Bob and Van
marco.org
marco.org
And then all that’s left is game theory.
I'm tired of pretending this is a "both sides" issue. One side, and one side only, is diving further and further in their hatred of blacks, gays, trans, women, progressives, you-name-it. Progressives haven't changed their tunes, they're still on equal rights and public healthcare, as they have been for decades. It's on conservatives to do some introspection, and ask themselves why their views have become so toxic that the world is slowly distancing themselves from their country, now that their guy is in office.
1. We could refrain from getting offended when just buying coffee etc., and overlook low-key indications of political views, in order to cooperate,
2. We could avoid offending one another with confrontational exhibitions of political views, in ordinary life, when not seeking a confrontation.
In which case the fact that they are wrong, and we are correct and wonderful, and indeed the fact that moral relativism is kaput, can just be ignored in this ordinary everyday context. Which we could inhabit most days.
No, what actually got rid of Nazism in the post-war era was how shameful it was to be perceived as one. That's how we overcame racism and homophobia too: by making it socially unacceptable to be such.
So if you care about anything, you can't just treat "support for Trump" as simply another mundane personal preference. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't treat Trump supporters with empathy, just that ignoring their garbage views is not helping anyone or anything.
So you ask what one should do in 1934, on the cusp of war, in a pre-war situation. That kind of depends on knowing that it's a pre-war situation and knowing that things are desperate and that you should throw civility out of the window. If I was strongly aware of that fact (as some were), I'd be thinking mainly "how do I keep a low profile and escape from Germany," not "how do I tell the fascists that I disapprove of all they stand for".
But I suppose there's a kind of antsy ambiguous semi-desperate state that just makes people angry without fully committing to desperation.
Post-war is different of course because then you've won, and it's socially acceptable to be rude to nazis, the conventionally accepted bad guys. Common consent encourages it. It's a civil kind of rudeness!
But we are not in wartimes, and my comment wasn't telling people that they should act as if we were. If anything, tolerating and overlooking bigotry isn't civism, it's how we invite incivility in our societies. Hence why I believe we shouldn't normalize the views of MAGA more than they already are. We're not in the same place Germany was in the 1930s, and I don't intend us to ever get there.
One group of people are upset their views, which were consequence free until recently, are now resulting in negative consequences.
The other group is arguing to defend the rights of people who until recently didn’t have them and who are being threatened with a loss of liberty, freedom or equality.
There’s no equivalence.
And it's not a both sides issue AT ALL, unless you mean "both sides [that are heard in the media]" are absolutely crazy and wrong, in which case I'm with you. Trans rights are super important. Inclusivity and tolerance is super important. But not being able to talk about the science of gender dysphoria at all is not tolerance, it's a type of fascism, just coming from people who identify as left.
Sure, there was the John Birch Society, but as a society we also kind of understood that they were nut-birds.
You would have liked my grandmother, who shared your opinion that kindness between neighbors can heal political rifts.
Unfortunately it didn't work out so well for her, as despite her kindness, the neighbors sent her to Dachau anyway.
Would you prefer a Communist rather than Nazi parable? Either way works.
Does exist and should be labeled as such. But it's also always been a term that evil political movements use to label those who oppose their ideas.
Let the wise be discerning. Not all is as it appears on the surface or is reported to be.
Are you literally asking for a moral re-evaluaion of fascism?
<rolls eyes>
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-president-and-c...
Authoritarian Communism and its variants mostly fail by the same standard: lots of misery and death.
A good principle here I think is “a thing is what it does.” It effectively banishes all the sophistry that these kinds of ideologies deploy in their defense. No, a thing is what it does, and these ideologies murder and impoverish.
I find it really disheartening that so many people today seem to want to revisit one of these two ideologies. These are the failed death cults of the early 20th century. They should be forgotten.
If what we have is not working we need new ideas, not these.
The modern right wants to replace democratic rule of law with enlightened despotism focused on eliminating perceived racial, sexual, and ideological impurities.
The modern left wants universal healthcare and high taxes for billionaires, similar to the well-known death cult of Norway. /s
These things are not the same.
The president has given up pretending to obey the law. He's torn down the east wing of the White House (which does not belong to him), he's issued Executive Orders that contradict a plain reading of the Constitution (14th amendment, among others), he has gratuitously and repeatedly violated the Emoluments Clause, he has used the DOJ to attack political enemies on the thinnest of pretenses, he is continuing an illegal "armed conflict" in violation of the War Powers Resolution, etc, etc. This has all been documented thoroughly elsewhere: the president acts like a king and demonstrates contempt for his oath of office.
That, in combination with his civil rights abuses, are tantamount to fascism. Under the guise of "immigration enforcement," he's unleashed a horde of undertrained, overpaid henchmen who apparently act above the law, killing people, including US citizens, and denying medical care to detainees, without any fear of accountability. He's also sought to withdraw citizenship from and cancel visas to those people who are legally in the US but, for whatever reason, displease him. This kind of capricious, content-based discrimination, without Congressional oversight, is exactly what the Founding Fathers fought to prevent.
Any other really easy questions?
No we are not Nazi Germany. Yet. But the ideas are absolutely popular in certain places and it takes a lot of deliberate ignoring not to see it.
That being said, I see that kind of rhetoric and adjacent rhetoric around.
That makes me think first we will finish our current bad LARP of fascism with our tacky parody of Mussolini or Franco (Trump is more like them than Hitler) and then we will do some kind of bad LARP of communism in the 30s when youth unemployment and the total decimation of entry level jobs really starts to hurt bad. It will (like fascism is doing for the grievances it was marketed to) make everything worse, because these fascism and communism don’t work.
It’s probably waiting for a good populist (which means a charismatic malignant narcissist) like a tankie Trump. Imagine a more extreme Mamdani or Bernie Sanders with Trump’s narcissism.
Ultimately we are LARPing these bad ideas because there are no new ones. It’s a testament to intellectual bankruptcy that anyone takes fascism or Marxism seriously in 2026.
(Lack of anything entry level was already a problem before AI. Now we are looking at there being basically no entry level jobs in multiple fields other than “bot herder.”)
Since OP was adding a counter argument to the article that some people shouldn’t be trusted, your comment seemed to reinforce the point that differing ideologies inferring that current preferences could result in similar outcomes. In another comment you equated that same group with Jim Crow.
I find the hyperbole counterproductive, immature, and annoying. It seems like you don’t know any conservatives very well, the ones you do know are the scum of the earth.
Either way, way, I find your Grandmother’s story noble, inspiring. It represents the best of humanity when faced with the worst. I’d want to be known for that a million times before being known for being the angry neighbor that knew he was more virtuous than everyone else.
I'm sorry you find it annoying, but I don't find the comparison hyperbolic at all, and perhaps if you understand the historical context and the facts on the ground, you wouldn't either. You are letting your feelings (in this case, being annoyed, combined with a cult of personality) get in the way of a sober analysis of the situation, which is unambiguously the decay of the rule of the law and the persecution of morally innocent people.
> It seems like you don’t know any conservatives very well, the ones you do know are the scum of the earth.
I agree with the second part. I live in a red state. I see these people every day. People just as bigoted and short-sighted as you. People who are utterly convinced of their correctness, even as they reveal their complete ignorance of and indifference to what is actually happening. Instead, what I hear again and again is blind trust for the billionaire in power based solely on his rhetorical style.
> Either way, way, I find your Grandmother’s story noble, inspiring.
It's not noble to be a victim. I hope that those persecuted in today's America won't be as naive as my grandmother.
> being the angry neighbor that knew he was more virtuous than everyone else.
This perfectly describes my actual neighbor, who regularly blames poor immigrants for all his self-inflicted ills and demands violent retribution against the gays, the liberals, the trans, the foreigners, and brown people, all while claiming to speak in the virtuous name of Jesus Christ.
But let's play the hypothetical.
- Would your grandmother's fate be better if instead of kindness she would be spewing vitriol? Don't think so, the situation would have been even worse, much faster.
- What about the other side of the coin - about all of those people, who survived, because they were nice and friendly?
- In general, always having the same strategy, no matter what is happening around you, is dumb. When the environment changes, so should the behavior. Kindness often helps, but not against wild animals like bears, nature forces like tornadoes, and the faceless state bureucracy.
"Spewing vitriol" is loaded language used to smear people you disagree with.
The fact is that during the Nazi regime, some people did speak out against the atrocities, and some people did fight back. More people should have. Those who did resist would certainly have been described as "spewing vitriol" by those in power. I wish my grandmother was that brave.
> What about the other side of the coin - about all of those people, who survived, because they were nice and friendly?
Some things are more important than surviving.
Your conservative neighbor is no more evil than someone who thinks their conservative neighbor is evil because they are conservative.
> Your conservative neighbor is no more evil than someone who thinks their conservative neighbor is evil because they are conservative.
In response this:
> This is just sentimental nonsense. You are not obligated to patronize or be friendly to evil people.
Why do you assume that "evil" == "conservative" here?
Modern politics is fundamentally different from the way things used to be. The right-wing political parties in america today have almost nothing at their core besides hatred for marginalized communities. Demonizing trans people, immigrants, muslims, "communists"- that's it. Everything else is just the whims of an impulsive imbecile - the tariffs, the war with Iran, kidnapping the president of Venezuela, the belligerence towards _greenland_ (?!?!?), etc...
And the purpose behind demonizing them it to energize a shrinking demographic base to compensate for how many reasonable people they've driven away. So at this point, the ones who remain under the maga umbrella have been exposed to so much vitriolic propaganda that they are just at a fever pitch of hatred at all times. I've seen it countless times in my own life- People who used to say that Obama was naive and inexperienced and that his policies were misguided, but who now say he's a muslim jihadi who wanted to destroy america. And so on with many other political issues.
I have several close relatives who used to be like bob, or van- but MAGA has changed them. They are just completely dripping with hate, now. And if I was a member of one of the communities they've been frothed up against, I don't know if I'd feel safe trying to engage with them like the person on the OP.
Then you are uniquely placed to show them you're not the baddie they thought you were. Say hello, introduce yourself, smile and wave, bring cookies or stuff from your backyard garden once in a while, be personable.
Great idea! If only we had thought of this sooner. We could have avoided Jim Crow and segregation if only black people had thought to be friendly to racist whites!
/s
But at the same time, it is true than many white kids had racist parents but chose not to be racist themselves, largely because they rubbed shoulders with black kids and learned they had a lot in common with them. Don't underestimate the power of patience, kindness, generosity, and general personability to win, eventually. It took a generation of integration before racism disappeared from most US neighborhoods.
I'm still waiting
Two of my grandparents were racist, but I haven't talked personally with a racist in probably 25-30 years.
Let me guess, you mostly mingle with white people? It's a different story among Latinos, Asians (toward blacks and other Asians), but especially among African-Americans.
Fascinating. I've found the perfect example of "white victimhood." Thank you for sharing your truth that "minorities are the real racists."
What utter nonsense.
> White Democrats showed the effect: they imposed a somewhat weaker norm against offensive statements targeting Whites than against statements targeting other racial groups.
> So there is genuine evidence of something reasonably described as selective tolerance of anti-White prejudice among White Democrats.
> The present study demonstrates that Whites (in comparison to other Americans) are also more likely to perceive a social norm governing anti-White prejudice. Interestingly, the strength of this norm follows a political ‘gradient’ and is most pronounced among White Republicans.
> Within this context, an interesting question is whether this norm can be expected to spread outside the core of White Republicans? For instance, it is possible that racial minorities within the Republican party will come to adopt the same position as White Republicans on the social inappropriateness of anti-White prejudice (in much the same way that White Democrats have come to adopt norms around anti-minority prejudice). At the same time, the social norm appears strongly linked to the Republican party. And given current levels of affective polarization in American society, efforts at norm propagation will likely make little headway among Democrats of any race. These considerations therefore suggest that the norm against anti-White prejudice is likely to remain a ‘particularistic norm’ for some time to come.
How do you know that you haven't talked with a racist? Are you in the habit of asking new acquaintances if they are racist, and then believing their answer? Or do you just assume that all racists wear the same uniform?
To be clear: if you think you haven't met a racist in decades, you're probably wrong. I call into question your ability to accurately diagnose racism.
The last people I heard do that were my grandparents - like "Did you hear? She married a black man." with raised eyebrows.
You didn't answer my question - do you have racist neighbors?
Please read up on "implicit bias."
You say you think a lot of my acquaintances are racist, without even knowing who I am, let alone who they are, let alone what they act like or say. That's pretty extreme prejudice.
Don't judge people before you've at least learned who they are.
Nothing personal. The fact is that a lot of people are racist: that's the basis of "implicit bias" which I gather you did not bother to read about, despite my encouragement. Given that, it's statistically likely that everyone knows a racist. I know plenty of racists, and I wish I didn't. I'm not judging people, I'm just playing the odds.
Before continuing this conversation, please complete the required reading: https://www.nationalequityproject.org/articles/dont-talk-abo...
It teaches us to suspect everyone around us, which promotes division and hatred, not love and unity.
Racism is an individual sin that arises from the heart, and it can be repented of and turned away from like any other sin.
As I understand it, structural racism is less of a notion and more of a series of facts; eg: post WWII white servicemen largely got easy bank loans and a greased entry into generational family owned housing, black servicemen didn't, real estate agents and HOAs redlined (?) rental and purchase applications to separate out black American families, infrastructure tended to destroy and break up black communities over white communities, etc.
Are these past events that you reject?
You might want to be clear to the other commentator (I'm just a drive by) what the "notion" is that you reject.
It's clear that you didn't read past the headline of the article that I linked, since the article makes it clear that structural racism is not the same as implicit bias.
You are welcome to disagree with the extent that structural racism is present in American society today, but it makes no sense to dismiss the idea of structural racism. Slavery, as practiced in the US before the civil war, is a clear example of structural racism. Or do you think that race did not play a part in slavery?
> It teaches us to suspect everyone around us, which promotes division and hatred, not love and unity.
Perhaps, but that's an argument from outcomes, not from principles. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
That's absurd. It's possible for anyone to judge another person by the color of their skin instead of the content of their character or their actual traits. No race is morally superior or inferior (and to say otherwise is very racist).
It might be helpful if you understood the definition of "racism" as used in this article before you reject it. Racism is not the same as discrimination. I agree that anyone can judge another person by the color of their skin: that's racial discrimination. Racism (again, as used in this article, not necessarily as used in everybody life) is defined as a particularly hierarchical view of the races based on social order. Thus, by that thinking, black people can't be racist because they aren't in a position to oppress white people.
But all of that is a digression from the original point of this conversation, which is implicit bias, according to which everyone is somewhat racist because they judge people at an automatic, unconscious level. You might find this article less challenging: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_stereotype
Point being: you're dreaming up edge cases, presumably as a justification for... what? Refusing to engage with people who don't wear their political views like a badge on their chest?
If your stance honestly is "we cannot be friends unless I know your political views", then those who keep their views to themselves in the face of that are wise.
Xenophobia and racial (or religious ) animus are hardly edge cases. On the contrary, they are the default setting for our species, as evidenced by (flips through history book) the last few millennia.
I welcome all reasonable opinions. But not all opinions are reasonable.
In particular, the Maga crowd favors opinions based on hero-worship credulity and irrational vibes, completely divorced from factual reality. Very often, this leads to a place of xenophibia and bigotry, which no one is obligated to tolerate.
Just look at the "conservative" "arguments" in this thread. Just a chain of non-sequiturs and preconceived biases.
Are you saying that bigots are edge cases?
Most bigotry doesn't come from an inherent maliciousness or evil. It's often just limited experience and never having had reason to reflect on one's views. If you instinctively go "fuck off bigot", you're not only not helping, you're their mirror image.
To be clear, there's a point at which you have to be intolerant of intolerance, but starting off with that is not only counterproductive by reinforcing echo chambers and increasing division, it also makes you not unlike the thing you're opposed to.
Madame Tracy poked her head around the door. "Coo-ee, Mr. Shadwell," she said, giving Newt a friendly little wave. "A gentleman on the telephone for you. Hallo, Mr. Newton."
"Awa' wi' ye, harlot," said Shadwell, automatically.
"He sounds ever so refined," said Madame Tracy, taking no notice. "And I'll be getting us a nice bit of liver for Sunday."
"I'd sooner sup wi' the De'el, wumman."
"So if you'd let me have the plates back from last week it'd be a help, there's a love," said Madame Tracy, and tottered unsteadily back on three-inch heels to her flat and whatever it was that had been interrupted.
Feels like an edge case to me.
I’ve heard many stories of people who were once racists or some other kind of bigot losing that attitude from living close to people of the other ethnic group. It’s common.
It’s a major hypothesis for why xenophobia is more popular in rural areas: lack of contact with out groups.
But if you instantly call someone out for their views, condemn them, take a self righteous position, that doesn’t happen. It might even have the opposite effect.
So maybe let the bigot next door borrow some eggs. Smile at them. But make sure they know it if you’re one of the people their dogma or emotional conditioning says they’re supposed to hate.
Might change someone’s mind every now and then.
It’s also important to note that people often don’t change their minds quickly. Seeds get planted. Experiences that contradict a dogma or an unexamined conditioned attitude are noted. The brain slowly updates its priors.
Maybe the healthier past wasn’t one where nobody talked about politics. Maybe it was one where disagreeing about politics didn’t automatically make someone your enemy.
As someone from the Netherlands, I find this especially strange. You can call the leader of the party your neighbour voted for every name under the sun, preferably involving some kind of disease, because that’s our style, and still have a beer together afterwards.
Try having a beer with someone who thinks your daughter in law should have her drivers license revoked because she "lied about being a woman", in a society where a drivers license is a critical part of life.
I think that the gap between the MAGA crowd and, say, Santa Fe progressives, is much deeper than the one between Wilders and some progressive NL equivalent. It might be as wide, but depth matters too.
The USA contains a lot of people who simply don't agree that the government has much of a role to play in anything. Wilders might sound quite MAGA in a number of areas, but he's still a Nederlander.
Also, there was a time when your neighbors’ politics probably didn’t want to strip you and your family of their rights and citizenship; times have changed a bit.
What I have found is that, accepting the inevitable human flaws that we are all prone to, they are all pretty good folks.
There has been the predictable blowback, then the blowback to the blowback, which he alludes to in the post: "should I be condemned for not publicly condemning them myself?" [1]
Ultimately, everyone needs to do what's workable. If you find X's owner repugnant but you feel you need to be on the platform, that's a choice you have to make. If your audience revolts, that's a consequence of the choice. Each audience member also has to do what's workable for them. There is no "right" or "wrong" response.
[0]: https://ticci.craft.me/explanation
[1]: TFA
This would then let you see your neighbors as people. What you claim are core values are nothing of the sort. They are misconceptions invented by your in-group to dehumanize the out-group. In reality people's core values are: their kids, their health, love, belonging, a sense of purpose. The rest is just a puppet master hijacking these core values for organizing a crowd.
Core values are about how you treat people who are NOT close to you, how you believe limited resources should be allocated, how and by whom you think decisions should be made, what the relationship between individuals and society ought to be, and specifically between individuals and government.
You say "values like how you treat people who are NOT close to you". Which is really code for "people who like open immigration policies are virtuous and people who oppose them are bad and/or less intelligent". But once you drill down to details - the picture changes. This kind of sentiment is used to drum up support for very specific pieces of very questionable legislation. Why should a specific ethnic group with a large and powerful diaspora get a free pass to ignore immigration laws, but other ethnic groups get the book? How is this about being virtuous and treating people NOT close to you equally? Well, you aren't allowed to ask these questions - you don't want to be a part of the dumb racist outgroup, do you?
If your core values are the there should no border controls at all, those are your core values. If your core values are that we should very tightly controlled borders, those are your core values. If your core values are that we should let in more Norwegians and less Bangladeshis, or vice versa, then those are your core values.
My point wasn't that a particular set of core values are virtuous, it was that core values are not things like "loving my kids".
By that definition maybe even "loving my kids" wouldn't pass the test, as Viktor Frankl explains better than anyone could.
As for immigration, it is no accident that anti-immigrant rhetoric is on the rise precisely when the economy is doing poorly. When there were enough resources to go around - there wasn't nearly as much reason to oppose immigration. Which means that "my family is financially secure" is a much more core value for most people than being open to the world (even if they'll never admit it).
That's less true IRL if you just talk to people and be personable. There's something about seeing someone face to face and chatting that helps you intuitively understand you have a lot in common with them (or not) - and regardless of their political opinions either way.
I find that the sorts of life choices people make and the character they have as a result is a far better discriminator of what they actually have in common (or don't) with others.
I think that's even true when a horrible ideology is gripping a nation. The Bolsheviks and Red Guards were not to be reasoned with by neighbors in their heyday. "The wise man sees trouble coming and hides himself."
"He who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins" (James)
I don't recognize the things the author describes here - awareness of hot takes, opinions about coffee shop owners... they strike me as features of the online world, but not the offline one I inhabit.
It used to be easier to tell when someone was a nutjob based on their appearance, but these days not so much.
It’s still good to get to know your neighbors, but some caution is warranted.
I think it's good to exchange views on the world. That's a stronger better species, society. People receive different information, and talking about the world and what events we see and what they mean to us helps broaden that base and provide context. A lot of it is bad wrong and annoying. I want to hope though that socialization and seeing that oh we are humans together is a great relief for many of the narrownesses that afflict our hearts and souls and which cause strife, which is terrible for our welfare economically, socially, spiritually, politically.
If your friendships can't handle a debate that's a skill issue.
Never heard a "conservative" call a protester a "libtard" right before rolling coal at them?
Never heard of a friendly Southern town doing anything they can to keep out people of the wrong skin color, or to encourage them to leave?
Oh.
Maybe you should read some history and not rely on your personal anecdata.
I have personally seen family members disown their parents. Siblings not speak for decades. A friend call another racist and cut off communication not for any racist behavior, but because the friend (who has a multiracial family) didn’t support the same cause.
And likewise, maybe you should experience the real world instead of believing sensationalized things you read.
I didn't ask if you saw those things personally.
> And likewise, maybe you should experience the real world instead of believing sensationalized things you read.
Do you think the Jim Crow era was "sensationalized"?
Do you think that your own personal experience is more representative than documented historical fact?
> Never heard a "conservative" call a protester a "libtard" right before rolling coal at them?
Then you said:
> Do you think the Jim Crow era was "sensationalized"?
Then you said:
> Your comment is utterly non sequitur.
While I like a good non sequitur, I don't like equating heckling protestors with racism, and think it's part of the problem of talking past one another. You jumped from several hypothetical social issues and one broad, non-specific racial issue in one comment to Jim Crow in the next.
I'm not denying the existence of profoundly racist people. I am saying I have personally been harmed by people who have jumped to the conclusion that people who don't believe exactly as they do are inherently evil.
> In fact, I’ve never heard of a conservative kid disowning their parents, family, or friends because of their liberal views.
Then when I confronted you with historical examples of conservatives behaving abominably (which you certainly had heard of) you pivoted to your own irrelevant personal experience, and you've been dwelling there since.
I never equated slurs to Jim Crow. I simply provided several examples, at different scales and degree, of conservative harming people who don't believe (or look) exactly as they do.
Back up to OP: he has conservative friends. They’re all cool with each other.
I mentioned, in _that_ context, that I have not experienced conservatives causing issues. Then I got hit with, yeah, but Jim Crow. I think my point stands.
Be cool with each other. Don’t equate people for things they aren’t involved with.
At the risk of repeating myself, since you missed it the first time: "I simply provided several examples, at different scales and degree, of conservative harming people who don't believe (or look) exactly as they do."
> I mentioned, in _that_ context, that I have not experienced conservatives causing issues.
You're talking about your personal experience with a small number of people who have enough in common to form a friend group. The point I'm trying to make, and which you are consistently not grasping, is that your friend group is not representative and frankly not relevant. You're like that guy who says "I know lots of dogs, and none have ever bitten me." Good for you, but your experience is not universal. We're talking about society and law, not your pals. It is logically invalid to extrapolate from your personal experience that conservatives do not hurt people, or even that they don't typically hurt people.
> Don’t equate people for things they aren’t involved with.
I don't equate people for things they aren't involved in. I judge every person as an individual. But if you vote for a fascist, then you're involved, and you're a fascist, and you need to be held accountable.
The research was done to measure the level of intolerance students had towards people of different views. Women were 3 times more intolerant toward people with the opposite views to their, than men. Heck, women were MORE intolerant towards people holding THE SAME exact political view as them, than men were towards people with the radically opposite views.
First, Ronald Reagan's adviser Lee Atwater[1], advocated for the use of wedge issues, such as the mythical "Welfare Queen"[2], to erode support for the social safety net. Reagan's FCC commission decided end the Fairness Doctrine[3], which helped maintain the public consensus in the mainstream. In my strong opinion, it was a huge mistake, along with Trickle down economics. However, considering the traitorous nature of Reagan's administration[4,5], I guess it's to be expected.
Hillary and Bill Clinton went along with things, and came up with the strategy of "Triangulation"[6], in which they used wedge issues as a way of staking out a political position, without actually needing to care for their base. This resulted in a wave of virtue signaling[7] and political correctness[8], and an end to actual support of the social safety net. Examples of this include "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" as official policy in the US Military.[9]
When Hillary Clinton and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz rigged the 2016 Democratic Primary[10], they shunted the backlash against all of this that Bernie Sanders was channeling, and gave us Donald Trump, who is a master of exploiting it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine#Revocation
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_October_Surprise_theory
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation_(politics)
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_ask,_don%27t_tell
[10] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-b...
"If I learn today that my neighbors have political views that my “side” considers unacceptable and unforgivable, [...] Should I be condemned for not publicly condemning them myself? [...] I don’t want to associate with any community that would insist on either of those. [...]
"The town coffee shop was just a coffee shop. We weren’t publicly shamed for going there because one of the owners was an ass."
Is there some way of reading the moral of his story such that it is not defending projects and people like Omarchy/DHH against criticism?
He says this, while implying his conservative neighbors, who did nothing but be wonderful neighbors to him and his family except have different political opinions, should, in fact be publicly shamed by people he agrees with. But now they’re not shoveling his snow anymore, so maybe it’s time for a mea culpa.
Did he feel this way when he shamed Y Combinator? When saying alternative political stances are reprehensible, regressive, and aggressive.
The world he helped create is uglier. Now he’s not happy that he crapped in the sandbox and no one wants to play with him.
I don't think Tumblr was particularly influential on the neighbors aspect. It never reached that kind of broad base. Twitter did though. Unless you just mean social media broadly?
I wasn’t referring to social media or his role in it at all except as a participant.