I feel there is a gap between left goals and left means. It’s particularly distressing to me because I always viewed “our team” as the side that was cooler headed, would wrestle with uncomfortable ideas, and would keep trying to find the merit in people that we disagree with.
But I find myself feeling that a portion of the left has retained the banner issues of the left, while adopting a shockingly tribal worldview and conservative tactics of the right.
It feels like when I was younger, and you'd say something critical about some aspect of the US, and the retort was, “if you hate our country so much, why don’t you just leave.” Critique was rounded to anti-American sentiment and you thus became a valid target of unlimited scorn.
I see the same thing on the left, where if you don’t agree to a reductive expression of certain wedge issues, people are rounded to nazi, misogynist, X-phobic, etc. and then are irredeemably subject to unlimited scorn.
I expect this kind of stuff from the right, but it’s painful to see it from the left.
But I find myself feeling that a portion of the left has retained the banner issues of the left, while adopting a shockingly tribal worldview and conservative tactics of the right.
It feels like when I was younger, and you'd say something critical about some aspect of the US, and the retort was, “if you hate our country so much, why don’t you just leave.” Critique was rounded to anti-American sentiment and you thus became a valid target of unlimited scorn.
I see the same thing on the left, where if you don’t agree to a reductive expression of certain wedge issues, people are rounded to nazi, misogynist, X-phobic, etc. and then are irredeemably subject to unlimited scorn.
I expect this kind of stuff from the right, but it’s painful to see it from the left.