"We're Nuanced, You're a Monolithic Block"

Yesterday I objected to the lies being spread about Gina Carano. I hate lies in general, but I especially hate them when they're used to tear down people in a guilt-by-association purge.

The problem with Gina Carano isn't that she's racist or antitrans, as those are proven lies. They problem is that she's Red Tribe. Since everyone knows that Red Tribe is super racist and super antitrans, if you can find even a the smallest thing that is kinda cringy you don't need anything more than that. The vast majority of people I talked to never read any of Carano's original tweets, they simply read the summary of "anti-trans" or "anti-semitic", believed it, and spread the narrative with outrage in their voices. Because look at that Red Triber being so typically Red Tribe! We can't have this sort of bigotry in public society, there must be consequences for this behavior!

The Red Tribe, as it turns out, is not a monolithic group. In fact, it's more fractured in the wake of Trump's disasterous presidency than it's ever been in modern history.

There is absolutley a tight knot of racists and bigots within the Red Tribe.

There are also a lot of people who are Red but are not bigots, and they dislike being lumped in with them.

Their politicians feel they have to court the bigots as well to get enough votes to win elections, and as it turns out, yeah, some of them DO have to court those people to win. It's a fucking mess over on the Red side right now. Honestly I expect the Republican party will collapse and restructure within this decade, due to this growing divide, which Trump brought into the light. And it's gonna suck for a lot of them. It'll probably be better in the end, once the rotten contingent can be excised.

But crucially, this means the rest of us need to acknowledge the part of the Reds that are not Bads, and work with them. Right now what much of the Left seems to want to do is drive those decent Reds back towards the Hate Core. They reject anything short of complete repetanance and baptism within the Blue Way. Since a lot of Good Reds won't do that, the Blues instead vilify them and drive them back towards the Bigots... and This Is Bad.

(Why is this Bad IMO? It isn't just a "gosh this sort of thing makes me uncomfortable" problem. The last year has seen riots burning down city centers, and insurection groups declare parts of a city an independant autonomous zone. Just last month we had a failed coup in an attempt to overturn our election, that lead to five deaths.  I think we're in danger of social collapse and possible civil strife/violence if things continue to escalate.)

This sort of "Driving Good People Into The Dark Recesses" happens even to people who aren't Red, but simply Aren't Blue Enough. Fucking Laci Green of all people was outcast. Laci Green! It's maddness, and I hate what it's doing to all sides.

It just happened to Gina Carano. Now that Disney fired her, she's teaming up with freakin' Ben Shapiro. While I'll admit Ben Shapiro isn't the worst person on the right, he's definitely in the Shitty Person camp, and having Carano pushed towards him has made everything worse. A good Red Person is being driven deeper towards the cruddy recesses, and everyone on the left celebrates? Is this really what you wanted? Has this made the world a better place?

The problem is that any who's already drowning in the Blue Tide doesn't see the difference between a Gina and a Ben. I've had people ask me how I could defend someone who's part of a political party that sometimes courts the votes of racists with swastika tattooes. I don't understand how such a person can consider themselves an enlightened member of the modern world. We were supposed to be the side that looked beyond what group you fell into. We looked beyond skin color, or religion, or lack of education, or accent. We judged people individually for what they themselves did. We do not believe in collective punishment or collective prejudice. We understand that all groups have many people a great nuance within them.

Or we did, at one time. Now all we need to know about someone is that they are proudly Red, and we know that they're part of a group that includes racists, so they deserve to be outcast. If someone were to point out that some people in the Blue Tribe are violent, unapologetically racist, unapologetically sexist, promote the mass murder of demographic groups, and believe in group punishment, well... those are a small minority. They don't speak for the Democratic Party. They're outlier fringe groups. We are a Big Tent that has to represent many people, and we keep the most-radical in check. We are nuanced. But you... you're a monolithic block. Get fucked.

Sadly, the Democratic Party is far from falling apart, and so unlike the Republican party, I don't think the knot of horrible Blues will be excised any time soon. If anything, they seem to be gaining power. There's some people trying to push against that (even little old me, with my miniscule little blog), but we appear to be losing. :/

(And yes, much like what happened to Rowling, I expect that what happened to Carano will push her further and further right, and will end up with her associating with actual bad people, and thus this post won't age well. That's a feature of this sort of attack though, not a bug. Good job guys. /s)