The Horseshoe Theory

~ Clarissa

Strangely, the only person I end up being in agreement with and vice versa during faculty meetings is our wokest professor. We have the worst round of austerity so far coming up. Departments will be closed, tenured people fired, Humanities completely eviscerated. And the only two people who had something of value to say at the meeting today were me and the BLM dude. Everybody else was in the “these are such important measures and I’d accept them if they came accompanied by praise for how hard I’ve worked” mode.

What is this, the horseshoe theory? Far left and far right being kind of the same? The dude and I are political opposites but on practical matters we are scarily in sync.

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Published by Clarissa

16 thoughts on “The Horseshoe Theory”

  1. Is he otherwise normally sexed, does not give you the ick, and has been around long enough, and is also otherwise competent at his job of work?

    I have read “everyone is conservative about his own business, especially if he is any good at it.”

    I can go along quite pleasantly with small farmers so long as we stick to, say, dairy cows and hugel-kultur.

    Unless their hearts are eaten away.

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  2. Is he otherwise normally sexed, does not give you the ick, and has been around long enough, and is also otherwise competent at his job of work?

    I have read “everyone is conservative about his own business, especially if he is any good at it.”

    I can go along quite pleasantly with small farmers so long as we stick to, say, dairy cows and hugel-kultur.

    Unless their hearts are eaten away.

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  3. Aha! I don’t know what you changed last but I can finally comment again! (Though it appears I can’t enter my email, which is weird.)
    -Pen

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  4. Aha! I don’t know what you changed last but I can finally comment again! (Though it appears I can’t enter my email, which is weird.)
    -Pen

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  7. “What is this, the horseshoe theory?”

    IME in Poland people who hate each other and agree on almost nothing find it easier to work together than people who agree about 90 % of issues do.

    I don’t get it but it’s a similar idea… you know you’ll never convince each other so you set the differences aside and concentrate on the little bit of common ground you can find…

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    1. There is a word for it in Freudian philosophy — “narcissism of small differences”.
      It explains how even the small deviations from the norm from people closer in belief systems challenge or “malign” the image of the primary ideology whereas the people evidently distant are too far to cause any damage or backreaction. Hence the former are detested much more heavily.

      The same phenomenon explains why different factions within a religion are at each other’s throat while they have a strained tolerance towards followers of other faiths. For instance, Ahmadis are butchered by other factions in Islam but other monotheistic sects (Jews and Christians) aren’t
      OR
      How Elon Musk goes from being a visionary planet savior, with his fancy electric cars, to a comic-book-evil technocrat when he stopped bowing at left-liberal altar.

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    2. Also, the far far left still remembers what it means to care about workers and how to stand up to neoliberalism abuses. The rest of the liberals can only mewl pitifully about how they need to be praised and rewarded emotionally during economic dispossession.

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    1. PaulS, how do you enter your name?
      I can only put it here, inside the comment. No email, no name… 😦
      Hope it changes soon, may it, Clarissa?

      el

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