The Comfort of False Equivalence
There’s a seductive kind of cowardice masquerading as wisdom in modern discourse: the insistence that all extremes are created equal. It’s what allows the centrist to shrug and say, “Well, both sides are dangerous,” as though morality and method exist on a balanced scale, and history is simply a record of shared mistakes. For MAGA, this rhetorical laziness isn’t just useful. It’s strategic.
That’s truly disgusting. I can fathom neither how sick one would have to write this nor how stupid one would have to be to believe it.
I did a thread on Bluesky about tracing down that particular piece and it was not a road I’d been down before. First, there was a screenshot with an even more inflammatory headline from RT. Eventually, I found a direct link to Substack from a “paleoconservative” POS maintaining a wordpress blog. I get that people actually growing up in Russia their entire lives have learned this stuff and don’t excuse it but at least can understand that to some degree. But I grew up in a very progressive bubble and never experienced people like this in my life. The blogger and the commenters were clearly programmed deeply from various corners of more hellish places. It’s sick but it’s also taught disinformation etc.