I started this thread in Politics & Society, but someone pointed out that this might be a better home. It's been a long time since I've posted on 2+2, but I value the intelligence of the community a bit over other social media. I'm building out a YT channel that commentates on group psychology, myth, and culture.

I'll start by sharing a few recent vids-

Stop Being Nice.
Odysseus and Crisis Compulsion
This is What Far Left Sounds Like
Can We Guess the News Source by Title?


About me: I have a masters from Columbia in organizational psychology, 5 years of conference work in group relations, and about 7 years working in the field of wilderness therapy. My YT channel applies theories from group psychology to current cultural phenomenons, with a special bent towards using myth as a metaphorical framework when applicable.

Subs and shares are super appreciated. I don't really want to whore myself out on social media, and thus I'm hoping to grow this thing organically with intelligent people that enjoy thought provoking topics, even if they disagree with my interpretations.

I hope folks enjoy!

-B

Man, the blogs channel is way mo' tame than the politics...

I was going to make a video on this, but I think it gets a little too lost in the weeds. Maybe I'll change my mind at some point, but I'm going to start it as a post.

I am confident that some % of closed-minded left leaning folk will interpret this video as an attack. It’s an interesting topic, though, and I want to talk about it.

Today I want to talk about the idea of directionality. This was brought up recently by a poster (EADGBE) in the 2p2 politics thread where I was posting my content (leave it dead, pls, it did not feel productive anymore)...and I think maybe they referenced another poster with the username phonebooth who talked about it previously.

Basically, the conversation got hijacked in some ways and dragged into a more strictly political discussion, which is interesting in and of itself. We might say that the group has a built-in defensive measure against self-critique, or perhaps that there is such an us-vs-them dynamic that any awareness of patterns shone on one side is interpreted as an attack. Which, of course, we see in other contexts when unconscious group drives are at play, and exposing or discussing them threatens their actualization. This is pretty common in therapeutic groups, where hostility rises against up against the therapist or other members that push for exposing certain dynamics, dynamics that actually serve the group unconscious in some way.

Part of the problem with that discussion is that most of the posters didn’t seem to have much of a grasp on what group dynamics study entails, and that’s probably at least in part feedback for me around how to front-load certain ideas. The expectation seemed to be that I was going to argue for specific policy, but really the thing I'm interested in is looking at how dynamics play out in groups, how the group psyche influences behavior, etc.

Anyways, on the thread, there was a lot of indignation from some leftist posters that I wouldn’t directly speak out against some of the republican quotes on mask wearing or fully endorse Fauci’s greatness, and pretty blatant outrage when I owned that I’m agnostic because I don’t consider myself anything close to an expert in the medical field. That seemed to be interpreted as tacit endorsement for rightwing ideology, even though I made it clear that at face value, the claims by some republicans, specifically Gomert, seemed ridiculous.

So what I want to look at is the idea of directionality, as it was named on the forum. In a nutshell, part of this post might serve as a PSA for those on the left. Or, you know, people are free to interpret this as just me being a dark agent for the far right posing in a centrist role. Maybe writing that explicitly will mitigate the reactivity, who knows.

Directionality was presented as the idea that if you’re on one side of an argument's continuum, anyone perceived as even being in the general direction (from where you stand) of the opposing side becomes an enemy. Meaning that if I’m over here on this side of the argument, if you are close to the middle-ground, you’re the bad guy, even if you are actually closer to my end of the spectrum. An implication of this idea is that those in the middle would draw ire from everyone else on the spectrum.

We might even see instances of where those closer in ideology to us are attacked more vehemently. From a group dynamics perspective, there could be a few reasons for this. I’ll throw out one hypothesis: I think that it’s likely the group unconscious actually gains some comfort from people clearly residing in the other extreme. It justifies their identity and extreme stance to have something obvious to push against. So people in the middle ground may be perceived as existentially threatening by the group unconscious of those on the extremes. There are plenty of other ways to talk about it, that’s just one idea that has occurred to me.

It’s possible that Audrey Gelman getting pushed out of her company The Wing might be a good example of this in real life. Look it up if you haven’t, but my understanding is that she was the cofounder and CEO of a company that provided all-female workspaces, and she was recently pushed out, dare I say cancelled, for “not doing enough for people of color in the organization.”
By my understanding, Audrey Gelman was pretty far left and obviously big into feminism. On the right, they use the phrase “eating their own” to speak down to this phenomenon and denigrate the left as being disorganized and mob-like.

As another example, in the 2+2 politics forum, for example, there’s a long thread entitled “I’m Left but the New Left is Going Way Too Far Out”, and the poster gets absolutely lambasted by leftists. The first response, I believe, is “You ain’t left.”

Yet to be fair, I would imagine that this would occur on the far-right too. I’m thinking about American History X type of white supremacists, who would look down on anyone that’s even slightly tolerant of other races. But I’ll be honest, the year is 2020 and I am not seeing any of that in my feeds, news, or personal life. If you want to say it’s historically been more prominent on the right, I wouldn't necessarily argue. But tides change, and it doesn't fit my experience to say that in this day and age.

The idea of directionality was kind of thrown out as a neutral phenomenon, wherein both sides engage in it, but I think we are seeing a manifestation of one-sided directionality from the left. Perhaps this directional hostility concentrates more in the groups that are experiencing elevated anxiety. In today’s case, given that the president is a guy named Donald Trump, the left may be experiencing elevated anxiety, especially in an election year, and that might be contributing to this effect being currently more prominent – if it is – on the left.

So here’s where the PSA comes in for the left: I don’t think the right is doing this as much, or at least, there seems to be much more tolerance on the right for people in the center from my perspective. There seems to be less of a demand for ideological homogeneity, so to speak. Now you may be able to find counter-examples, I’m largely offering this hypothesis based on experience. But I mean, for a clear example, check out Dave Rubin talking with rightwinger Michael Knowles. Rubin is right leaning, but doesn’t agree with the conservative view on a lot of pieces, and Michael Knowles is relaxed about the differences. Or Eric Weinstein and Andrew Marantz. I dislike Marantz, but Eric and him have a long form discussion about their ideological differences. As for me, I’m pro-choice, I’ve never voted Republican, I wear a mask when I’m in a store, I believe in equal rights, and I’ve made videos talking about how racism may not be baked into the laws of society anymore but that the history means there are still effects in play today…but in my short and tiny career of discussing these issues on Youtube, I’ve experienced a ton of outrage from folks on the left. On facebook someone called me a sophisticated Russian bot, for example. And as I said, that 2+2 thread could demonstrate something similar.

In that thread, I asked one very adamant left-wing poster about which Leftist thinkers he would recommend, and his response was pretty strange: He didn’t really have any strong recommendations. To me, that implies that there may be a dearth of challenging conversations happening. I know, people listening will think this means I am saying the left are less intelligent, but that’s not my point. My point is that I asked for examples of where the really good dialogue is happening there and didn’t get much back. An effort to further educate myself about what the best leftist thinkers are saying today was met with very little from someone who nonetheless felt very strongly about their views, and was very comfortable accusing me of being ignorant.

This is not healthy for the left. If you care about leftist ideology, it’s something that would be smart to address. I do think leftist ideology is important, for reasons I talk about in my video titled “Fairness vs Greatness”. And what I’m saying is that it is morphing into something way out of balance. Not only the potential lack of left-on-left rigorous debate, but the hardening of boundaries to disallow centrist thinkers to enter the conversation without experiencing an overwhelming hostility. Or per our topic, the increasing hostility towards those on their own side of the spectrum.

I think a big idea you're missing out on, both from your description of your experience on YouTube as well as over in P&S is that in online discussions, no one really cares what positions people claim to hold. Anyone can claim to be pro-life. Anyone can claim to be pro-labor. But people also naturally have a hierarchy of their positions, e.g. someone says they're pro-choice, but they vote Republican because they like low taxes for rich people more than they like being pro-choice. Obviously, being pro-choice isn't all that important to them. Indeed, being a centrist, for many people, isn't about having all their political positions sitting neatly between the platforms of the two major parties, but instead having a mishmash of positions from both parties, many of which might be quite extreme. People also like to troll, and claim to have certain beliefs even when they are not deeply held. And quite frequently, people will workshop ways through backwards reasoning to criticize opponents or certain ideas through language that sounds like it's working from principles and following logic, but then those principles suddenly don't apply when talking about something from their own side.

What is more consistent, what's harder to fake, and what does tend to reveal real values about a person in an online discussion format, whether written or in video format, is what arguments they choose to make. So, anyone can claim to be pro-life, but if they aren't choosing to formulate any arguments in favor of it, or to argue against any of the pro-choice people they come across, it's obvious it's not a belief they take as seriously as the ones that do generate arguments. Relatedly, if someone states principles to support their pro-life position, say for example something like a commitment to the sanctity of human life or whatever, but that principle doesn't also come out to play on other related issues, like free prenatal care for mothers or opposition to more war in the Middle East, it's likely that principle was not actually deeply held or important but rather a mere veneer of reasonableness reverse engineered in service of a stated position. Most people work this way: they identify the policy preferences they like, and then they work backwards to find lines of argument that support them, rather than starting first from principles and then thinking through to which policies would best reflect those principles.

So, to tie this into your reception over in P&S, people on the left who understand the above and have been immersed in that way of evaluating new posters are going to look awfully suspiciously at someone who, one, claims to be towards the left but directs 100% of his arguments against the left, and two, claims to be aghast at mob mentalities, untamed emotions, a lack of reason, etc., and then can't be bothered to levy any criticism along those lines at the right, where those things are rampant and easy to find. Now, maybe you do have some deeply held principles, but it sure looks to a political forum veteran that you just don't like the left and also want to present yourself as an intellectual superior to them.

Directionality isn't just about how close you are to the opponent you're facing. It's also pretty relevant who you have your back to. In the Black Lives Matter protests, the police send a pretty clear message when they line up facing the BLM protesters with their backs to the white supremacist counter-protesters. In a debate about the value of reason, if you face the left and turn your back on the right, it sends a similar message, no matter how close you claim to be to the people you're arguing against.

Over on that other politics forum, we had a brief discussion where some vegetarians couldn't believe that omnivores thought that militant vegans were a problem when they had militant meat eaters up in their faces all the time, and the omnivores couldn't believe that the vegetarians didn't think that militant vegans were a problem when they had militant vegans up in their faces all the time. In reality, it's really hard to get a sense for which group is more militant or more abundant because where one sits on that spectrum is going to dictate what sorts of criticism they see and remember. The analogy to your case is that you don't see many right wing attacks on you, so you perceive them as being more welcoming. However, it could also be a case that your centrism is just further right than you think, so the right sees you as more of an ally than an adversary.

It is weird to me how so many posters like to start replies with “Where you messed up is…” (or some variation). It’s off-putting to me, and implies an undue arrogance that I don’t think is helpful to bring to conversations. It gives the person on the other end the option of either submitting or firing back from a place of opposition. I don’t think you’re making great points, so I guess I’ll take the latter.

Re: How people choose policies/stances, I would argue that many of our drives are unconscious having to do with basic needs—things like belonging, freedom/fun, self-actualization, etc. I do agree that people do mental gymnastics to come up with ways to plausibly justify their behavior (generated by the deeper needs) to values they think sound nicer. I mean, I shouldn’t really say this is my take, this is based on needs-based thinking in psychology. It’s similar to what you said but actually explains the first step, which seems to be left hanging in your description. It also moves us away from simply having a jaded, negative view of people and allows us to recognize deeper positive intent based on basic needs even when the end behavior is maladaptive or harmful. Compassion is more likely to be maintained, as explained in Marshall Rosenberg's teachings on Nonviolent Communication.

In terms of reception in P & S, people are welcome to judge for themselves, but I’d say it was mixed with a few lefties getting especially excited. Pretty weak arguing, trying to catch me and others on technicalities, and a lot of self-congratulation. They are welcome to be suspicious of posters who criticize the left, I don’t really see a point in getting worked up about it. My point is that isn’t a healthy place to be when some people who genuinely share liberal values are very concerned about some of the fringe ideology that is rising quickly. That stance of theirs precludes people who are passionate and want to really clean “their own house” from being able to be a part of the team. You end up with less healthy debate, taboo, and groupthink. I know, you won’t agree. But maybe look into the signs and symptoms of groupthink and ask yourself how that might fit in.

And maybe it would be worth considering that the hyper-defensive reaction to any criticism of one’s side is likely to disincentivize people from opening up criticism on the other side, as well. The urgency for me to criticize things I don’t like about the right goes down sharply when lefties start leveling spazzy accusations. I would feel the same about rightwingers if that’s where the reaction was coming from.

I’m not sure where you get the “aghast at mob mentality” impression. I think they are fascinating and terrifying at the same time. Definitely destructive, but like, a really really interesting thing to look at.

Feel free to give examples of specific instances of cops dealing with protesters, but I would suspect cops are going to face the direction of imminent danger or lawlessness. And are you interpreting that counter-protestors are white supremacists or is that what they are explicitly representing? Yes, yes, I know, people will claim to represent one thing and then implicitly rep something else. But it is also important to suspend buying into your own projections to an extent as well. If it is not objective, then don’t present it as objective.

You also seem overly nihilistic about our ability to rise up out of cognitive distortions. Simply not accurate. It is a big factor but there are also tools to mitigate. And if you really believed that fully, why even respond to my post in the first place?

And your point about far-right people not attacking me on a personal basis is a reasonable one, IMO. I mean, I just naturally look like someone that alt-right people wouldn’t target, so I’m sure that plays into perceptions. I do however have specifically anti-Trump messaging in some videos.

However, look at Terry Crews and the shade he got for some of his tweets. Or the Audrey Gelman example from above? Or Dr. Karlyn Borisenko losing friends over being curious about a Trump rally? Show me the equivalent from the other side. They might exist but I haven’t come across them this year so much.

The example of cops turning their back on white supremacists was an anecdote told to me by a protester. At one he attended, open white supremacists waving symbols thereof were counterprotesting BLM, and the cops lined up with their backs to the white supremacists. The main purpose of relaying this was as an analogy rather than an all encompassing description of every rally. If you purport to be a centrist enforcer of reasoned debate not beholden to any one side, but you turn all of your attention to just one side, you certainly look like an ally of the other side, especially when they look to be an equal if not greater risk of committing violations.

I'm honestly not even sure what sort of equivalence you're asking me to draw in your last paragraph. Terry Crews was criticized on social media. Lots of that criticism was fair. I'm sure some wasn't, because there are a lot of idiots on the internet. Is the idea that the right don't correct their own on social media some sort of good quality? When the right attacks people on social media, they attack people like Christine Blassey Ford, who had to leave her job and move from her house due to a tsunami of harassment and violent threats.

Eh, I need more than "a reporter told an anonymous dude who's telling me on the internet". Although I am sure there are plenty of examples of messed up s*** down by cops and groups of cops. But that is not a compelling point as stated.

The Terry Crews stuff was mostly attacks and condescension. "Correction" is not what that was, and that's a weird way to put it anyway, imo. "Challenging respectfully" is what I would consider appropriate. A counter-example that would address my point would be someone on the right dabbling in some more liberal ideology and getting shellacked by the right for it. I'm sure there are examples too, it just seems less prominent.

And uh, I think I spelled out my thinking on it reasonably well, and it certainly wasn't "that the right don't correct their own on social media [is] some sort of good quality." Wth? Maybe you are conflating debate with hostility?

I don't know the nitty gritty details of the Christine Blassey Ford story, but if taken at face value, then we probably agree that it is super shitty. And a worthy topic of discussion from a group dynamics perspective about how voices are intimidated and silenced.

We do have video of cops tipping off white supremacists to make themselves scarce when a crackdown was about to start, so that the cops would not accidentally catch them up in the beatings or gassing, or have to look like they were soft playing half the crowd. But I don't really care if you are convinced that it actually happened or not. The point is that you, despite being one who claims to be a neutral and rational arbiter of debate and discourse, by focusing exclusively on one side and largely ignoring the abuses of the other, you come across like those cops, even if they're just hypothetical cops in a metaphor.

With regard to Terry Crews and getting shellacked, I make a distinction between "receiving criticism" and "not receiving criticism," and not between "getting debated" and "getting shellacked" precisely because there are basically no instances of, shall we say, discussion of the alleged poor takes of prominent people that cannot be described by people who are responsible but also sympathetic for the accused as being shellackings. Any internet commentary by non-trivial amounts of people is going to contain spiteful idiots, and that cannot really change. So, I'm not sure why one would think that the case of Crews receiving criticism, some of which was surely crap and hateful and some of which I thought was apt, was particularly noteworthy, except in the unlikely event that you thought his takes were unassailably reasoned and reasonable. The only question is if one chooses to describe the criticism according to the words of the worst criticizers or by the best. In my estimation, I think the words of the worst of the left look pretty benign compared to the worst of the right, but I don't expect to convince you of that.

Judging an entire political wing by isolated leftists you choose to single out does seem to be a habit of yours, however. You took a passing exchange with eccriture in which he said he didn't have any particular favorite left wing thinkers that he consults with on the regular to be evidence of the intellectual bankruptcy and lack of reasoned debate on the left. You also devoted an entire video to dissecting out of context text messages from an anonymous alleged leftist, who could have been drunk or otherwise emotionally agitated for all the viewer knows, and claimed without any further evidence that they were characteristic of lefties in general.

But that aside, do righties attack righties who stray from orthodoxy? Absolutely. Mitt Romney is a persona non grata in the party. Justin Amash had to leave the party. Neither of these men actually flirted with liberalism. They merely disagreed with Trumpism on either a factual or conservative basis. Do we get to look at the stupidest or most vile criticism of Ammon Bundy coming out in support of Black Lives Matter to judge whether that is intellectual debate or a shellacking? I don't think we are going to find exclusively reasoned arguments. Public health leaders at the state and national level are choosing to resign or take on security detail because of masses of death threats to them and their families coming overwhelmingly if not exclusively from the right, and that isn't for being liberal per se but for merely being factual (granted, being factual is often correctly seen as being anti-conservative), and that includes Republican appointees. That seems way worse to me than whatever words were said about Terry Crews or your other examples.

Centrist =/= Neutral, hopefully that's understood, but apparently not.

That second paragraph begins with a super long run-on sentence, not sure what you're trying to say there.

I actually do think that the worst of the right is more harmful than the worst of the left (for now). I don't expect you to allow for nuance in how you perceive my stance, so I doubt you will believe this. I just think there is a TON more of the far left and the energy there is surging, so total harm potential seems very high. I think a lot of pretty intelligent folks that are habituated to acknowledging the awfulness on the right are not perceiving the threat coming from the left as that wave crests.

Generalizations are inevitable in group dynamics work, your indignation about it is just a sign of inexperience/ignorance. It becomes a malicious problem if/when we lose sight of the fact that we are only throwing out hypotheses, not defining reality with our interpretations.

Your point about that convo with a leftie might be valid in a vacuum, but becomes spurious when I present that video and a large % of people side with the other guy. What he says consistently resonates with some ppl so far.

Cool, some counter-examples. I'll look into them (obv I'm aware of Romney and McCain having friction in 2015 and 2016 with R party/Trump--and at that time I would have said that the rightwing happenings were way more concerning). It sounds like you believe that this type of thing happens equally on both sides of the aisle in the last year or so? I guess we'd need to look at some good data to determine.

The only online criticism that cannot be described as a "shellacking" by people sympathetic to the one being criticized is a complete absence of criticism. As such, trying to make an objective distinction between a debate and a shellacking is uninteresting and largely meaningless.
Without presenting a single shred of objective methodology behind this, it just reeks of confirmation bias. Whenever you go looking for masses of passionate idiots of a chosen political persuasion, you will find them. Lots of them.

"This is What Far Left Sounds Like" sure doesn't sound like a hypothesis. It reads as a conclusion.
That video has 8 likes and one dislike (none are mine). It has 7 comments, all of which are either sympathetic or from you. I'm not sure where the people siding with your anonymous ranter are, but they certainly aren't obvious to me. Even granting that they exist, why is that cause for alarm? You put something on the internet on a relatively unmoderated platform, YouTube. Idiots disagreeing with you in idiotic fashions are inevitable.

You might also look at Gamergate.

My point isn't actually an objective quantification of the vitriol on respective sides. My point is that one can find idiotic mobs on the internet on both sides, and on no particular side (flat earthers, 9/11 truthers), they are obvious to anyone who's used the internet at all, and they are an inevitable consequence of the internet as it exists. As such, pointing out their existence isn't particularly interesting or shocking. Also, highlighting the mob of only one side as being a problem is a pretty obvious case of bias, either of selection bias from only having gone looking at the mob on one side, or from a deliberate intent to smear one side as being represented by their worst members.

This is just complete nonsense. There are obviously differences, you are just muddying the waters by conflating the two. I guess I'm not surprised that you might actually not understand the difference though, given your attitude in approaching conversation here.

Here's my dedication to you and the others on this forum: Despite the gross energy you bring and the lack of good faith or interest in growing through friendly debate, I'm not going to let you push me to the Right. You won't understand what I mean, probably. But there's no way in hell I'm voting for Trump, even though you and others have further defined for me the archetype of self-righteous, pseudo-intellectual, aggro-lefties.

Other people you interact with might not have the same commitment.

I'm guessing you haven't listened to the works I recommended of the brilliant Dr. Glenn Loury or Dr. John McWhorter, two black ivy league professors who discuss these cultural phenomena. Maybe you'd be more open to a different perspective from those guys. You'd have to do some extra mental gymnastics there to call them blind Rightys, I suspect. (Because they aren't--they are close to center by my gauge.) Spoiler alert: they are both deeply disturbed by the rising woke tide.

We could start to demonstrate the prevalence of woke ideology by pointing to the massive wave of corporate virtue signaling. NBA, Gushers, Gillette, Nike, Halo 360 Ice Cream are just some on the tip of my tongue. I mean, your demands for like a complete thesis defense from me are obviously absurd. Some things *should* be generally understood by folks paying attention (that doesn't mean they are beyond question though, but if we disagree on even the fabric of the basics, this is problematic). And jesus man. Look how you have to pivot from even considering that there is common ideology between us--about the far-right being more dangerous per-capita than the left-- and steer it straight into drama. Gross.

And of course you might be able to find "idiots" on either side but that does not mean the numbers are similar--or the threat they represent.

Sure, I worded that to be provocative, it's true. Are you saying you disagree that is a representation of far left ideology (at least a part of it)? That should be fairly easy to verify, in part, as I said, by virtue of the fact that a significant % of the people who I show it to think I'm the a**hole in the text thread examined.

Some examples are in the P&S forum, some are personal. Yeah, I know you can say I don't have statistical validity or something, because you seem interested in granulating the conversation to the point where it's too murky to be of value.

The cause for alarm is that they aren't idiots, some are my friends who are well-educated, and a consensus to disavow logic would undermine many of the societal structures we rely on. I know, you'll probably blather about me needing to prove that statement or something. A common tactic to just grind the debate down by bogging it down in minutiae. I'm not going to worry about proving to people that logic is important with my time today.

Not true, first of all (it can be bias, or it can be a plea for rigorous debate and a restoration of integrity. One sometimes wants to focus on one thing at a time for reasons that aren't malicious). Second, this isn't what I do, if you watch all my videos.

Couple examples of hypocrisy on the right I've been tracking:

The reporter who was thought to have said "lying *****" to McEnany--this was a bit ago, but it seemed pretty clear she said "You don't want to engage", and at worst it was ambiguous.

The AOC fake tweet about #keepusclosed was posted on twitter by Larry Elder. That's real bad, considering his status as a rightwing voice. Interestingly, much of his twitter feed called him out for it. But I'm sure me pointing that last part out is just my inner bigot trying to make the Right seem more sensible, right 2p2?

Biden response to the cognitive test question from a reporter, "No I didn't take it!...That'd be like asking, hey, did you do a test for cocaine before this show, what are ya, a junkie?" (or something similar) is being conflated as him actually calling the reporter a junkie. Pretty clear distortion there of what Biden was trying to go for (albeit awkwardly). Tim Pool went hard into this line.

Some rightwing outlets are citing falling NBA and MLB ratings coinciding with their embrace of the woke ideology, but when I data check this it doesn't seem to hold up.

Might be a video brewing in me about these topics, specifically around the stretching/distorting of words. Obv this happens on both sides, but I'm seeing a lot of it concentrated in the recent days from the Right.

I'm a contrarian (hence the channel name), so I want to say that honestly I'm feeling a resistance to creating content about it atm. I really don't like the idea of feeding the arrogance of the leftist people I've interacted with on this forum, but I guess I should still just produce the content that's been sticking out to me, even if it makes some gross posters here comfortably smug.

In my summary of the sentence you refused to read and comprehend, I didn't emphasize that the criticism had to come from non-trivial amounts of people. Sure, any one tweet or blog post can reasonably be characterized as thoughtful or malicious, but when there are thousands, it's inevitable that many are malicious, and as such, any outpouring of criticism can be classified as a shellacking, even if there are a fair number of reasoned articles amidst a bunch of "u r dumb" tweets. So, I guess I turn the question around to you: who has made a controversial statement and has only been met with reasoned debate rather than getting shellacked? If my position is such nonsense, surely there must be many.

I'm not really sure what grounds you think I'm posting in bad faith, and I don't really care who you vote for. My main point that I should have made more clearly earlier is that casting yourself as an ombudsman with respect to the overreaches of the far left when your argued points position you as an adversary to the left rather than as an ally to the left is going to fall on deaf or antagnonistic ears if your goal is actually to improve the left rather than to just denigrate them. No one is receptive to criticism from the opposite team, but they might be convinced to do better from an ally. It did genuinely seem like you desired better discourse, but positioning yourself as an antagonist to the left is just going to get you what you got: antagonism from the left.

Ah yes, playing the hits from the Trumpkins. The leftists made me vote for Trump!
No, I haven't.

And on the other side we have Chic-Fil-A, Hobby Lobby, My Pillow, Goya, Honeywell, and whatever all other companies Trump gets to genuflect before him in the Rose Garden on a bimonthly basis. That you have several examples in mind doesn't mean you're free from confirmation bias. For every example of left wing misbehavior, you have numerous examples at the tip of your tongue and expect that everyone knows them as deeply as you do. But when people point out right wingers doing comparable things, every on the forum here and in P&S you've never heard of them and will have to look into it. The right is a massive blind spot, because your biggest interest has been in criticizing the left.

By all means, if you have an objective metric for how many idiots there are on the left and the right and the damage they will respectively cause, post it, but thus far, you've just listed off leftist slights from anonymous people and some left-leaning performative signaling from corporations like there's some actual danger there.

Deliberately provocative man SHOCKED to find that he provoked a negative reaction from the people he deliberately provoked. Yes, I disagree that your selected excerpts are representative of the left, and I also think that posting context-free excerpts without any other material to support your accusation is kind of a jerk move.

Being well-educated on one or even a few subjects doesn't mean someone can't be an idiot on another. Smart people are way to prone to overestimate their competence in unfamiliar territory. But, uh, yeah, it does look a lot like you expect everyone to take your selection bias as gospel.

Right, this gets back to my central point. No one on the left is going to take your plea for integrity seriously while you're positioned as an adversary.

Wookie, I'll let you have last word. I don't agree with most of your points and I think you're distorting pieces of what I've said and came in with a "I'll get you" attitude. But I think I've said a lot of what I wanted to say and don't expect us to gain traction with any more back and forth.