Days after board members laughed at the exchange, the Washington County Board of Education called the comments “shocking,” saying “no explanation can justify that.”
I don’t get the hostility. It seemed like a pretty uncontroversial observation to me. Nobody complains about “the left”, they complain about “the far left”; nobody complains about “the right”, they complain about “the far right”. Anybody with two brain cells to rub together can observe this.
I have no idea why this would upset anybody, but it seems like I’ve triggered some people. Unless you’re just bots, in which case: deuces.
If you want a genuine answer, people are upset because you’re expressing a centrist opinion. Centrism more or less advocates for maintaining the status quo. The status quo sucks for most people.
You’re also equating the far left with the far right. To understand why this is upsetting, we can look at some basic definitions. If someone is on the Left, they are generally in favor of more equality, while those on the right want more hierarchy. Equality and hierarchy are opposites. You can see this in a more concrete way by comparing the goals of far-left organizations to the goals of far-right ones.
I think a lot of the confusion comes from the Cold War. Countries like the USSR and China would claim to have far-left intentions while acting in right-wing ways. You cannot achieve left-wing goals through right-wing action.
Even the term “Communist country” is an oxymoron, because Communism advocates for a stateless society, and governments never voluntarily give up power.
That’s funny, because complaining about the “far left” or the “far right” sounds centrist to me. It’s like you’re saying “Oh, the people closer to the center are okay. It’s those crazy extremists I have a problem with!”
If you’re anti-left or anti-right, just own it ffs. I consider myself a leftist, so I don’t bother specifying whether something I disagree with is “far right” or not; it’s all just right-wing to me. If the people on the right want to distance themselves from the extremists on their side, that’s their business. I’m not gonna make that determination for them.
That weaselly way of talking reminds me of people like Gavin Newsom who finds ICE distasteful but supports discriminating against trans women in sports. No doubt he finds the former position “far right”, but the latter one is just common sense or some nonsense. Both of those stances are extremist!
I don’t get the hostility. It seemed like a pretty uncontroversial observation to me. Nobody complains about “the left”, they complain about “the far left”; nobody complains about “the right”, they complain about “the far right”. Anybody with two brain cells to rub together can observe this.
I have no idea why this would upset anybody, but it seems like I’ve triggered some people. Unless you’re just bots, in which case: deuces.
If you want a genuine answer, people are upset because you’re expressing a centrist opinion. Centrism more or less advocates for maintaining the status quo. The status quo sucks for most people.
You’re also equating the far left with the far right. To understand why this is upsetting, we can look at some basic definitions. If someone is on the Left, they are generally in favor of more equality, while those on the right want more hierarchy. Equality and hierarchy are opposites. You can see this in a more concrete way by comparing the goals of far-left organizations to the goals of far-right ones.
I think a lot of the confusion comes from the Cold War. Countries like the USSR and China would claim to have far-left intentions while acting in right-wing ways. You cannot achieve left-wing goals through right-wing action.
Even the term “Communist country” is an oxymoron, because Communism advocates for a stateless society, and governments never voluntarily give up power.
That’s funny, because complaining about the “far left” or the “far right” sounds centrist to me. It’s like you’re saying “Oh, the people closer to the center are okay. It’s those crazy extremists I have a problem with!”
If you’re anti-left or anti-right, just own it ffs. I consider myself a leftist, so I don’t bother specifying whether something I disagree with is “far right” or not; it’s all just right-wing to me. If the people on the right want to distance themselves from the extremists on their side, that’s their business. I’m not gonna make that determination for them.
That weaselly way of talking reminds me of people like Gavin Newsom who finds ICE distasteful but supports discriminating against trans women in sports. No doubt he finds the former position “far right”, but the latter one is just common sense or some nonsense. Both of those stances are extremist!