Written after the assassination attempt on Trump last year:
The biggest shame in all this is that it happened in America, a country that is doing pretty damn well in almost every way. We’re rich. We have abundant natural resources, space, and technology. We enjoy strong political freedoms. Our economy is growing and has grown regularly for decades. We are not suffering from famines or depressions or major political repression. America certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s doing fine.
That’s the backdrop for this horrible act of political violence. It’s the background for Trump’s rise in the first place, which has featured its own calls to violence. There’s no material reason any of this should be happening. Instead, we’ve driven ourselves insane due to political hysteria and polarization. And chief among the reasons we’ve gone insane is social media, with its algorithmic promotion of the most divisive messages possible.
As much as you can, resist the hysteria. Refuse to participate in it, refuse to make the polarization worse. The purpose of liberalism is to allow us to disagree with someone without discriminating against them, without harassing them, without killing them. It’s a precious thing, perhaps the most precious thing our civilization has achieved. Every time you break bread in peace with an outsider, every time a Catholic and Protestant shake hands, it’s a miracle. Don’t take it for granted.
1 comment:
There’s no material reason any of this should be happening.
Once again, the myopism of Centrism on display.
Well off middle class Americans look around at their own comfortable lives and think, "What is there to complain about?".
They make the mistake of thinking that by being "middle" Americans, they are somehow representative of "typical" Americans. They are not. They fail to understand just how many people there are below them, and just as much FURTHER below them the overwhelming majority of those people are.
They look at things like "median income" and nod their heads, as the poor sink into greater poverty, exploitation, and desperation... but the middle value of the data set climbs ever so slightly. They in the middle are doing better, so surely that means everyone is!
"There’s no material reason any of this should be happening" is EXACTLY the sort of thing the bourgeoisie said in response to communist revolutions. That's not an exaggeration, it's literally true. The middle class was shocked and astonished then, and they're shocked and astonished now.
Of course, the wrinkle nowadays is that the degree to which the rich actively foment dissent among the poor, because they've found ways to profit of it, and to direct the harmful effects of it against targets of their choosing, weaponizing it. Populism at work. The brothers Gracchi would be impressed, and envious of the skill with which the modern elites manipulate the mob for their own ends.
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