Gored by the Oxymorons

In Case You Missed It: my review of JD Vance’s new book hit the goal and was unlocked for everyone.

A couple of restaurant lunches ago, I was telling Josh Slocum about a project I want to do, but that I cannot think of enough material for it. He thought it was a good idea, and funny, but agreed with me that it would be hard to generate enough to pull it off.

So my comments are open for all subscribers on this one for you to help, if you’d like. I will link back to this post and credit “the comment section” generally; if you need more credit than that, don’t participate and no hard feelings. I’m too busy to turn this into a spreadsheet.

I want to make an exhaustive list of the left and right’s inherent contradictions in their positions. Note that this is a generic list of reasonable or at least quasi-reasonable summaries of the discourse, not any party’s official positions, and that I am not saying I believe or don’t believe any of these things. Nor will I infer that you believe or don’t believe something just because you put it in the comments.

Bonus if you can phrase it in a funny way.

Women are responsible for nearly every problem in society, which is why we should dramatically increase the birth rate and have as many women as possible homeschooling, thus increasing female influence on society exponentially.

Government is incompetent on every level and incapable of doing anything at all correctly, except writing abortion legislation. Every law in all fifty states is written perfectly and without ambiguity. There is a zero probability that any pregnant woman in miscarriage could ever be harmed by any phrasing or reasonable interpretation of this, the one thing government achieves with god-like perfection.

Masculinity is in crisis, particularly strong masculinity that takes on a provider role, which is why undocumented fathers who do brutal manual labor all day to provide for their families should be deported as quickly as possible.

Free markets are sacred and government should never distort them by picking winners and losers — except for the tariffs. Also farm subsidies propping up industries that happen to be red in red states and/or vote red, which don’t count because the label says “America First.”

Government cannot reliably fill potholes, not even in New England states where winter has looked the same for all 407 years that Americans have been on this continent, which is why the reasonable default hypothesis to any event is a conspiracy. (Probably government incompetence is a giant psy-op just to make us doubt their enormous power to carry out Byzantine conspiracies with thousands of moving parts, in a world where everyone carries a broadcasting studio in their pocket and is highly incentivized to make money by going viral with receipts.)

America is a hellpit of systemic racism so severe that every non-white person is in reasonable fear for his/her life every time he/she leaves the house, which is why we need open borders — so as many people of color as possible can come here to suffer.

Police are dangerously, violently, genocidally racist, which is why only the police should have guns.

Black Americans are disproportionately harmed by bad public schools, which is why allowing poor black parents to escape their assigned public school is suspiciously right-wing.

Women spent generations fighting against the idea that biology determines their social roles, which is why we urgently need everyone to understand that liking dresses is significant evidence about whether or not a boy will grow up to be a woman.

Billionaires have grotesquely disproportionate political power, which is why democracy must be protected by making sure the CEOs of enormous technology companies decide what political speech people can see.

It is inevitable that this will turn into a fight, because this is the internet. I may or may not limit them to paid subscribers at some point, I may or may not wade in, I may or may not delete off-topic comments, and I may or may not turn them off when someone annoys me sufficiently.

No promises; it’s Monday. Even having a job I truly love, it’s still Monday. So if you have one you’d like to see included, you should probably act fast!