— Feature, Musings —11.20.2024 03:03 PM
Left, right, whatever
What I write sometimes makes people angry. Right and Left.
Here’s what I’ve noticed. It’s interesting.
I write about different stuff. Politics, music, culture, whatever. People react.
Sometimes I take a position that is notionally “progressive.” I’ll indicate support for trans kids, or taxing polluters, or vaccines.
Self-described “progressives” will react by saying nothing. “Conservatives,” meanwhile, will go apeshit and say I’m a communist, a pedophile, whatever.
But they will say those things to me directly. Right to me.
And sometimes I take a position that is notionally “conservative.” I’ll say I support capital punishment, or less taxation, or (these days) Israel.
Self-described conservatives will react by sending me messages about how delighted they are that I have joined their side, even though I haven’t joined any side. They always want to increase the size of their team. I think they always want validation.
The progressives are a different matter. When they read that “conservative” stuff, they again don’t contact me directly, almost ever.
Instead, they complain to my editors. They complain to my publishers. They complain to my clients.
They complain to whoever they think is my boss.
They do that to get me fired or disciplined or whatever. Mainly, they do it to get me canceled.
That’s the difference between conservatives and progressives, in my experience. The conservatives will get angry and abusive, but at least they do it to your face. The progressives get pious and indignant and vengeful, and they will try to get you shut down.
Both sides have assholes, in their own way. The critical difference is that, however: one side gets mad at you directly, and then forgets about it. The other side wants to end you, forever.
That’s how I look at the “woke” stuff. In definitional terms, being woke means opposing bigotry and injustice. I agree with opposing bigotry and injustice.
In practical terms, however, woke has come to mean: punish those who disagree with you. Make them bleed.
That’s what the Right and the Left have come to mean to me, at least insofar as my writing goes.
I don’t really give a shit about either extreme, but it’s certainly been interesting.
I define “woke” as overemphasing identity, such as gender, race or sexuality, at the expense of individual lived experience. Those who subscribe to “woke” generally lack individual, lived experience.
I lost interest in extremes long ago. Politics is far more informative if you take the time to consider divergent perspectives. There are moments when Conservatives have valid things to say about public spending, moments when the NDP has valid things to say about social justice and moments when Liberals find a careful balance. None of them are right about everything all the time and they will all let you down eventually. However, dismissing alternative perspectives out of hand only demonstrates intellectual laziness.
well said
This is really insightful piece, Warren. Thanks for it.
As a small-p, small-c progressive conservative, I witness much the sort of same thing, in my own way.
My views aren’t identical to yours. I think I’m more to the right than most of your readers. I appreciate that you let me express my views, and that we can disagree while being nice to one another.
Spot-on.
As a small-c conservative, let me apologize for my brethren who subject you to written / verbal abuse. Some in my family are further right than me (anti-vax, anti-immigrant, etc…) and I’ve seen the same thing from them.
What you say about the left trying to shut people down is absolutely true. Note that I detest the word “progressive”, because it is one of those deliberate words to invoke the opposite being bad (the opposite of progressive is…. well, you know). So I will stick with saying “left”. And yes, the trend of the left in the past couple decades has been to shut down and/or punish anyone who they disagree with. In my view, that’s far worse. But then again, I suppose I’m one of those nasty “regressives”, hey?
I always enjoy your writing, whether I agree with the opinion being expressed or not. That is the essence of good writing.
I always thrived in a survival of the fittest environment. Working in the corporate world I really enjoyed the pace, competition and rewards. As much as I feel this way personally, I don’t think its good for society as a whole to be solely focused on competition, production and winning – we need a society that recognizes the value of a social safety net, the necessity of one. And not just for homeless people, but for kids that don’t get the same chance, and their parents who struggle to raise them – that’s why I’m a centrist – as much as I enjoyed the cut and thrust of the corporate world, my conscience wins and I see the necessity of programs that act as an equalizer. I could always make my own chances – i was born with all kinds of energy and a will to survive, thrive and win – we cant expect that of everybody, and the truth is we don’t all get a chance to excel because of poverty, sickness – parents with language barriers in a new country – we need a safety net, and more than that we need programs that equalize us in core areas like health and food and access to education – they’re a necessity we can’t live without – we wouldn’t be Canadians if we didn’t have a heart.
Excellent photo BTW. Should be on an album cover IMHO. In politics, I want someone who is pragmatic, and uses common sense to arrive at a decision. I don’t care if they are left, right or centre. I think the “woke” crowd are so invested in their beliefs that they view everything through a political prism. To them it’s a zero sum game. They are sanctimonious, and because their cause is so vital, there can’t be any objections. Those that stand in the way of creating heaven of earth are evil. As my dear departed mom was fond of saying, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I would suggest to any readers that if they disagree, why not post it here. Warren’s a tolerant guy – it’ll be okay –
Thanks W. One extremely irritating thing I find online is that if you’re in a debate, hard left or hard right partisans accuse you of being one or the other, just because you’re expressing an opinion non a specific issue or person. Hard core partisans tend to think there are only two kinds of people: people on their team, and people on the opposite team.
This comes up a LOT with Trump supporters. Most of them seem to think that if you have a problem with Trump you’re a “lefty” or, in Canada, a Trudeau supporter. They cannot comprehend a centrist or a small c conservative.
As Bill Maher said that he may not agree with conservatives like Ben Shapiro but at least they will come onto his show to debate him unlike hard core liberals.
True. I have a lot of time for Maher, people like him and Ruy Texiera need to be listened to if the Democratic Party wants to dig itself out of the hole it’s gotten itself into.
A big problem the Democrats have is they’re not reaching and listening to people they need to reach and listen to. For example they should be banging on the door of Fox News begging to get on there every second they can.
Just a small point of disagreement:
Conservatives are divided on capital punishment. Especially among Christians.
Jewish legal culture highly values the protection of human life and rendered capital punishment extremely rare.
However, the legal culture into which the Hebrew Scriptures were first received does not always translate clearly into modern English Bible translations.