Entry 1822, on 2016-11-19 at 11:10:01 (Rating 4, Politics)
I have to do just one more blog post on the political theme I have been following for the last two weeks. After that I will move on to something more significant, I promise!
In the last few weeks (this really relates to the period around the Trump presidential campaign and election) I have made a bit of a journey away from supporting the more liberal and left-oriented side of the political spectrum. I have seen the far left for what they really are: just as dogmatic, ignorant, and narrow-minded as the far right.
This in no way means I am now a conservative, and I am not a Trump supporter. But I am not a Trump denigrator either, like a lot of the left are. There are some things about him - such as his dismissal of the clear facts of climate change - which I find unacceptable, but the way the far left constantly criticises him using unthinking buzz-words annoys me too.
For many years now I have been visiting conservative fora on the internet and criticising the far right's ideas on economic policy, gun control, religion, and other controversial subjects. And I have been banned from a few sites for my efforts. My first banning (many years ago) was from a conservative Christian video site called "GodTube" (I know, it sounds like satire, but it's real) where I listed the lies in various anti-evolution and other movies.
But yesterday I was blocked from a Facebook discussion which mainly involved a group of far left individuals. By "far left" I don't mean communists or anything like that (although some might possibly follow that political idea), I mean people who follow political correctness to a ridiculous degree, who have extreme feminist opinions, and who automatically reject any ideas apart from their own.
I have clashed with these people before over their unthinking criticism of Donald Trump. Again, I want to emphasise I am not a Trump supporter, but I do reject anyone who thinks that calling someone a misogynist, racist, bigot, sexist, fascist, or xenophobe is real political dialog or debate. It isn't. It's more a feeble minded parroting of words other people of the same persuasion are using with varying degrees of validity.
I'm not saying that a case couldn't be made to say that Trump doesn't have some of these attributes, but I am saying that the people making these claims haven't really made this case, and they have failed to accept that many people specifically reject the claims they do make.
So what's really the point? Why keep repeating these insults over and over? The people who are likely to believe them believe them already, and those that reject them will continue to do so.
Well here's what I think. The standard insults act as a "badge". It's a way of saying the person is a politically correct BS artist who stands up for women's rights, and for the rights of minorities, non-dominant cultures, alternative religions, people with alternative sexual preferences, etc.
But, apart from a small percentage on the extreme edge, everyone wants to give other people a fair chance and few people would say they don't want to treat everyone equally. The discussion is over how this should be done, and the far-left don't have a monopoly on ideas about how to achieve it, although the way they talk they obviously believe they do.
The air of utter arrogance and smug self-satisfaction amongst these people is quite disturbing. And the way they have now developed a persecution complex and see themselves as the heroes standing up to the forces of evil can only be described as pathetic.
I am talking about a core group of three people here (all women as it happens) who I won't name because I only name public figures I criticise in this blog. But who they are is irrelevant because it is the worldview these people share with others which I object to, not the people themselves.
I can't remember why I initially friended the main perpetrator of this propaganda, but there have been several times when I considered removing her from my Facebook friend list, but didn't because I force myself to listen to other perspectives no matter how annoying they are. I think it's important to do that or it is easy to end up in that echo-chamber where you hear only the opinions of those who agree with you.
But clearly exposure to alternative ideas is not a high priority for those on the far left, just like it isn't for their opponents on the far right. They really are as bad as each other. I have always resisted being labelled as belonging to any particular ideology and this experience has just reinforced what
And despite being unfriended by this one person there are plenty of others with similar views I still follow so I'm not likely to be completely cut-off from their perspective any time soon. But sometimes I wish I was!
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