Sometimes I just want to ask some people "Is there any liberal cliche that you don't believe?"
I'm sure you know conservatives out there about which the same might be said. I can think of a very few. I'm not sure that's a fair comparison however, as conservatives seem to have strong subgroups, and an unusual number of people who are locked in to a few key points. Paleocons dislike neocons; libertarians aren't always comfortable with social conservatives; not to mention all the people who have particular hobbyhorses, like tax protestors or schismatic Catholics, who are more likely to be offshoots of the right than left. Though sometimes it's admittedly hard to tell. Conservatives almost always have some area where they dissent from not only the societal Conventional Wisdom, but the conservative CW as well.
I hope that I can remind myself to avoid cliches.
8 comments:
It can be difficult to avoid cliches when every liberal you know fits the cliche. Yes, your experience is the tiniest of reality, but it's YOUR experience.
Difficult, for me as well, as liberal friends who are the nicest people on earth are STILL screaming on Facebook that they're all gonna go into concentration camps and their children are crying and scared and....
And I always think, why do you want to frighten your children so much. This is worse than nuclear bomb drills.
The main cliche is they have some touchpoint at/on which they just detonate in anger.
Sam, I discovered to my deep regret that I have touchpoints at which I detonate in anger before I even know what happened. As I looked at the smoking crater, I thought, I did that? But I'm the reasonable person! Except at touchpoints.
Assistant Village Idiot: Sometimes I just want to ask some people "Is there any liberal cliche that you don't believe?"
Do you have examples?
Assistant Village Idiot: I'm sure you know conservatives out there about which the same might be said. I can think of a very few.
Could that be that you share certain cliched beliefs, hence don't recognize them as such?
@ Zachriel - A) Yeah. Jennifer, Josh, Marilyn, Monique, Sven, Kevin, and Katy. Why do you ask?
B) As that has been one of the main themes here over the last ten years, I can safely answer No, emphatically. Thanks for jumping to conclusions and assuming you are the only person who knows anything. It's amazingly persuasive, isn't it?
Assistant Village Idiot: Jennifer, Josh, Marilyn, Monique, Sven, Kevin, and Katy
Jennifer Lawrence? Joshua Jackson? Marilyn Monroe? Mo'Nique? Sven the Reindeer? Degrees of Kevin Bacon? Katy Perry? We're supposed to known them?
Assistant Village Idiot: Why do you ask?
In order to better understand your position, and to help determine whether the skew you note is real or due to perception.
You haven't the faintest idea. You simply don't have the background, even if you had the objectivity. There are people here who know me in real life and others who have read thousands of the posts and comments-recomments here. You walked into this party thinking you had something to teach. That's a rather amazing degree of arrogance. Dunning-Kruger territory. You don't even know what it is you don't know. You have one more chance to make an intelligent comment, or you will be banned.
I dissent from quite a few conservative pieties, possibly as a result of being a sort of hippie-turned-right-winger. I grit my teeth a lot at attitudes toward women, for instance. It's true, though, that I grit my teeth a lot at liberal attitudes toward women. Such a lot of nonsense is in circulation on the subject.
It's awfully refreshing to talk to a strongly liberal or progressive friend and find that he dissents from the platform in some particular, ACGW perhaps, or abortion. It makes me think I'll benefit from his views on the issues where he does toe the party line. Someone who never dissents from the program at all is very likely to be a tiresome and shallow thinker with a lot of canned rants they're just waiting to spew on me. Much better if I can say, "I'd like your perspective on this, because I know we probably approach it very differently," which I'd never do without some reason to think he makes up his own mind issue by issue.
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