Following the election, I went through a few days of being compulsively attached to social media, like for hours at a time, down insipid rabbit holes, and re-living all my agita several times per day. And, then, I simply decided, enough. I deactivated all my social media accounts and felt it was time to move on.
Well, not completely. I discovered and turned my attention to podcasts, mostly of a right-leaning variety. In particular, among my favorites, is the Megyn Kelly Show. She cuts through the bullshit in a manner consistent with my own thinking, and I like it.
I bring this up because today she had Dave Rubin as her guest, another like-minded individual. And he said something that resonated. I paraphrase, but the gist was that people on the right think the system is all screwed up and want to be left alone. Folks on the left think the system is all screwed up, but the solution is let's give it more money, more power, and just get the right people in.
All of it reminded me of a passage from the book The Revolt Against the Masses by Fred Siegel:
"Liberal interests never reexamined their assumptions, even when faced with social and political failure. They never asked why, despite the vast sums expended, poverty had become worse rather than better. Instead, they pointed to shards of success and, more significantly, in the hopes of maintaining their grip, redefined the problem. Great Society social programs originally designed to reduce if not eliminate poverty were now justified in terms of rights, racial justice, or diversity. And then there was the fallback to the fallback: the insistence on good intentions rather than outcomes...Their claim to moral superiority rested more on self-image than real-world results."
A timeless comment.
