Leftist Thinking; Bulwarkers; and Magic Words Thinking

Some more good Twitter conversation. I feel like I did a good job of illustrating Magic Words Thinking in this one; it's called out below.

@Gitabushi: Can't stop thinking about this thread and what I learned from it.

Yay yay yay! Gita has got it.

The only way to understand the Left is to get into their headspace, which is a completely foreign place to the average conservative or even centrist thinker. https://t.co/mgpKFR06Uw

— Todd of 93% Mischief (@AndToddsaid) September 3, 2020

@TheCynicalVixen: I feel like this is definitely something I instinctively understand, but absolutely suck at putting into words.  I have to think there are others out there who do, too.  I really need to learn how to put it to words, though, so I can make effective statements.

@AndToddsaid: The challenge is that Leftism is a visceral ideology. It operates beneath words. Yes, it needs words to spread, but it’s tapping into base feelings of resentment and entitlement. So it doesn’t need to spread much, just the notion that there is a team for the resentful entitled.

I think this is why I find it difficult to bring Leftist headspace into words that people in Rightist headspace might understand. Once you’re in the Leftist headspace, words get to wibbly-wobbly to grab onto, let alone bring back.

@TheCynicalVixen: Oh, I'm not trying to convince Leftists of anything.  I already know they won't listen.  It's more the moderates who act like they haven't gone nuts, but through generations of seeing the Ds as the Default Position, refuse to see that the Left acts in Bad Faith so often. The "I don't like wokeness, BUT" or the "I don't like the Green New Deal, BUT" types.

@AndToddsaid: I still think a lot of Rightists still need convinced that Leftists don’t think in the same way they do. That is, they know it to be so, but they don’t understand the depths of it.

@Gitabushi: Too many on the right still they can stop it by calling it out.

They call it out, claim victory, go home, and then the Left just continues what it was doing and takes over the battlefield the Right departed in assumption of victory.

I’m conceited, I know.

But I fancy we see this problem more clearly than French or Goldberg, and it is their ONE JOB to understand this and disseminate plans to fight back.

They don’t even know what game they’re in.

@AndToddsaid: I think French, Goldberg, et al. have, at least unconsciously, succumb to an “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality.

They may also have been high on their own stash, because their entire collective shtick has been “If you point it out, they can’t get away with it.”

The reason they’re mad at Trump is because he’s shoved the wrongness of that approach in their faces. 

It used to seem right because the proto-Bulwarkers could turn their method against people on the Right and demonstrate its efficacy—then argue the reason it wasn’t working against the Left is that it wasn’t being done HARD enough.

This is what gave rise to what I termed “Magic Words Thinking,” that supposed the only reason call-outs against the Left backfire is because the words chosen were too soft. 

They failed to notice that almost every backfire was a non-sequitur along similar lines.

“Here are reasons to limit access to entitlements.”
“RACIST!”
“Here are reasons to restrict abortion.”
“SEXIST!”
“Here are reasons to slow immigration.”
“XENOPHOBE!”
“Here are reasons to restructure Social Security.”
“GRANDMA KILLER!”

And the reply from Magic Words Thinkers was predictable: “Tut tut. Should’ve been more clear. Shouldn’t have used words that can be misconstrued.”

As though such words even exist. /rant

@TheCynicalVixen: Or maybe they agreed that everyone else on the Right not part of the entrenched chattering cocktail party classes ARE racist, xenophobic, misogynist, etc... and decided there were more at home siding with the Left on those insults to bolster their own sense of superiority.

@AndToddsaid: That’s where they are now. It’s why I rail also against #BothSides. Because when you subscribe to the mistaken belief that the high ground and the middle ground are the same thing, you necessarily compromise yourself.

From the middle ground, it seems that both sides have a point. And most of the time, they do. 

From the high ground, it can be seen whether each side has a point. Because sometimes, one doesn’t.

But when one is stuck in the middle ground, one finds oneself forcing points onto words that have none. One says, "There must be a point, and it’s my job to find it." And when there is no point to find, one concludes that the assertion is the point, and simply agrees.

More plainly, if one believes that people who cry “racism“ all the time have a point, even when there is no point to find, the middle ground approach leaves one with no option but to see more and more things as racist, just as the people who cry “racism“ all the time do. 

The people who drive the phenomenon of things that weren’t racist yesterday being racist today are the people who cry “racism” all the time. But the middle grounders, who think everyone has a valid point, are the enablers.