Well, so what? Hooray, I get to eat lunch alone, and read my book without interruptions. But social pressure weighs heavily on many people, and few feel it more than political partisans. If you are very strongly in favor of Party A or Party B, if you are deeply invested in their candidates, then it's going to matter a lot to you that those around you feel the same way. It will matter so much that you will adjust your views to align with theirs, whether you realize it or not.
That doesn't necessarily mean you are evil. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean you aren't, either; a lynch mob and the March of Dimes are both groups of people gathered together in support of a common cause, and members of either will hector you if you don't go along. The end results of their efforts are nevertheless strikingly different.
If your politics happen to put you in the "libertarian" corner of the Nolan Chart, an interesting side effect is that the closer you are to that corner, the closer you are to the middle of the conventional Left-Right spectrum of the two main political parties in the United States. While this mostly means you'll find their polices and plans about equally despicable, it does leave you in the center -- and politically homeless.
In the howling wilderness of post-Trump, semi-post-pandemic America, the Libertarian Party seems to have found itself most comfortable way out on another axis: crazier than the craziest Republicans. Given that the GOP itself has embraced howling nonsense about election security (nonsense debunked in every audit, investigation and court case in the wake of the 2020 election) and both the coronavirus pandemic and vaccines to protect against it (having chosen bullshit social media memes and rumor-based grift over hard science), and found widespread support among its traditional base by so doing, being wackier than that is a notable achievement. It's just not a direction I care to go. So I'm still homeless.
I can only imagine how awful that must sound to people who take comfort in belonging. Thing is, I don't. I am easily overwhelmed by crowds, all the more so if they are shouting, cheering, singing. I don't want to take part. I want to get away, as fast and as far as I can.
Apparently I've been living rent-free in the heads of a few of the old loosely-associated blogmeet bunch. Largely peripheral types, they are shocked -- shocked! -- that I didn't climb aboard the crazy train when it was clanking by. I guess they weren't paying attention way, way back in the autumn of 2016, when I had already declined the Republican candidate and he befouled himself in a manner that ensured I would never give him serious consideration. I cut ties with a lot of people then, and later, when the pandemic burst from China and spread across the world, I cut ties with many more, people who refused to come to terms with reality. I have no problem with this. I prefer having my lunch alone, away from the noise.
Once you get far enough away to see the whole picture, it's bleak. It used to be the Dems and the GOP were little more than a clown show, tripping one another up and making feeble efforts to enrich themselves and reward their pals at public expense. Oh, they all made a tragic mess of domestic and international affairs, but occasionally they'd manage to do some good and they never quite broke the important things. These days, the Democrats remain clowns but the Republicans are running around the Big Top with dynamite and blowtorches. It's not safe to be in the crowd, it's not moral to join the destroyers, and the clowns don't seem able to do much to fix the problem.
And you, friends, ex-friends and casual readers, what are you doing? If it involves much in the way of chanting and cheers, and you're not at tent-meeting revival or a sporting event, maybe you'd better take a step back. If you're believing six impossible things before breakfast, that's not a good sign. Maybe you'd better take a closer look at what you're cheering for, and why. Maybe you'd better take a closer look at how well your beliefs match objective reality.
BUILDING A 1:1 BALUN
4 years ago
7 comments:
Reading your posts regularly I find it extremely funny you think you're a Libertarian in the center. BTW, it is intellectually dishonest to respond to comments without POSTING those comments so people can judge what was actually said by the commenter.
I think that Objective Reason, having been ignored for so long, has wrapped her cloak about herself and slunk, slinked or slank away. We must organize a movement wherein we, each during her solitary lunch, beseech Objective Reason to return.
Ambi:
I find it hilarious that you have assumed I was referring to comments here; the weirdly-askew assumptions of an occasional Blogmeet attendee were voiced elsewhere and in a very odd place, in the comments section of someone who linked to one of my posts from their blog.
As for your accusations of "intellectual dishonesty," this isn't a debating society. This is my blog. I don't post comments that use insulting or derogatory language; I don't publish comments that use inflammatory language or that make false claims about the pandemic or elections. I'm not here to argue with crazy, I'm here to mock it and point out the harm it does.
I do not "think [I'm] a (sic) Libertarian in the center," I was alluding to my score on the Nolan chart, which is based on a survey and which I have posted on this blog in the past. I score way up in the libertarian -- small-l -- corner. I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Libertarian -- large-L -- Party. In my distant youth, I was a Republican and voted for Gerald R. Ford, after which I stopped voting for decades and let the rest of you pick whichever idiots you liked. Eventually, the choices made (and offered by the parties!) were so bad that I had to start voting back at you.
I very rarely allow comments the use ALL CAPS, but you seemed so proud of your own ass that I thought I'd give you this one chance to flaunt it for everyone to see. Read my blog all you like but you'll never have another comment posted here under your oxymoronic handle.
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Cop Car, I think Objective Reason left because she didn't like the way things were going. I hope we can lure her back but prospects appear dim.
I ate lunch alone in 2020 and it's looking like I'll be doing it again in 2024.
Never have I ever... commented on your blog, though I'm a multi-year reader. You're one of several I follow because you are so close to my point of view so often...but never quite in sync...and sometimes drastically different. I'm rather bemused to have a question I really want answered, but here I am.
Why do "tent-meeting revival or a sporting event" get a pass on the list of activities that involve dangerous agreement? Many of the people I have found quite dangerous to me have participated with fervor in one or the other of those pastimes. Too much investment in either is a hard pass on deep friendship for me.
Dean Hankins, that's an interesting question. Neither one is an activity I would care to be immersed in -- but huge numbers of people do and experience has shown them to be largely harmless to society at large, the occasional post-championship riot notwithstanding (I don't excuse those, but it's fairly predictable and could be controlled with sufficient numbers of properly-equipped public safety personnel). As for religion, the widest possible latitude must be granted to such activity in a free society. I would suggest that is axiomatic.
But cheering exuberance is not in and of itself a yardstick of rightness, truth, morality or good sense. It's certainly not how we choose elected officials. There's a very large difference between a political rally of willing partisan attendees and an election open to all adults (other than certain felons).
I'm keeping an eye on exits and making preliminary plans to skip out of the Big Top if it gets bad enough (it's not close to that yet). Meanwhile I'll just vote against whatever blowtorch users show up on my ballot even though in my state they'll probably get elected.
Jeffrey Smith
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