There is a certain childishness to wanting leaders to say things, or disambiguate what they said to confirm your wishful reading. You’re not a child. A leader is just another adult in a position of power. That power exists via your consent. If you disagree, withdraw that consent
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I’m starting to think it isn’t just unprincipled speakers and writers who debase language. It’s cowardly listeners and readers who beg for such abuse so they can find room in ambiguity to justify their compromised positions to themselves as actually fine.
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It’s not lack of verbal talent that stops a lot of people from speaking for themselves. It’s fear of revealing their own failings to themselves. So long as you hide in the benefit-of-doubt band around a leader’s words, with others, you can feel at least not-alone in your views.
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This is why I flipped the bozobit on Peter Thiel the moment he made that “take Trump seriously but not literally” comment. It was perfectly clear what values he was signaling with that choice to read what he wanted into Trump’s rhetoric.
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In 2016 you were going to be compromised no matter who you voted for. If you voted for Hillary as I did, you were signing up to be viewed as a status-quo preserving cronyist hypocrite supporting machine politics and militarism for 4 years. I’ve been fine with that perception.
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But somehow Trumpies don’t seem to want to own their compromises. Congrats, you’re not seen as a hypocrite. You’re seen as a racist. You don’t like that label? You want to “problematize” it like the postmodernists you hate? Tough. You coulda chosen “hypocrite.” But you didn’t.
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We all pay a price for our compromises. I’m civil and friendly to those in my circle I know supported Trump, but they’ll never again have my trust, and I’ll never knowingly work with them again. Not that it’s a staggering loss to anyone to have me cut them off.
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And I’m fine being cut off in turn for being openly pro-Hillary in 2016 or pro-Biden in 2020 (in both cases, I’ve mainly been bozobitted by Bernie supporters). Easy enough for me, since I have no significant power and so can’t lose any power through being unambiguous.
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Point is, other people’s words, unlike bullets, only have as much power over you as you allow them to. A bullet can kill you dead whether you’re courageous or cowardly. Others’ words... not so much. Unless they’re “avada kedavra”.
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This holds true for institutional words too, cf. the kerfuffle over Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s words. A corporation is not a employee-statement-issuing body. It’s a highly asymmetric structure designed to make some people —execs and board members — count more than others.
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When a company speaks through it’s PR apparatus, it’s mainly the execs and board members speaking. Employees can choose to walk away, customers can stop using the product, the company can accept the cost of missing out on some talent, shareholders can dump shares.
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If you want to debase words so they become commodious enough to fit your views without you having to pay a real cost like quitting a job, don’t complain if they stop being useful for pointing to things of meaning things. That’s what debasement means.
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Words that mean everything to everybody eventually mean nothing to anybody. And words that speak meaninglessly for power don’t share that power among all being spoken for. They erode that power in proportion to the abuse.
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End of conversation
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