okay i think i have a tweet version of conflict theory
there are two kinds of political information, info about policy alternatives and info about the political game itself (factions, coalitions, payoff matrices)
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You can model liberalism as the belief that only disseminating information about policy is politics talking to people about the political game itself is fighting dirty, like assassination or voter intimidation
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and that extends to providing information about policy alternatives that is informed by payoff matrices for example, murder rate is okay, but discussing who murders whom isn’t fair (because it presupposes the who might have different interests than the whom)
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it rly has nothing to do with morality, or at least it doesn’t have to obviously it’s awkward to admit you advocate policies that ate rly bad for lots of ppl whose votes you want but “awkward” != “evil”
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in fact it is the ppl who think they are just discussing empirical policy like good pragmatists who have a hyper-moralized conception of politics bc any info that would help ppl relate empirics to their own interests is subversion, fatal to democracy, etc etc
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so they never stop policing ppl who veer on the border of mentioning who-whom in elite social settings it’s a subtle social pressure, a laugh, a frown when they don’t know who you are they call you a nazi and demand total ostracism, even violence
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End of conversation
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