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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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It's definitely a hard question to answer, in no small part because of how there's no standard definition of what counts as "left," and how "left," "liberal," and "progressive" get conflated. When I look at the values that tend to get associated with such groups, I see values that I support today as much as ever - e.g. sympathy and support for the least well-off in society for "left," freedom of speech for "liberal," and changing the structure of society to get "better" in some meaningful way (i.e. for it to "progress" rather than merely "change") for people who used to be ignored or denigrated for "progressive."

Where I see myself departing greatly from the modern left - besides the fact that they largely just reject the principles of liberalism - is the willingness to check that claims are true and that policies really do create desired outcomes. E.g. the whole WPATH situation seems to be the result of people just deciding not to check what would actually lead to the best outcomes for kids who claim to be trans and just going along with people who are sympathetic and sound like they know what they're talking about. To achieve anything good in this world requires some level of brutal honesty about the reality of the situation, and I just don't see that happening.

And this is one insight that I think right-wingers of yesteryear had when I was poo-pooing their claims of "slippery slope" (I too admit that I have egg on my face on this, for whatever little it's worth) that I lacked. They understood the psychology of self-proclaimed leftists/liberals/progressives than I did. Perhaps unsurprising, because I'm not known for understanding the way others think, but I would have thought back then that as a leftist/liberal/progressive, that I understood their thinking better than their enemies would. They understood that the left/liberal alliance was largely one of convenience, and that liberalism would go out the window if the opportunity presented itself to most of those identifying on the left. That's what they were warning me about, and I was pushing back using basic philosophical/logical arguments instead of recognizing the way the landscape was shaped. Often, when someone is proven wrong, it's not that hard to reach for excuses for why it was reasonable to be wrong at the time or how this thing doesn't actually prove oneself wrong, as a way to save face, but in this one, I don't see any way around just completely submitting to any "I told you so"s that anyone might want to throw at me.