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There's a particular perspective I've noticed, which consists of treating the left as rational individuals possessed of moral responsibility, and the right as mindless sociopathic zombies that need to be managed and contained.
And this perspectives leads to admonitions that we should never 'provoke' right wingers. And that left wingers should be 'responsible'.
It's weird, because it implicitly endorses the truth of the situation, whilst continuing to apply the facade of democratic proceduralism to something that goes beyond what our liberal order can realistically cope with.
The democrats launch an attack ad against Trump for being Trump, but apparently this is 'irresponsible', because it will just cause Trumpers to double down on anti-social behaviour vis a vis corona.
Democrats (the American centre-right party) are being 'needlessly destructive' in attacking the Republican (the American far-right party) president for being an incompetent senile bigoted sociopath.
But the Republican, well, that is just how Republicans are, no? Who are we civilised people to question his brutish nature?
The other big example of this related to the discourse around immigration and brexit, and how bigotry ('very real concerns') was treated as an immutable and unarguable fact; but remainers, and pro-movement people like myself were always expected to justify our positions.
It's *so* weird. And not. What's actually happening is that this framing is convenient to a small number of billionaires and their greedos. Decency is delegitimised, and bigotry is cast as the immutable core of the Will of the People.
I mean, my view is that people are *either* an inert mass that an enlightened elite inject various stimuluses into so as to achieve some output; or else, people are rational moral individuals deserving of respect and consideration, and as such should be held responsible.
(In reality it'll be somewhere between the two, of course)
But it's interesting and fun to note that bigoted right wingers are treated like an inert and repulsive mass, and left-wingers are held to a high moral standard. It's actually correct, in a twisted and unjust fashion.
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