Since the previous thread with my name was locked and the desire to keep this out of the moderation thread was expressed, I post this here in a new thread.
In hia “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, Dr. Martin Luther King sadly noted that
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler 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 cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more onvenient season.”
I go beyond “almost” and have definitely reached the conclusion that the biggest stumbling block for those who seek justice is the moderate who desires the semblance of “order” above all concerns for justice, who claim to what change but only if that transition does not come at a cost (that they have to pay). The game theory solution to this is obvious. If moderates care about preserving order (or civility or decorum), then the correct move is to threaten sufficient disorder, sufficient social unrest, equal to transitional costs of embracing justice. Giving them no way to have order, they should (eventually) come around to the acceptance of justice.
This does not mean that I advocate violence, in any way. I do not. However, I am realistic. With any true resistance, there will be violent outliers. If you increase the breadth of resistance and intensity of its spirit, the probability that there will be violent outliers increases. I do not call for violence, but I accept that true change will probably result in a few people doing things they shouldn’t. In his letter, MLK wrote:
We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence.
I do not believe in denying the truth just because of the chance that someone may happen upon them and be inspired to commit acts of violence.
There is a realistic concern that only violent disorder is enough to shake moderates out of their slumber. If Sandy Hook is not enough to move the needle on gun control, that suggests that Congress would only be moved if there was an even more traumatic event. Speculation on how much more traumatic is not advocacy of creating that event, just analysis of how politics works. Republicans don’t care about things that affect other people until it affects them directly. They aren’t part of the solution on guns until enough of them have been affected by guns directly for some of them to change their minds. Violence may only be necessary if you think they have to be part of the solution.
I care about accurately describing how the world works. I don’t care about coddling some leftist need to feel morally superior to conservatives. I don’t really believe that liberals are all that better or significantly smarter than conservatives. Many on the left are idiots who stumbled upon being on the side of what is right.
If someone reads my analysis and decides that violence is acceptable, that’s on them. It’s not on me. It’s currently not acceptable for me personally because of the cost, but the math says to me that at some point, the price of not acting and the benefit of acting becomes such, that the cost is acceptable. If I say that I don’t know what I will do if Trump gets re-elected, that only means that I haven’t evaluated the payoff matrix for certain actions in case that happens. I can’t lie and say what I will or will not due because it is not in my nature to lie about things like that. The future is probabilistic and I can only see what I might do in terms of a range of actions.
In my mind, what I am doing is the same as Maxine Waters advocating confronting members of Trump’s Cabinet in public and telling them that they are not welcome. This led to a bunch of pearl-clutching on the right, claiming that Waters was calling for Trump supporters to be harmed. You had Nancy Pelosi calling her words “unacceptable”, but civility won’t save us. I endorse the idea of harrassing Trump supporters. I do not endorse violently harrassing them, but I also don’t feel the need to condemn violence preemptively. The truth is that even if I do not want physical harm to come to them, I don’t have a problem with them feeling terrified that some liberal bogeyman is going to commit violent acts upon their persons.
If I call for the same treatment to be given to a MAGA baseball umpire, apparently some people can read my mind and tell what I really mean. If that is the case, then it doesn’t matter how I might try to moderate my words, because I will always be given the least charitable interpretation, so I might as well be myself and not bother trying to avoid being inflammatory.
I resent any suggestion that I am trolling. I generally mean what I say. What I choose to post about might be inspired by anger, but my mode of communication has been chosen by reason, with a desire to cause discomfort and cognitive dissonance in moderates who care more about civility. Some choose to resolve that cognitive dissonance by believing that I am a troll. It’s easier than believing that someone like me is on their side, I guess. If I were trolling you, you would feel a lot more triggered.