I’m subscribed to Greenwald and Taibbi. I haven’t felt this good about being a liberal in more than a decade.
I have serious difficulty dealing with people dying from Trump Derangement Syndrome, all convinced that I am a committed Trump supporter. I’m opposed to the Far Left which styles itself Progressive, and claims it’s the same thing as liberal. It is fundamentally illiberal.
A friend is a committed Christian and committed Trump supporter. He sent me a message asking if I knew what 2020 divided by 666 was. I did the math in my head, knew the answer instantly. It’s 3.0330. I replied that I had no idea that God was limited to Base 10. He’s furious. Just assume for a second that there is a God. Why would he ever use Base 10? Binary or Base Eight is infinitely more sensible.
As you know, there are 10 kinds of people: Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
Bill – There is so much tribalism out there but, for reasons I don’t understand, I seem to be less vulnerable to those pressures. It has been that way ever since I was a small child when my dad started trying to jam religion down my throat (I recount those moments in part one of a five-part article here at DI, Mending Fences). I also subscribe to Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi on Substack, along with Andrew Sullivan. I subscribe to Making Sense, the podcast hosted by Sam Harris. I follow many people who many “Liberals” consider to be on the “other side.” Eric Weinstein is another. I don’t see “sides” as much as others–I consider such binary categorizations to be too often misleading and counter-productive.
I want facts first, and only then we can give opinions and express feelings. For the most part, I fear for those who launch with feelings first, skipping over the facts. It is almost impossible for me to have meaningful conversation with those people when they are in this tribal mode, all armored up. One-on-one, however, many of them eventually calm down and we can have conversation, but this takes time and patience. It’s the same phenomenon I’d encountered when discussing religion with believers over the decades.
These people you and I mention are geared toward following the facts where they lead, not perfectly so, but they do it much more rigorously than many other writers and I crave this. Sam Harris and Steven Pinker came under much heat for merely looking at the facts regarding police violence against Blacks (instead of relying on videos) to determine the extent to which there is a problem. Here’s Sam’s account. Here’s an article about Pinker.
I agree with you that people wired like us, who dare to criticize the far Left, are often written off as supporters of the Right. I think this is the only way out for the U.S.: we need to criticize the excesses of our out “side” (as well as criticizing the other “side”). That is important for tamping down shrill tribal impulses. That, in turn, will allow us to govern as a country instead of continuing on our path to civil war, which is being waged mostly with harsh words so far.
I enjoyed your comment about God preferring base 10 math. This makes sense that he is so human-like, given that He also has so many cultural preferences regarding the way we interact down here on Earth, mostly preferences concerning sex and reproduction.