psocoptera

So I think there's something to this idea that I've seen, that the attraction of Brexit or Trump is not the actual policies, but just the opportunity to express forbidden racism (& misogyny, in the Trump case) in a public, validated way, and that plenty of these people would actually like to continue to have sensible policies and responsible governance along with their chance to howl their hate and have other haters howl back. I... don't really know what to do with that. On the one hand, I believe pretty devoutly that condemnation of bigotry is the only moral option, that the very real lives and safety of Muslim/Latinx/Black/Jewish/etc people are at risk whenever white supremacy is allowed to flourish, that the only way this evil is ever actually going to diminish and become a rare perversion is if we just keep banging away on it being completely unacceptable. On the other hand I feel like maybe in history there are societies that have experimented with outlets for the forbidden, inversion festivals, licentious release of what is suppressed the rest of the time for the good of society, and, I don't know, if all of these jackasses could do their disgusting howling somewhere where it *didn't actually threaten sensible policy for the rest of us*, would that be worth something? If you could uncouple the hate from actual political power at the cost of even marginally legitimizing it? I mean, I think history says no, I think history says that people who get to go wear white sheets on the weekend just get more emboldened to wear white sheets in their daily lives, and the kind of people inclined to be Nazis are not going to be satisfied to be performative Nazis, they want real-world power. But. I don't know. If "posture and lose" is the actual best-case scenario for a lot of these people, I wish there was more the rest of us could do to help them do that.

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irilyth

Yeah, I've always been in favor of letting people who want to be assholes, but not directly hurt other people, go be assholes off by themselves, where they won't hurt anyone. Letting them do it where they already are, and making everyone else leave, seems unfair to the non-assholes. I don't know if we could give them a walled city somewhere and let them inbreed themselves to death in a few generations or something.

(It's also arguable that their kids don't deserve to be stuck in City Of Assholes either, but I'm pretty wary of "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" arguments, especially when the basis is "...because their parents believe things we don't agree with".)