Now, right-wing bad faith isn't anything new, but I've been thinking about this lately, so I figured I'd noodle on it for a bit. The thing I've had on my mind quite a bit recently is the accusation leveled at progressive people by conservatives that we're actually the intolerant ones. Their proof, other than the specter of campus illiberalism, is how surveys repeatedly find that we don't want to date conservatives.
But it's also vice versa, as this survey suggests. Anecdotally, I've also noticed a couple of instances recently on dating apps where I saw a conservative woman's profile, in which she said something about not wanting to date liberals, or needing to be aligned on politics. Or in the case of one I saw today, who didn't want to date anyone vaccinated because of "shedding".
Leaving aside that plainly insane person, these profiles are notable because they're so rare - I happen to live in an area where, if you're conservative, you need to highlight that you're different from the majority of the daters around you. But it's not just here of course, as progressive daters in conservative areas have to do the same thing.
The couple in the article I linked to may be outliers, but you have to wonder how they manage it, when the two sides in this country are so plainly on different planets; less "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" as one side is living on Planet Zenu or something (I'm sorry, but how else to describe the most recent foolishness surrounding Tylenol?).
The simple fact is, leaving aside agreements not to talk about politics, I find it hard to imagine being aligned on most things with someone who'd vote for Trump. I'm not saying all Republicans or Trump voters are necessarily racists, homophobes, transphobes or anti-Semites, but, well... there is a reason that guy from the KKK endorsed Trump in 2016. These aren't just things to have gentlemanly disagreements about: someone who genuinely believes Black people or Asians are genetically inferior to white people just can't be a good person, no matter how personable they are.
But this is all part of the big double standard that keeps operating in this country (and other parts of the Anglo-Saxon world, I'd say): somehow it's worse for me as a progressive to take a stand about wanting someone with abhorrent beliefs in my life, than it is for someone to have those abhorrent beliefs.
A really good example of this double standard is California's Proposition 50, which is aimed at redrawing congressional maps in the state until 2030. This is being presented as a way to combat Texas's own mooted gerrymander, which Trump has asked for to ensure that Democrats don't take the House in next year's midterm elections. California's districts are drawn by an independent commission, so that incumbents aren't guaranteed to win every cycle.
The reason we have that independent commission drawing our congressional districts is because Charles Munger Jr (yeah, the son of that Charlie Munger) poured his millions into ensuring that it wouldn't be politicians drawing those districts. His efforts are admirable, but he's now bankrolling the campaign against Prop 50, to which I have to ask: if he's so worried about rigged elections and gerrymandering, why isn't he doing anything about Texas or any of the other Republican states that have extremely partisan gerrymanders?
This is the problem: when Republicans do something shitty, nobody bats an eye, but when Democrats respond with something less than or equally shitty to the thing Republicans did, then suddenly it's a big deal. So this Munger guy gets his knickers in a twist about California doing something that Texas is doing, but doesn't seem to mind that Texas is doing it.
The Prop 50 campaign has been running ads saying that Munger's a MAGA Republican, which seems not to be the case, but at the same time, if Munger's so anti-Trump, why does he seem happy for Trump to enact his full agenda without scrutiny or pushback? There's a simple answer, which is that he benefits from Trump's agenda, even if he himself maybe doesn't subscribe to the culture-war aspects of it. But if you're happy to let abuses like Alligator Alcatraz or CECOT pass unremarked, because the rest of the agenda is good for your stock portfolio, that doesn't read like principle to me...
No comments:
Post a Comment