Hello Kevin,
"And we need to stop acting like asses. Just because the Soviet Union is gone does not mean we rule the world."
That is a spot on targeting of the problem we face. We have seen what happens when the powerful elite in a party stop listening to the common folk that brought them to power ... the party falters. The same could happen to western powers.
I view the 90s inside US politics as going kind of extreme. It took a severe toll on the left wing of our political sphere. In the back draft, I have watched several years of SI radical ridiculousness with all kinds of over the edge commentary and theorizing about why the right wing coup of power worked. It worked because the left wing got over confident and pompous in their dealings with the common folk. Some of the elites seemed to think they had reached an aloof status of protection against wrong doing, and stopped championing progressive renewal. The ridiculousness went on for years. Now it looks like the left is back with new blood that is sensible, civil, and serious.
Recently, we have seen the right wing elites make the very same error. I didn't expect the extremists from the right to suddenly start the back draft of radical ridiculousness on SI but I am seeing it on threads that were once known for their honorable and just dispositions.
Since we are continuing this discussion on extremism from the extremist bigot thread that banned me, I will repost the comment I made just prior to getting banned there, for refusing to support extremist views.
Political hatred is just one among many extremisms that have become the plague of our generation.
Loyalty to tribe, religion, race, national origin, extreme liberal chaos, extreme oppressive totalitarianism, etc. is a false sense of devotion to the banners of some group. It is this very commitment to the external formulations of order that tends toward corruption (extremism). The cost is a principled identity of self.
Since it is personality based, it doesn't really matter which form of extremism one buys into, if it were not one, it would be another... may as well just pick a color or pick a club.
When the internal locus of fidelity is to intelligent and principled communion with others for the sake of common humanity, the likelihood of creating chasms between groups is reduced; just as it is widened by expressions of devotion to less deserving tenets.
An extremist within your own identity sphere or an opposing one is a corrupter of the principles upon which you stand.
So when you declare war on extremism you have an enemy within (your realms of identity) as well as without. Geopolitical borders, ideological group membership, etc. no longer carry the standard. How then do you identify your brethren in the cause? And, of equal importance, how do you define your enemy, and do you have the courage to do so?
PS I expect to be banned from most ridiculous right wing extremist threads now for making the very same type of commentary that got me banned from most ridiculous left wing extremist threads over the past 8 years or so. This thread may be one of my last stands. |
