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And yet, opinion on most political and social events of significance splits into two rough clusters parsimoniously described as "Red" or "Blue", and this split and the density of the clusters grows more pronounced as the sorting of the population continues along the arc it has been travelling for at least the last decade. Or perhaps you would care to describe the evidence you see that this trend is reversing itself?
Of course not. If I were not listening to you, how would I be able to address the points you are raising, or to point out how they are very clearly wrong?
Both Tribes routinely coordinate meanness against things they consider socially hazardous, always have and always will. A supermajority of Americans consider hard narcotics the central example of socially-hazardous goods against which meanness should be coordinated, and have for at least the better part of a century. You argued that people don't take this attitude toward guns, so they shouldn't toward drugs. The problem is that Blues do, in fact, take exactly this attitude toward guns, to the point of successfully defying federal law in their efforts to coordinate meanness against a good that is both legal and explicitly protected by both federal law and the Constitution itself.
You argued that people don't do this in a case where they very obviously and publicly do. I have listened to your argument, and am pointing out how foolish it is.
You argued that people shouldn't do this in the case of hard narcotics and the cartels smuggling them, because it might result in the logic being applied in other areas like guns. I have listened to your argument, and am pointing out that this logic is already being applied to guns, has been for decades, and has been pushed about as hard as it's possible to do, so the concern you raise is laughable.
You appear committed to arguing that social hazard logic is ridiculous, specifically for the social hazards of your outgroup. It seems to me that this is a very silly thing to argue, but you are free to chase this dragon as far as you please. From my perspective, it is obviously true that social hazards exist and must be coordinated against, and likewise that not all arguments for social hazard are valid. Particularly, it is obvious to me that comparing tobacco and cigarettes to fentanyl, meth and heroin is laughably absurd. Cigarettes do in fact kill half a million citizens a year, and it is in fact true that there are very few legitimate uses for cigarettes. That does not change the fact that there is no cigarette equivalent to the "fentanyl zombie" or any of the other numerous, horrifying outcomes that hard narcotics reliably produce with appalling regularity. Lung cancer can kill you, but all men die sooner or later; narcotics can and frequently do destroy people on a level deeper than the physical, in addition to frequently killing them young and quite suddenly in a way that cigarettes absolutely do not.
Your argument would be slightly less absurd for alcohol, and I would more than welcome your efforts to convince Blue Tribe to revive prohibition if this is an argument you seriously wish to pursue. But as it stands, you appear to be deploying a fully-general argument against government restriction of any good; if we're not willing to drone-strike the Marlborough headquarters, we're not allowed to lay hands on agents of TdA or else you'll call us hypocrites.
This would at least be a colorable argument if you were endorsing full legalization of all narcotics, and also we abolish the ATF and legalize machine guns, cannon, rockets and high explosives, AI-generated child porn, homophobia and the N-word. Most of us have experienced the siren song of Radical Libertarianism, and I too am mildly sympathetic at least to the concept of the recreational McNuke. If this were your argument, my reply would be Is and not Ought: that the evil generated by the distribution and use of hard narcotics is sufficiently vast that it must be confronted by anything even distantly approaching a civilized society. The moral outrage thus generated has heretofore been channeled away from the users, who we have for many decades agreed to consider largely as victims, and toward the dealers, producers and cartels.
Your argument demolishes this venerable settlement, and the logical consequence is a renegotiation of our social response to addiction, for which your opening bid, in your own words, is that the users have chosen to commit suicide of their own free will. It seems to me that there are many who would be entirely content to take you at your word in this matter, write the users off completely, and finalize the end of life you claim they've consciously chosen. I would not hurry to such a conclusion, but would note it is a result I could be willing to accept.
On the other hand, the actual, compact that our society has long settled on is that the Cartels and their agents down the distribution chain receive full responsibility both for their own crimes and for the evils generated by the addicts' victimization, and as a consequence they have essentially forfeited their membership in the human race. Consequently, what restraint exists in our treatment of them arises only from practical, utilitarian concerns of the second-order sort. Perhaps this compact really is wrong; again, I can think of few political developments I would welcome more heartily than a Blue Tribe commitment to publicly argue for and defend the poor, maligned drug dealers and Cartels. Here, though, I'm going to point out that your arguments appear to be to be poorly thought out, low-effort, and motivated by partisan ideological commitments. If you perceived principles that you cared dearly for at stake here, you might demonstrate that by engaging with any of the context above yourself, thus showing that you actually cared enough to give the matter a bit more thought. Instead, this exchange is necessary.
Many citizens are not, surely. Most, perhaps. Many are distracted or detached from politics. Then too, many are mistaken, even badly mistaken, about what has happened and the realities of our situation. For example, I'm given to understand that some people actually vote for Liz Cheney.
And yet, half the country backed nation-wide riots, partisan suspension of law enforcement, arson, brutal assaults and murders based on Blue-tribe lies. Half the country backed the various partisan abuses and lies of the Covid years. You are correct that many millions are still deceived or deceiving themselves that the Culture War is a distraction from matters of true import, that our systems are in fine form, and that everything will continue in the future as it has in the past. That does not make the Constitution any less of a joke, or make our society any more viable in anything but the shortest of terms. Many millions of Americans of both tribes continue to publicly salivate at the thought of their political enemies being harmed, jailed, even murdered, and this number does not appear to be decreasing. Political norms and the concept of rule of law continue to erode, and at a steadily increasing pace. At some point in the not-so-distant future, Blues will regain the reins of formal power, and then we will see how things go.
Actually, no. I've read a number of your comments that seemed notable for what I perceive as, to put it charitably, argumentation that really ought to be given a detailed response. It has merely taken a while for recency and free time to converge, but I've got your "Nazi Republican" posts and your analysis of the jan 6th events in particular saved to revisit when time permits.
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