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confab  ·  3446 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Explaining white privilege to a broke white person

Of course you haven't because how an ideology self-identifies versus how it applies its principles is rarely the same -- that's the nature of ideological thinking. It's like asking Fox News to be consistent with its claim to being "fair and balanced" while expecting them to compromise their core ideology for the sake of being "fair and balanced". That will never happen because what they preach and what they practice can never square with one another. Their goal has never been to convince but to win at all costs.

And to suggest that the Left is in any sense less prone to this instrumentalist bullshit is pure fantasy. They engage in the exact same rhetorical slight-of-hand as do the right-wing fear mongers. It's really a shame. The Left (at least historically) has marshaled fact and reason as a basis for their social, economic, and political critiques. Nowadays, such requisites are seen as suspicious or status-quo capitulations that invariably compromise the party line.

Truth is now a matter of beating the royal crap out of your opponent rather than demonstrating the persuasive merits of the better argument.