Laughter Or Despair?
Why lefty-trendy wokists are mostly a source of harmless amusement while howling populist zombies are a fundamental threat to civilization
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It is unfortunately the case that politics is increasingly a game of extremes, with cynical politicians pandering to the least intelligent and most bigoted among us in order to garner essential edge-case votes. This is possible only because everyone else votes for “their team” regardless of the inadequacy of individual candidates and the incoherence of any supposed policies. This behavior arises from the conviction that while “our team” may be a disaster, the “other side” is immeasurably worse.
In consequence, we find ourselves staring in despair at brain-dead populist morons on the far-right side of the political spectrum and shrieking neurotic wokists on the far-left. Both groups are reprehensible, but which is worse?
To begin, it’s important to recognize that both sides resemble one another more than they differ. Both far-right and far-left believe that complex reality can be reduced to mindless soundbites. Both are in favor of censorship and oppression. Both operate in the realm of blind emotion rather than permitting the ingress of anything remotely approaching reason. Both attract followers who evince a religious devotion to the cause and are correspondingly intolerant and bigoted. Both right and left studiously ignore real-world information in favor of dogma regardless of the continuously poor outcomes delivered as a result. For both, blind faith is central and empirical evidence irrelevant. Neither has any capacity to perceive that benefits always incur costs, and that it’s essential to balance costs and benefits rather than pretend there are no costs implied for whatever magical fixes they wrap up into suitably vapid soundbites.
The primary difference between far-right and far-left, however, is of great social importance: on the right, regardless of differences in tone and tempo, the enemy is clear and the focus is reasonably constant. On the left, the enemy is far more frequently not players on the right but rather other lefty-trendies who are deemed to be insufficiently extreme; moreover, the focus is rarely on one thing for more than a moment or two before a new…
