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Cue the anguished comments about institutional capture and its consequences.
There is no alpha in measured responses. By definition a discussion forum will underrepresent the boring and the practical. Selection bias makes the news a hellscape, and as independent free-thinkers^TM we are obligated to feed such training data to our own biases.
Multiply anything by a large enough number and it becomes a crippling moral singularity. Millions of oppressed trans kids vs. millions groomed away from their parents! The deaths of countless fetal humans, weighed against intolerable social control of women! A red/blue state passes a red/blue law, and it cannot merely be liberalism in action; it must represent the spearhead of an existential threat, the beginning of the end for all one holds dear.
Except this isn’t true for the median-or-higher American, which includes most of this community. I can put my head down and stick with the social contract for fabulous rewards—money, amenities, a family, all vastly improved over my likely 1800s lot. I’m not spiritual, which is the weakest link, but even there we enjoy a détente derived from centuries of liberalism.
This is what the Kulaks of the motte are discounting. Riots and stochastic terrorism are rare and unpopular because life is pretty good. It’s easy to discount problems exponentially with distance, just like most people do for the broader spectrum of suffering. It may even be morally correct.
Believing the news is normal. Eye-rolling at the news is also normal. Casual xenophobia is normal, as is bending over backwards for capitalism. Tribalism is perhaps the most normal of all. Remembering this offers a lot of predictive power over competing models of doomsaying. Ideological impositions rarely survive competition with the deep-set urge to strive for one’s own.
I’m getting back to work.
The most sane take that the motte has produced
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