Agreed. The conservative persecution complex is a real thing you see all the time. The media is biased! The justice system is biased! The education system is biased! Big pharma, the UN, social media, big tech, all biased against conservative ideas.
Convincing people that these biases are real allows conservatives to prop up their own purposely-biased alternatives. Fox News and OAN to counter the liberal media. Private Christian schools, home schooling, and for-profit schools to counter the liberal education system. Truth Social and Elon Muskification of Twitter to counter liberal big tech.
Read https://www.thefp.com/p/you-are-the-last-line-of-defense for a perspective from a liberal lesbian Jew who is concerned about censorship and current progressive ideologies. She opposes most of the alternatives that you criticize.
Admitted. That speech was given to a conservative audience. But she remains firmly liberal in the same sense that it was generally understood back when Bill Clinton was President.
Frankly, I can’t deal with the likes of Bari Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Jordan Peterson, etc, who’ve basically cashed in on their “I’m a progressive, bro!” creds to grift conservatives by telling them things they want to hear. They’ve made very successful careers out of both sidesing everything under the sun.
There’s a reason Weiss was invited to talk at a Federalist Society event here. And it’s not because the Federalist Society is open minded to progressive ideas.
I read that as you're so firmly into an us vs them mindset that you slot everyone into one of those buckets. And so anyone with a dissenting opinion becomes either an evil conservative, or a stooge of the evil conservatives.
What does a dissenting opinion look like? We've literally gotten to the point where MLK Jr's "I have a dream" speech would have gotten him kicked off of campuses for being racist. No seriously, https://pacificlegal.org/martin-luther-king-jr-would-have-fa... discusses a legal case which makes that clear.
For my part, I'll gladly stand with MLK. These days, that means I can no longer be a Democrat. I'm obviously not a Republican either, which leaves me as an Independent.
As I said, there really are more than 2 sides here.
Well, as a moderate MLK fan, let me share one of my favorite MLK quotes with you :)
"First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a 'more convenient season.' Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
Since the 1980s, the black-white income gap has been rising. Two contributing causes are racially biased law enforcement outcomes (particularly from the escalation of the drug war), and the abandonment of school bussing.
When I've talked with progressives about the importance of fixing inequities in education, I've generally received excuses about how expensive and unaffordable that is. Yes, it is expensive. But because we choose not to deal with it, the ones who bear the real cost are the blacks who can least afford it. See https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/half-of-black-students-c... for more.
Democratic policies have focused on things like affirmative action, and equity in hiring.
I see affirmative action as virtue signaling tokenism. It is far cheaper to admit a few more blacks to universities than to fix schools.
I see equity in hiring as sheer cynicism. We have chosen to not fix our schools, but we can force companies to treat blacks that we failed to educate the same as whites who did learn. And then we can punish companies again for failing to promote underqualified blacks as fast as qualified whites. If we as a state taught the blacks, and offered them support services for the gaps that we left, then it would make sense to penalize companies for any difference in outcomes. I'd be happy with that outcome. But when it is the state that failed, we are shooting the messenger to penalize companies who notice that the emperor has no clothes!
The state should find ways to fix its own failures. If it did, perhaps it would realize that it's cheaper in the long run to not fail in the first place!
I could go on. For example San Francisco is currently facing the results of the BLM slogan, "Defund the police!" BLM protesters were happy to amplify any black who was willing to repeat that message. But surveys of blacks found that most DIDN'T want the police defunded! I've heard interviews from blacks who tried to say that. They reported that they were shouted down by whites.
Apparently, in the name of recognizing that black lives matter, we're supposed to only listen to blacks who say things that whites approve of?
Now bring that thought I told you to hold back, and re-read. Who sounds more like they have the shallow understanding of MLK's white moderates? Me, or progressives?
Convincing people that these biases are real allows conservatives to prop up their own purposely-biased alternatives. Fox News and OAN to counter the liberal media. Private Christian schools, home schooling, and for-profit schools to counter the liberal education system. Truth Social and Elon Muskification of Twitter to counter liberal big tech.