This really doesn't surprise me that much. The well-off conservatives that rant about SJWs area easy to understand, and having lived in the Bay Area a while, there's also a large population of well off leftists that seem to live in a bubble where Trump isn't too far off from Hitler and Fascism is apparently a mainstream political view. Despite that, most of them would condemn the actions by "SJWs" you see in your typical "SJW owned video".
The right is ranting about a left that doesn't tolerate controversial opinions that exists, but isn't nearly as widespread as the right would like to believe. The left rants about a right that advocates for white supremacy and the purifying force of violence that technically exists, but isn't nearly as widespread as the left would like to believe.
It seems like we have a fake problem created by people with too much time on their hands.
This is lolbrooksian false equivalence served up with statistics. I don't think that the "radical left" came to the conclusion that America ought to have a single payer system because they're part of a "cult." While there sure is tribalism, it's patronizing to equate Trump and his ilk with modal far left voting group. What problem, precisely, is fake?It seems like we have a fake problem created by people with too much time on their hands.
I'm genuinely curious: When is "cultish" conformity justified, or is it definitionally a bad thing? I'm speaking specifically with respect to reforming healthcare, but one can imagine other positions with a similar degree of conformity. I believe an electoral subgroup's large-majority attachment to alleviating the medical--not to mention the financial and psychic--pain that our healthcare system inflicts as a matter of course an occasion for justifiably high degrees of support. My priors are such that I think providing a safety net is a good thing. I say that despite my libertarian sympathies, as someone who's traveled and read, witnessed and experienced personally the medical system and its (lack of) coverage. The heart of Brooks' false equivalency is, to me, betrayed by his suggestion that if despise Trump and his enablers... I must be part of a cult?
As always, the important question is: qui bono? Once Republicans proved in the early 1990s that mobilizing the most rabid of your supporters was an effective political strategy, it became a race to the extremes (even if Democrats were slower to pick up on this lesson). It's not just this, of course: mass communication means it's that much harder to stand out from the background noise, so it's a race to maximum volume as well (and yelling means you can't say as much). He's much more optimistic than I am.I don’t know what the next political paradigm will look like, but I bet it will be based on abundance, not deficits; gifts, not fear; hope, not hatred.
Could these be the key statements? And...In many cases, 97 to 99 percent of Progressive Activists said one thing and 93 to 95 percent of Dedicated Conservatives said the opposite. There’s little evidence of individual thought, just cult conformity. The current situation really does begin to look like the religious wars that ripped through Europe after the invention of the printing press, except that our religions now wear pagan political garb.
Unfortunately, people in the exhausted majority have no narrative. They have no coherent philosophic worldview to organize their thinking and compel action. When they get one I suspect it will look totally unlike the two dominant narratives today. These narratives are threat narratives. But the people who make positive change usually focus on gifts, not deficits. They tell stories about the assets we have and how we can use them together.