To follow on from my post yesterday, the following came to mind.
What if you were in group X, and your leader’s authentic self said phrase Y?
- You are a deeply committed feminist, but the leader of your party said, “Women should be second-class citizens.”
- You are a deeply committed Marxist, but the leader of your party said, “Profit maximization at the expense of labor is the highest good.”
- You are a deeply committed capitalist, but the leader of your party said, “Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”
- You are deeply commited to democracy, but the leader of your party said, “I support hereditary monarchy.”
- You are a deeply committed free speech absolutist, but the leader of your party said, “I am pro-censorship and, in fact, believe that all public speech should be pre-cleared by the government.
- You are a deeply committed anarchist, but the leader of your party said, “I am working to establish a totalitarian state.”
I could go but, I hae probably already ranged into belaboring the point.
At some point in cases like this, a person has to change parties, yes? Else they need to stop and reevaluate if they really are “deeply committed” to X or whether, in fact, they value something even more that the leader is allegedly going to provide them.
There is also the possibility that X really is just some kind of cultural signifier that means less than the member of X pretends to be the case.
