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rynlingI have many fears right now. This is not at the top of the pile, but it’s what I can handle this morning.
One of my many concerns about another Trump presidency is that discourse between leftists is once again going to get just as nasty as the discourse of white supremacists. In other words, I'm afraid that progressives are going to start attacking each other just like they did back around 2016-2021.
Let me give an example of what this looks like from my own life. I published a book right before the pandemic and was then denied tenure the day after a state of emergency was declared. It was intense, and I was depressed. A group of students at Temple asked me to come to their campus and give a talk about my book. I apologized and turned them down, saying that it was a pandemic and I wasn't doing okay. I was honest and admitted that I could barely put on pants in the morning. The way they responded was to get on Twitter and say, among other things, “this is the sort of autistic freakshow they let teach at Penn.” It’s wild that a bunch of gay people in the Disability Studies program would feel comfortable saying that sort of thing in public about another gay person who just outed themselves as disabled, but that really was the tenor of the discourse at the time.
The only way to respond to that sort of combative atmosphere, unfortunately, is to become the most obnoxiously online and morally pure person who ever was. It’s not enough to be informed about political issues and write political essays in your field; you also have to be keyed into online discourse and constantly post the up-to-date “correct” opinions about it, which is exhausting - especially if, indeed, you’re the sort of sensitive person who might qualify as “a freakshow.”
I hope that doesn’t happen this time around. Everything about this is devastating, and real people are going to be in real danger. I hope we can at least be kind to one another.
One of my many concerns about another Trump presidency is that discourse between leftists is once again going to get just as nasty as the discourse of white supremacists. In other words, I'm afraid that progressives are going to start attacking each other just like they did back around 2016-2021.
Let me give an example of what this looks like from my own life. I published a book right before the pandemic and was then denied tenure the day after a state of emergency was declared. It was intense, and I was depressed. A group of students at Temple asked me to come to their campus and give a talk about my book. I apologized and turned them down, saying that it was a pandemic and I wasn't doing okay. I was honest and admitted that I could barely put on pants in the morning. The way they responded was to get on Twitter and say, among other things, “this is the sort of autistic freakshow they let teach at Penn.” It’s wild that a bunch of gay people in the Disability Studies program would feel comfortable saying that sort of thing in public about another gay person who just outed themselves as disabled, but that really was the tenor of the discourse at the time.
The only way to respond to that sort of combative atmosphere, unfortunately, is to become the most obnoxiously online and morally pure person who ever was. It’s not enough to be informed about political issues and write political essays in your field; you also have to be keyed into online discourse and constantly post the up-to-date “correct” opinions about it, which is exhausting - especially if, indeed, you’re the sort of sensitive person who might qualify as “a freakshow.”
I hope that doesn’t happen this time around. Everything about this is devastating, and real people are going to be in real danger. I hope we can at least be kind to one another.
