[lbo-talk] conservatives vs. leftists

Wojtek S wsoko52 at gmail.com
Fri Feb 3 07:14:59 PST 2012


Marv: "I'm typically attracted to people who are warm and reliable and alienated by those who are cold and self-centred, which I suppose is true for most of us,"

[WS:] Ditto. I have to admit that I met far more leftists than conservatives - so the self-selection bias of my observations is obvious - but boy, many of these lefties were the most obscene self-centered pompous asses, and judgmental, intolerant pricks I met in my life (and I've been around the world,so to speak.) I liked their ideas and their reading suggestions, but I would not invite them to a dinner, let alone develop a more personal relationship.

And this is not just my experience - I saw a lot of that in Graeber's descriptions of the anarchist scenes. Graeber makes a deliberate effort to portray these folks as nonviolent in the conventional sense (i.e. avoiding to physically attack or harm another human being), but what I see in his descriptions is a lot of affective violence - eagerness to condemn or deprecate other people on suspicions, differences of opinion, and superficial appearances without actually trying to understand how others think and react. On a second thought, perhaps it is not that much different than male interaction in any setting, frathouse, locker room, office, social events, etc. But since I avoid male-to-male interaction in most social settings precisely for that reason, and the main contact I have with it is the internet and left wing activism - it appears that the problem is endemic to this group.

Wojtek



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