Ethan Strauss, of House of Strauss on my sidebar, discusses how to get past the critics who are dismissing you as a mere "contrarian," seeking attention by being merely oppositional. An Uncontroversial Guide to Being Controversial.
It’s hard to be publicly sensible in this way without eventually going insane. It happens because you get locked into never-ending arguments, or you lash out at the people who try to shun you, or you’re obsessed with proving critics wrong, or all of the above. Ultimately, it’s not the criticism that kills you; it’s the unforced errors you commit in response to it.
This one is in print form. I understand the temptations he discusses all too well. I don't even have a Twitter account and so can only link the things that I come across elsewhere, so his discussion of stopping tweeting except for links and site PR was merely a curiosity to me, but I think it has a general application about many forms of communication.
His advice about being apolitical was generally good, in that once you get associated with a group, even in your own mind, you tend to align yourself with it. I was a radical leftist when young and kept that by default even when I became uninterested in politics in the 1980s. I worked in a very liberal field and got to see the dark underside of them - the meanness and condescension while themselves being unintellectual in particular. At the same time I was hanging with a group of Christians that was increasing identified as conservative (moving from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, for example) and finding they were not the ogres I had been told and were quite decent folks, really.
While I remained more neutral and apolitical than most, I did find myself inexorably drawn into taking sides, and as unpopular as I can make myself with conservatives at times, still basically identify with them. But this has changed over the last decade as well, and I move not so much to some fictitious "center" as to "a plague on both your houses" mode. I cared very little what happened in the midterms this time around, less than at any time since 1986, I think. I'm sorta figuring I lose either way at this point, and don't derive the joy from watching fools being put in their place that I used to. One of the great joys of Rush early on, for example, is that he was essentially Doonesbury against the Doonesbury crowd (same post, separate set of comments, both good), and they just lost it, unable to deal with it in even small ways.
But that is long past now. It became clear that to many Trump supporters they didn't care what he did, even giving away billions in free money for very Washington reasons, so long as he kept "pwning the libs." The politics and the country's best interest was gone, it was all blood sport to them. Well, that's why I left the liberals decades ago.
BTW, I think Strauss's advice may work just as well for personal affairs, perhaps because once you make your politics a personal rather than intellectual affair they are indistinguishable from arguments with your relatives over inheritance and who was Mom's favorite.
So yeah, I hate you all at this point. But this audience likely perversely enjoys that, so carry on.
I think the links is supposed to go here?:
ReplyDeletehttps://houseofstrauss.substack.com/p/an-uncontroversial-guide-to-being
If you take the historical view, there is an ebb and flow to the forces of reform and conservatism, each having a place. The former aspires for a more equitable and just future, while the latter seeks solace and stability by preserving the long-standing mores of the past.
ReplyDeleteIf you take the philosophical view, people are not of one mind. They long for a better tomorrow, while grasping at traditions for comfort. They know change may be needed, but fear that with change something essential and important may be lost—or worse, once the foundations of society are undermined, all may be lost.
Still, society has become, in fits and starts, more egalitarian over the centuries since the Renaissance; first in matters of religion and conscience, then with the weakening of the aristocracy, followed by the rise of republics, the end of slavery, popular literacy, social safety nets, movements for civil rights, universal suffrage, and greater economic equality.
Yes, thank you.
ReplyDelete"So yeah, I hate you all at this point. But this audience likely perversely enjoys that, so carry on."
ReplyDeleteHahaha! If 'this audience' agreed with you all the time... so boring!
...I do not, however, identify with a political party or support any candidate in particular. Why?
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, because I don’t have to, but more to the point, because that crosses a line for some. The second you identify with a party or candidate, you become a combatant on the battlefield to a lot of people, and some who’d otherwise listen will tune you out.
The problem is that someone might identify you, rightly or wrongly, with a political party or candidate, because you might have agreed with one thing, perhaps an entirely unpolitical thing, that a particular party or candidate supports. You expressed a favorable opinion about bowling. Trump likes bowling. Therefore you agree with Trump about everything. Therefore you are a terrible person.
You cannot win in this kind of situation. You can only express opinions and risk being mischaracterized, demonized, canceled, shunned -- or you can keep your mouth shut. So the knitting forum etc. get politicized and normal people flee.