It’s been a heck of a few weeks, but things seem to finally be slowing down slightly. I am behind in postings, and hella busy, so if I miss one or two, I apologize. It’s National Novel Writing Month, and I’m writing a new cookbook. I hope to have the first draft complete by Dec 1st. That eats a lot of time, because it requires me to do a LOT of writing each day, but it’s very productive.
I got talking with friends about the differences between the Left and the Right. The biggest one that I see is the concept of morals. These are, of course, very sweeping generalities. Take what you will from them.
The Right has a very strict sense of morality, and while there are people under the Big Tent with different beliefs, generally speaking the vast majority hold incredibly similar morals. You can be a straight laced, white Christian and be Republican. You can be as gay as they come, pagan, and be Republican. But if you think it’s okay to punch people because of their beliefs, you can’t really be Republican. The opposite is true of the Left. On the Left, if you aren’t clad in rainbows and supportive of whatever the victim-de-jour requires, you can’t be Democrat. On the other hand, you can have wildly different moral codes, and in fact have moral codes that change depending on the moment.
The Right likes to talk about how intolerant the Left is, and the Left makes all sorts of claims about intolerance on the Right. Trump’s election win has the Left trotting out Karl Popper’s essay on intolerance, of course. Let me share:
“Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.” — Karl Popper, The Open Societies and Its Enemies
I actually think that the moral code of the Right has led to the enacting of the paradox of tolerance. The strict adherence of the Right to the freedom of speech and expression, coming to us from the First Amendment, means that the Left has been allowed (and yes, that’s a sticky word, but bear with me) to become the intolerant group. The Left can’t abide people who don’t work in lock step with their leaders. They insist that anyone who doesn’t praise Harris/Biden/Obama (pick your poison) is a heretic and is themselves intolerant. They scream that from the rooftops, completely unaware that it is the Right’s tolerance of their tantrums that allows them to continue spewing their rhetoric.
The Left would currently have you believing that their selfless tolerance of all people and things has led to the downfall of America, and the voting in of Trump. They didn’t do enough of the cancel culture nonsense and so people thought it was okay to vote for Hitler. They really can’t understand why anyone would vote for the man.
One of my TikTok folks asked, “Did you really think that people were going to vote for aggrandizing gender dysphoria and creating a protected right to abort children, over having the ability to afford groceries and clothing for their kids?” And he’s right. The Left was so caught up in “women’s rights” that they lost sight of what actual people were suffering with and from.
I’m looking at Trump’s cabinet picks and his choices for leading various parts of the government (in particular, Joel Salatin as “Advisor to the Secretary” for USDA) and thinking, wow, the Left ought to be jumping for joy. Joel is an awesome guy who I’ve had great respect for, for years now, but he’s awful crunchy for a Right leaning government. But Trump doesn’t care what “side” he’s picking from. He’s picking the right people for the jobs, and Joel is indeed a great choice for that position. The Left is in a conundrum because now they don’t know what to do. Joel Salatin has been “on their side” for years because he’s all about organic and local, people growing their own food, and all that stuff. But now he’s kowtowing with Trump. Their ability to parse that information is very low, especially in this grieving period over the election. They’re spinning like the Windows blue ball right now, unable to gain traction. It doesn’t help that their administration, their leaders, are just as out of touch.
For a group of people who pride themselves on understanding spectrums of sexuality, gender, and orientation, they have no political spectrum. There’s this adherence that happens, to a black and white morality, with no room for anything nuanced. You’re either with the Left, or you’re against them. There’s also this strange issue of contamination that happens. If someone they adore and love touches or otherwise interacts positively with someone or something they don’t love, that original thing becomes sullied. Elon Musk comes to mind. He used to be a darling of the Left, and now he’s in Trump’s upcoming cabinet.
The Left machinery (as opposed to the people, though they are often doing the same thing) makes huge claims about how they defend and uphold free speech. The problem is, they only do so when it benefits them. They want to restrict hate speech, angry speech, misgendering, triggering, and hundreds of other types of speech. You can’t claim to be the champion of free speech then turn around and restrict someone else’s speech. And this week, we’ve seen a DoublePlusUnGood response to just this. Groups of miscreant youths have been reported (and in a couple of cases filmed) saying, “Your body, my choice!” This has generally been accompanied by aggressive or aggressively sexual posturing. No one is putting up with this crap. We’re all saying, “Enough is enough. I catch you saying that shit to my daughter and you’ll get what’s coming to you.” This isn’t a Right or Left thing, this is a “teens are jackasses at times, and are using a political turmoil they have no understanding of to mouth off” thing. But the Left has seized on this, and some are claiming that anyone who tells those boys to stuff it is actually oppressing the free speech of the boys. This simply isn’t true, and no one is interested in seeing boys behaving this way. It’s a verbal barrage that is meant to confuse, but the only ones they’re confusing are themselves.
So what else do we have? Well, the Left is for freedom of religion… if you’re not Christian. They’re accepting of everyone, no matter where they are on their journey… unless their journey leads them Right of extreme Left. They don’t see the dichotomy of the Left losing a court case, then stating it’s always okay to challenge again in the future (they’re right, it is), but then when they win a court case, it’s suddenly settled law and no one may ever challenge it again. It’s like we’re stuck in the novel 1984, where everything that’s said is “true at the moment of speaking” but can and likely will be changed later.
I think the thing I’m most upset about right now, and the thing I don’t understand at all, is the extreme meltdown over the election results. Crying, upset, grief, those I understand. I experienced those things. Fear, too, I get. But the primal screaming, shaving off of the hair, the cult tattoos and bracelets… these are beyond my ability to understand. I didn’t understand them when I was on the Left, and found that kind of behavior to be distressing, to say the least.
Putting on my Leftist hat for a moment, what I should be doing is looking at myself and my party very closely right now. Trump won by a landslide, and has taken House and Senate, and the popular vote as well. This may surprise me (in my Leftist guise), but it’s not going to stop me. I need to know why voters flocked to Trump. I need to ask what I did wrong, what I need to do in the future, and whether anything I’ve done up until now can be fixed. Very obviously the problem is with me, because more than half of the country simply can’t be insane. There are way too many moderates who went out and voted for Trump.
That isn’t what the Left is doing, though. I’m seeing them blaming it on Biden, for not stepping down earlier. I’m seeing them blame Harris for not talking about the economy more, and for misjudging her base so badly that she thought abortion was more important than feeding your kids. I’m seeing them blame Trump for somehow, in some way, stealing the election. It’s always someone else and never themselves.
That’s pretty much a good summing up of why I left the Left… why I’m finding myself on the Right. I’m big on introspection. I’m big on asking good questions. I consider it important to hold strictly to my moral values, even if they differ from other people’s. I know I’m flawed, and so I am always watching to see ways I can improve and better myself. These are not things the Left tolerates very well.
The last thing that I’m trying so very hard to understand is the basic idea that the Left spent so much time saying that everyone needed to get out and vote, and then everyone did. Not everyone voted for Harris, but that’s to be expected. The country is fairly evenly divided, most years, and so you’d expect half the country to vote for Trump. The fact that they were gobsmacked over the idea that anyone voted for Trump just confuses me. They want to protect democracy. The way to do that is to ensure fair and honest elections, and I believe this one was. I know the last one wasn’t. But regardless, you cannot cut off everyone who voted differently than you, like a petulant child, and then scream that you’re protecting democracy. That’s not how it works.
There’s so much that I just don’t understand.
Leave a Reply