothes. So laugh.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that was the problem, not taking these people seriously. That and laughing at those who were taking these people seriously.
DeleteThe term is sadist. An entire party of sadists. Wow!
ReplyDeleteIronically, it appears that politics has become a religion for those that eschew traditional religion. So to them the misfortunes of Messrs. Peterson and Limbaugh are merely a case of the heretics getting their comeuppance.
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