Read on Twitter
When you talk to conservatives you can mostly jus say what you mean. When you talk to progressives you have to bracket everything with a million “to be clear” and “of course that’s not anybody fault” and “I wish this weren’t true, but…” and “look, nobody likes this, but…”
Whenever I talk to progressives I am in the mindset of managing their emotions. I know there are things I will say that will upset them, so like I’m talking to a toddler, I change my approach to manage their feelings. What’s wild, though, is this actually does work.
Progressives actually are more receptive if you just add a whole bunch of meaningless, pointless hedges that act like scaffolding around your core claim. It somehow signals for them that you take the emotional content of your claims seriously.
Like, if I were talking about the failures of educational interventions to a conservative I would just state plainly that most of what we have tried simply doesn’t work. With a progressive you have to add a lot of that, “this isn’t anybody’s fault” asides for them to hear you.
A lot of this is about signaling humility and deference and kindness. “This is just my opinion, and to be clear we might not have designed the intervention properly, and maybe there’s data I am unfamiliar” etc etc. They’ll hear you if you add all that stuff.
Probably because I’m like 15% autistic or something these hedging statements appear to me to be entirely meaningless. I want to have conversations with people where we can just assume good faith and skip those pleasantries in service of pursuing what’s true.
By the way, I think this ties in neatly with the way that progressives constantly accuse conservatives in policy debates of just simply not caring about the poor. This is why signaling that that doesn’t apply to you gives you permission to talk about uncomfortable facts.
Progressives are constantly trying to figure out if you’re one of the good guys and if you’re not, then they know they have permission to ignore you. But if you can demonstrate that you are sufficiently compassionate, then you can make the same claim you were going to make anyway
Discussing politics with a progressive is like arguing with your partner. “I hear what you’re saying and I acknowledge it. Your feelings are valid.” Only after that’s established can you cite the data that makes your point either way.
See also the demand in some spaces for a long preamble full of disclaimers like, “first of all, I acknowledge that I am a privileged straight white cis man” before you’re allowed to make a claim. This is sometimes interpreted as a way to disqualify people…
… but there’s an aspect of it that’s not so different from what I’m talking about in this thread. You gain credibility by acknowledging that you understand the relevant questions about privilege.
https://twitter.com/wanyeburkett/status/1642561439243157505
In these circles, an understanding of relative privilege on the dimensions of sex, gender, race, and class is table stakes for having an informed opinion. So you’re performing a sort of ritual that demonstrates that you get it.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
