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Why political revenge narratives don't make sense to me.
It essentially implies the difference between the right wing and left wing argument about things are about morals and not about the effectiveness of policy or economic ideas for the good of our country and our citizens. If "your rules fairly" includes doing things that you think are stupid, inefficient, counter-productive and extra prone to corruption then doing it back would be strange.
Presumably if you hold an idea like "smaller governments are generally better for a country's growth" or "the state taking ownership in companies leads to bad incentives" or "free speech benefits the country's citizens and the country as a whole" then it would make little sense to abandon them once you've taken power if you want the best for the nation.
After all if you care about the country, I would assume you want good and effective policy. If you see the left's policy ideas as bad and harmful to our future, it's not a great idea to join in on the self-harm. Unless you're a traitor and hate the country, you would be pushing for what you think is the best policy. Now people might disagree on what is best for growth, what is best for the people, and what is best for the country but we should expect them to pursue their ideas in the same way if they care about America, towards ideas they think are good.
This is part of why principled groups can stay principled so easily. An organization like FIRE truly believes that free speech is beneficial. Suppression and censorship when their side is in power would be traitorous to the good of the country in their mind, even if done out of a desire for revenge. A person like Scott Lincicome of CATO truly believes that government taking equity of private enterprise is bad policy, and thus it's easy for him to critique it.
They aren't "turning the other cheek", they just actually believe in the words they say and the ideas they promote. They want good policy (or at least policy they think is good) for the benefit of the country. Sometimes you can see this in politicians, like how Bernie Sanders supports the plan to take equity in Intel. He believes government ownership of corporations is good for the country so he supports it even when the "enemy" does it. I think he's a stupid socialist but it's consistent with what I expect from a true believer. And you see with libertarian Republicans like Ron Paul, Justin Amash and Thomas Massie criticizing the Intel buy.
Counter to this, the "revenge" narrative comes off like the advocates never believed the words they were saying. It suggests their stated beliefs don't reflect what they think is good for the future of the US, but rather personal feelings and signaling to their in-group community. If they changed their minds it would be understandable, but if that's the case then the revenge narrative is unnecessary to begin with, they can now argue on the merits.
I just wanted to chime in that I personally think your thoughts written here were so well spoken, worthy of consideration and discussion and sympathetic to many opinions in the way I think your intentions are such and that which the Motte rules encourages that they resurrected my lurking ghost to my corpse to tell you someone out there sees what you say here and appreciates your effort in this post. I think if more posts used language like yours here, the brain drain happening on this site currently will be dialed back a bit.
I've also skimmed and read your responses to what you've said from other users and I want to additionally commend you for what I think is a genuine effort to remain calm and give everyone fair questions and chances to explain themselves. Keep it up!
Now, um. Remember remember the 5th of November. My soul now leaves this husk.
I, for one, will be devastated that you will be ridding everyone here of your Main Character Syndrome. Please don't go...
To your point, there is some clear frustration that we all share. Some people here are more hysterical about it than others, and I appreciate @magicalkittycat for starting shit (in a thought provoking way) here and challenging people to explain their positions. That being said, if you need a reminder of brain drain on a massive level, hop on over to reddit where as a collective they consistently call millions of people Nazis and ban a not-so-small percentage of them for the capital crime of having a dissenting opinion. The mods here don't do that.
According to mainstream reddit (which is the largest internet forum on the planet), I have been a Nazi from 2020 forward for stating the facts of the Kyle Rittenhouse case, not wanting certain sexual content in schools, disagreeing with certain aspects and goals of BLM, calling out the leftist creep in our institutions, etcetera, etcetera. So, take what you see here, flip the politics, lower the IQ by about 10 points, then multiply it by a couple hundred thousand users, and what you end up with is a gigantic brain drain, plus an ideological purge that's been allowed and encouraged for the better part of a decade.
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