I appreciate the attempt, I think you can rework it to make your point, but just for the sake of keeping our minds working I will extend the conversation out to address the higher-level premise of what you’re trying to communicate.
If your clever comeback sounds exactly as smooth coming out of the enemy’s mouth, it’s not a very good comeback.
I fully agree with this point, but it’s also not how we argue with/interact with our current ideological opponents. We’re stuck in a loop on the left where we think crafted arguments and intellectual superiority will have any impact at all on anyone. If the right broadly cared at ALL about ideological consistency we wouldn’t be in this weird situation to begin with. Our big, missing hole in our analysis here is that the left us largely about headspace arguments and logic and consistency, and the right only acts like they do because they see us arguing this way and try to use the same way we argue to score points.
Conservatives generally don’t care about hypocrisy. Like, at all. They live in a world of feelings and how they feel now, and whatever story has been supplied to them about why they feel this way at this moment, so it almost doesn’t matter if our arguments are bad. If we want to change hearts and minds, we need to back waaaay the fuck up and start attacking how people feel. Like on a very personal level, because they only exist in their present moment and present feelings. This is why they get so worked up about petty, superficial insults like “you’re weird.” It’s far less satisfying because they always have bravado and hold frame, but it DOES effect them.
We like to craft expert arguments to impress other leftists, but if it had any kind of real-world impact, we’d all be swimming in socialism and equality.
I appreciate the attempt, I think you can rework it to make your point, but just for the sake of keeping our minds working I will extend the conversation out to address the higher-level premise of what you’re trying to communicate.
I fully agree with this point, but it’s also not how we argue with/interact with our current ideological opponents. We’re stuck in a loop on the left where we think crafted arguments and intellectual superiority will have any impact at all on anyone. If the right broadly cared at ALL about ideological consistency we wouldn’t be in this weird situation to begin with. Our big, missing hole in our analysis here is that the left us largely about headspace arguments and logic and consistency, and the right only acts like they do because they see us arguing this way and try to use the same way we argue to score points.
Conservatives generally don’t care about hypocrisy. Like, at all. They live in a world of feelings and how they feel now, and whatever story has been supplied to them about why they feel this way at this moment, so it almost doesn’t matter if our arguments are bad. If we want to change hearts and minds, we need to back waaaay the fuck up and start attacking how people feel. Like on a very personal level, because they only exist in their present moment and present feelings. This is why they get so worked up about petty, superficial insults like “you’re weird.” It’s far less satisfying because they always have bravado and hold frame, but it DOES effect them.
We like to craft expert arguments to impress other leftists, but if it had any kind of real-world impact, we’d all be swimming in socialism and equality.