Thread by @prempanicker

Because it is Friday, a bit of a rant: I am getting a bit sick and tired of "liberal opinion makers" spending increasing amounts of time and space calling out various folks for having changed their previously held opinions -- particularly with regard to Modi. For various reasons:

#1. To change a previously held opinion -- no matter that the originally opinion was wrong, or did not take into account all the facts -- is not a crime. It could actually be proof that you are not totally brain dead. +

#2: More to the point, this whole climbing onto a self-erected moral high ground and sniping at those below is self-defeating. Here is why: Assume you, as a "liberal", stand for certain values and spend your life in the public space defending those values. +

+ Why do you expend so much energy on this? Because you want to explain those values, because you want to persuade, because you want more people to buy in. And what happens when someone does? What do you do when someone veers around to your point of view, albeit belatedly? +

+ You sneer. You mock. You go huh, lookit him, he used to say the other thing and now he is finding out that we were right and he was wrong. Idiot.

Nice job winning people over to your point of view, folks. Tell me, doesn't it get lonely and cold, up on that moral high ground?

You know why liberal values are constantly having to struggle for survival? Because the gatekeepers of those values are busy fighting among themselves over the right to be the sole torchbearer, than in combating the ideas of the opposite group.

<End of rant> TGIF.

FFS, stop sending me DM questions in response to public posts. Here is a public answer to the DM-er.

Question: What is wrong with calling out hypocrisy when you see it?

Response: Maybe think about what your objective is? ++

Inn 2014, a certain number of people voted for Modi, despite knowing about 2002, despite being aware, to a greater or lesser degree, that his Gujarat Model was smoke and mirrors.

We are in the middle of another election cycle. What is your objective here? +

A primary one is to convince a plurality of former Modi supporters about his toxicity, and convince them to vote against.

How exactly do you hope to achieve that, if on the one hand you put out facts and figures and then, when I am convinced, you call me names and sneer?

The irony is, a group of people aspire to be opinion-makers. And when they succeed in changing their minds, they get busy mocking those they just persuaded.

Grow a brain, no? And learn how to fucking use it?

I am done here.