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This does sound like most progressives to me. It also sounds like most everyone else to me. Do you think progressives are unique in this?
I might be persuaded that elite progressives are more that way than elite conservatives but I'm not sure.
Sure, most people operate this way, with the possible exception of the world's most principled rationalists (read: annoying nerds that have no influence on public debate whatsoever). But saying only that suggests a false balance between the two sides of the political spectrum.
The reality is that progressives control public debate. They control the overwhelming majority of institutions, from news organizations, to multinational corporations, to NGOs, to academia, to the judicial system (up to the Supreme Court perhaps), to websites like Wikipedia and reddit. They gatekeep what news makes it to the front page and stays there to be talked about by normies. They form an implicit coalition to filter out facts that are inconvenient to the progressives, but not to conservatives.
In practical terms that means conservative politicians like Trump have very little incentive to harm people that oppose the goals of the progressive coalition (as Ovechkin seems to do by supporting Russia over Ukraine), even when those actions would theoretically reflect well on Trump, because the progressive coalition will ensure Trump never receives any credit for it.
Yes, thanks, that's the sort of nuance I was hoping someone would delineate.
A lot of the time when I push back here it's not because I disagree but because I want to see the finer structures of someone's thought, to compare notes.
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Uniquely blatant. Most people do that to some degree or other, but most people also feel some discomfort when they do it. There's an unease, a vague awareness that they're doing something wrong, that they're actually losing. To the extent that I think I'm pretty good about that sort of thing, it's because that feeling of unease hits hard, and makes me feel nervous and paranoid, like I've forgotten a project due tomorrow. I suspect something similar affects many of the people who end up on The Motte.
A lot of progressives/leftists seem to just not give a fuck. I think it's partially downstream from the Primacy of Consciousness that fills so much leftist/progressive epistemology. What is reality anyway, man? Reality is in the eye of the beholder, it's all in your head and words anyway, so why not reject your words and assert my own? The more charitable angle is a kind of faith in institutions. Sure, I might not have an answer to your facts, but some professor somewhere does, for sure, and they'll prove me right.
I felt this in the recent kerfuffle over Trump, where Democrats are pretending to believe that Trump unironically asked Iran to blow up San Diego and Los Angeles.
There's no possible logical way to come to this conclusion but it's the approved message.
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