I don\u2019t know if this is entirely fair to Tolkien\u2019s \u201cOn Fairy Stories,\u201d but one of my recollections from that essay is that a fairy story is a result of the clash of two civilizations \u2014 e.g., when someone from one world finds himself in another.<\/p>\n
England became the home of several waves of immigrants, who generally pushed the previous inhabitants west or north. At any given time you might have two cultures bumping into one another. E.g., Angles living next to Jutes. If a Jute teenager wandered into Angle territory, he\u2019d find himself in a completely different world. Strange languages. Strange clothing. Strange customs. <\/p>\n
A “fairy story” is about falling into that other world. <\/p>\n
I believe that concept describes the left and the right in America today. We live in completely different worlds, where words have different meanings, there are different facts, different news, and different \u201cnarratives.\u201d (That word in that context annoys me, and I\u2019m not sure why. Perhaps because it seems to imply there is no truth, only story.)<\/p>\n
A serious conversation on any political or cultural topic would require a patient disassembling of assumptions, alleged facts, and so on. After that soul-crushing, mind-numbing exercise, you might be able to back up to something like a common starting point. But I think that’s becoming more elusive every day.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t want to do it. I have no patience for the people who get their \u201cinformation\u201d from the other side. The \u201cnarrative\u201d in that world — the woke world, the world of the legacy media — is shaped by people who believe it\u2019s okay to flood the country with illegal immigrants, that it\u2019s possible for a boy to become a girl, that speech is violence, that social media not only can, but should suppress certain views, that we should blindly trust government science and silence anyone who dissents, that climate change is a bigger threat than China, that we should ship oil and gas to Europe while New England gets ready to freeze this winter ….<\/p>\n
Such people \u2014 that is, the \u201cnarrative\u201d creators on that side \u2014 are either crazy, sniveling cowards, or both. I have no time for them. <\/p>\n
In most areas of life, it’s a good thing to listen to both sides. But when one side is insane, that doesn’t apply. <\/p>\n
Unfortunately, a lot of people who don\u2019t accept<\/i> the insane propositions I mention above, nevertheless drink from that well and get \u201cinformation\u201d from these clowns. Maybe out of habit. Maybe out of a misguided attempt to \u201cget both sides.\u201d I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
It’s a fool’s errand. The other side might as well be flat Earthers. They\u2019re that far gone. And their insanity infuses everything they say. (I\u2019ve never been a fan of \u201cpresuppositionalism,\u201d but there is clearly some merit to the idea.)<\/p>\n
There is hope for the people who drink that poisoned draught. There are plenty of examples of people waking up and seeing the light, and there are plenty of people who have the time and the energy to help those poor souls out of the slough. Ben Shapiro. Prager University. Etc.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t have the time, the energy, or the patience to do that work. And probably not the talent either. <\/p>\n
In today\u2019s environment, expressing simple and obvious things like \u201cwe should not get rid of energy that works until we have something else that works to replace it\u201d make you some sort of criminal, a hater, and probably a Nazi. It\u2019s wearisome beyond belief.<\/p>\n
When I was a younger lad, I had the patience to try to explain things. I\u2019m not young any more, and I\u2019m done with it. Other people are doing a fine job in that space. I’ll follow and support them in their efforts. <\/p>\n
I will continue to listen to the remaining sane people. Pigweed and I will continue to opine on topics that interest us over at the “beer and conversation” podcast<\/a>. But blogging doesn\u2019t have any appeal any longer.<\/p>\n This is site is officially closed. I’ll leave it up for a couple weeks, but after that, I’ll probably delete the whole thing. <\/p>\n It’s been a fun ride, and I appreciate all of you who have participated over the years. But it’s time to close this chapter. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t know if this is entirely fair to Tolkien\u2019s \u201cOn Fairy Stories,\u201d but one of my recollections from that essay is that a fairy story is a result of the clash of two civilizations \u2014 e.g., when someone from one world finds himself in another. England became the home of several waves of immigrants, … Continue reading “I’m addicted to politics, social issues and such, but I’m not interested in discussing it any longer”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2868"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2876,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2868\/revisions\/2876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crowhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}