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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
The phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations" is a fantastic way to put it, marred only by the fact that it was coined by George W. Bush. Moral relativism is another obvious problem, by the way.
But I actually have sympathy for this sort of reasoning in part because I see myself doing something similar. I'm at a point where I sort of just laughingly dismiss a large proportion of right-wing nonsense as "there go those crazy tea party nuts again", but I'm much more focused on the flaws I see in the behaviour of my ideological bretheren... notwithstanding that although I think the left is in the process of completely losing its mind on certain issues, it's still perfectly coherent when compared to the carnival taking place under the GOP's big tent.
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Well I think part of that is also what affects you/me personally. The crazy rantings of the far-right are probably not of a huge concern to you because most of what they're advocating for will never negatively affect the average white dude. However, when your "ideological brethren" go off the deep end it at least has some mild consequences for you in terms of identity and affiliation. I'm much the same way. I'm way harder on my leftist friends who are anti-GMO than I am on my friends who are right-wing climate-change deniers because at some level I feel implicated with the people I share a majority of opinions with.
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The other concern - which I think Cliff expressed really well with the line about making perfect the enemy of the good - that we become so obsessed with minutae and ensuring utter purity of mind that we outlaw anything that mildly reeks of patriarchical or colonial modes of thought. That effort has some frightening implications, not the least of which is that I can't name a single person I'd trust to be the "patriarchy" gestapo, and certainly not any of the people I can think of off the top of my head as likely wanting the job.
There's some balance to be struck about not resting on the laurels of progress and recognizing that there's still work to be done on the topics of racism and sexism (and LGBT rights, and others), and turning progressivism into some sort of absolutist cult.
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I think a lot of progressives, and for specificity's sake let's say feminists because they're usually the target here, would be fairly content if people would just acknowledge that patriarchy and privilege exist.