One thing I did not care for that Hitchens said was that what matters is one chooses to believe. Granted many do approach ideas that way, but I’ve never gotten that. Surely if one is rationally convinced, it ceases to be a matter of choice at all. I don’t choose to believe 2 + 2 = 4; I cannot disbelieve it. Choice in these cases is only appropriate when certainty is lacking, and only to the degree that it is.

I lived in the Bay Area from 1982-2016. I suppose I was one of your commie progressives. I was an activist. I went to meetings and demos. I had a clipboard and I knew how to use it…

For me it fell apart after 9-11, when my comrades were asking the boggling question, “Why do they hate us?” I knew that was the wrong question. And when I started asking my own questions, it all unraveled and quickly.

IMO the current situation is ripe for a mass reversal. The left has taken us too far, too fast and much of it obviously doesn’t work. Much of the middle is fed up with cancel culture, defund the police and transgender crazy. They can see that Biden is not moderate, not unifying and not competent.

History doesn’t move in a straight inexorable line. A backlash is coming. Most Americans aren’t committed to the left. They are going along to get along. That can change.

dnaxy on October 28, 2021 at 9:40 pm said:
“The purpose of life is to discover the purpose for life.”
Rather, the purpose of life is … the continuation of life. To propel your gene complement (and their related traits and characteristics) into the next generation, at the expense of your maladapted peers. There is no other teleology, per se. Sort of a cell level, chemistry version of Conan? The same purpose applies to humans, sea slugs, et al. Human sentience, emotion, and culture may attempt to distort this perception, but the universe does not care.

That is the replication part of life. The metabolic part is driven by hydrogen and/or hydroxyl ions traversing the cell membrane boundary, creating a free energy difference that drives all of the organic and biochemical reactions within the cell, including those related to genetic separation actions (miosis and mitosis). Aside from the occasional genetic or chemical disturbance via radiation, all of this fits within the electromagnetic realm of physics. But you know all of this already.

@MJR and Neo- I suppose if you are not a fully invested Commie, and a real thinker (like Neo) that you could wrest yourself from the progressive side. Short of that it seems…like no. I think because it is a combination of politics, religion, morality, social standing and acceptance, all wrapped up into one package. It is their essence-not sure how else it can be described. What conservative/libertarian folks are noticing now, I felt in SF 40 years ago. I was surrounded and isolated by these progressives/communists. It was shocking to me at the time and has made me a Cassandra to my friends/family and anyone else I felt comfortable with sharing my experiences, for this many years. Now it is banal.

In social justice speak it means “somebody I never heard of who is probably a deplorable or poor or something. Certainly not ME!”

Strikes me that the Loudoun County parents, and others elsewhere, who were liberal never thought the first definition of “we” was going to come crashing down on their own children. So NOW it’s a problem. Well, a hypocrite who votes right is a vote we an use.

That being said, I wonder how many liberal parents in Virginia (or non-parents for that matter) are hopping mad enough with the recent school board sh%@show to either switch their votes away from McAuliffe or not vote at all….

(Though I’m not sure how such a metric might be measureed…)

Thanks for the response. I do hope you noticed where I wrote that “I agree wholeheartedly with Tina, brushing aside my two exceptions and focusing on the remainder, which are legion.” Left-to-right conversion has been and is relatively rare.

They still all think women should be cops, firemen, and serve in the military if they want to.

The 2016 GOP convention applauded Trumps LBGT line.

Then on the economic side you go from wanting stuff, to having stuff and not wanting it taken away.

I don’t think anyone is saying such a change is common now. It certainly happens, though, and there are plenty of us online to prove it.

However, Hitchens is trying to say that until the 20th Century such a switch was so common that “everybody” did it who was on the left. I take issue with that and see no evidence for it having been especially common then or now.

😉