Valerie: Bravo for bringing this topic to light.
Sullivan wrote:
“If political ideology is not just a viewpoint, but a means of providing meaning and purpose to your entire existence, then anyone who disagrees with you is not merely wrong or misinformed; rather, they are evil, wicked, the enemy. They deserve to be hated, shamed, shouted down, ridiculed, or ignored.”
The Justice warriors have also infected Universities with ironically a Puritanical zeal wherein as Sullivan also wrote, “…they punish heresy by banishing sinners from society or coercing them to public demonstrations of shame, and provide an avenue for redemption in the form of a thorough public confession of sin.
In Canada we witnessed this in the public excoriation of CBC Radio host Jian Ghomeshi, who although found innocent and his accusers labelled essentially liars for colluding and giving ‘selective’ testimony, nonetheless found himself banished.
And when Ghomeshi dared to come out of this exile, celebrated writer and editor Ian Buruma of The New York Review of Books was arguably forced out of his job by daring to publish an interview with an admittedly ego-centric Ghomeshi: it was not only viewed as a contrarian view to the Justice Warrior’s creed.
But it was also viewed as heresy!
And so, with French Revolutionary fervour, it was off with Buruma’s head.
Orthodoxies, it would appear, are not good with irony.
How else did they miss that one of Buruma’s books was based on both German and Japanese fascism: “The Wages of Guilt.”
Orthodoxies do not wish to examine their methodologies. Why should they?
But back to your timely thesis.
Both sides are ultimately patronizing!
For instance, Buruma believed that his readers have the intelligence to decide what to make of Ghomeshi’s interview.
You know, let the article stand on its own and allow those reading it to come up with their own conclusions.
Silly man.
Buruma ran headlong into a wall of Dogma.
Just as Wilfrid Laurier University teaching assistant Lindsay Shepard found, even showing an opposing viewpoint, like that of Jordan Peterson, can find oneself in a disciplinary star chamber: https://globalnews.ca/news/5012667/lindsay-shepherd-jordan-peterson-lawsuit/
Even the university released this: “…[n]o formal complaint, nor informal concern relative to a Laurier policy had been registered, and that Shepherd had done nothing wrong by showing the clips.”
Lamentably, while those who break our laws must face consequences, both MAGA and the Social Justice adherents wish to circumvent a legal system, while admittedly flawed, a system which is based on the presumption of innocence.
Any attack on such a legal system will allow for the rule of law to be relegated to the pulpit, be it in the Media or on the University campus or even on this forum.
And of course their tools, especially the loathsome labelling inherent in Identity politics, are likewise limiting. There’s no need for dialogue: you’re a certain colour, you’re of a certain age or you’re of a certain gender.
It’s like both sides really love the ‘facts-don’t-matter’ catharsis a witch-hunt can give: ‘lock her up’ or even more revolting, the recent “AOC sucks”, as well as “You’re just a Cis-gendered male” are prime examples of simplistic yet encapsulating memes, so important to cultish ideologies.
Unfortunately, a catharsis can unite a group, which is all part of an indoctrination wherein the need to inculcate supersedes the need to foster critical analysis.
And that’s why your call to sanity is so refreshing.
Thank you.