Very Weird Ideas About What It Means to Respect Someone's Political Project
There’s a constant jumping from one foot or the other among social justice liberals right now, as their once-inescapable form of engagement becomes more and more embarrassing - this stuff is true and good, oh that part that’s not good? it never mattered, oh actually it’s still good. Traister gives us my favorite move of all, the “canceling isn’t bad because canceling doesn’t actually hurt anybody” thing, which as I will not stop pointing out amounts to trying to defend a political tactic by asserting that it doesn’t work. If canceling doesn’t hurt anybody, why have so many left-leaning people spent such an immense amount of time trying to hurt people through the tactic of canceling?
As someone who a) gives a shit about politics and b) has been part of a tiny and irrelevant political fringe my entire life, it just drives me batty that people won’t stand up and advocate for these politics if they believe them. If you want to defend a political moment or argument or tribe, defend it! Make the affirmative case! Stop hiding behind arguments about how none of this matters or by watering down specific political beliefs until you’re representing as some vague “Good people doing good!” pablum.