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Withdrawal of consent means exiting the sphere of influence of their power. It means quitting a job if you don’t agree with what a CEO says. It means giving up Trump’s blessing and possibly losing an ejection if you’re a Republican politician who didn’t like what he said.
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If you’re a Republican politician trying to get Trump to “clarify” what someone evocatively called a “dog tuba” like “proud boys stand back and stand by” it means you want to have his endorsement and hold on to your seat more than you want to be seen as having integrity.
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Frankly I can respect outright endorsement more than I can respect attempts to pretend he didn’t mean what he said. It would be different if the cost were much higher, like threat to life. But unless you’re near destitute, walking away from a mere job is not hard.
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This might be the most annoying sheeple behavior in public discourse. Leaders by definition speak for followers within a limited context. If you don’t like what they say within that context, walk away. Find another leader or speak for yourself. Don’t whine at being misunderstood.
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If you don’t like what they say outside of the context where they’re seen as speaking for you, you can actually simply distance yourself without any loss. If your CEO declares that vanilla is the official icecream flavor of Acme, inc. but you prefer strawberry, you can... say so.
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If your support for a leader is a tough compromise and some sort of “least worst” choice, guess what? You’re compromised. Don’t whine about the choices being limited or that the other choices were worse. We can read your values in the compromises you chose.
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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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