Do you ever wonder, what else have I been horribly wrong on all this time?

[JaneorEleven]

Do you ever wonder, what else have I been horribly wrong on all this time? If I was SO wrong on those that are GC, what else have I been wrong on?

All my life I’ve been solidly left leaning, and pretty much agreed with most points on the left. I’ve described myself as an old fashioned socialist, love the idea of the NHS, a safety net for lower income people and unemployed, social and economic equality, disability rights, rights for women all tied up with feminism including being pro-choice, LGB and the TQ etc rights, you name it, I supported it.

I had previously been very sympathetic to Trans issues, and had a friend who transitioned, and I supported this person as best I could. But after some time of researching and I guess educating myself for lack of a better expression, I did a complete uturn on this, and found myself agreeing with many wise GC women. It was a bell I couldn’t unring. And Mumsnet played a large part in this.

I’m British now living in the US, and find myself busy Terfing USA. I’ve listened to NPR for years, nodding along, but now almost daily, they have a segment that infuriates me with regards to Trans issues. Could be anything from “trans kids” not getting their meds, to prisons, to bathrooms, schools, and they support it all. Female reporters who I held in high esteem, interviewing and fawning over transwomen, platforming them and letting them hold court without challenging them.

These past few weeks, I’ve started to question myself. How could I have been so wrong on this? I thought GC peeps, or Terfs, were full of hate and lacked patience and understanding.

Which leads me to ask, on what else have I been so badly wrong? Anyone else think like this? Now I don’t think I’m a closet right winger, but is it possible I’ve allowed the left to lead me up the garden path on other issues too?

people don't challenge themselves or look to find ideas that break orthodoxy. Thats fundamentally unprogressive. You can't be ideologically driven and progressive - the two concepts are diametrically opposed.

I agree with this redtoothbrush, but I also think a large part of what we have now with gender ideology and social justice "wokery" is that it does think it's progressive nonetheless. Time and again you'll see gender ideology being misrepresented and mis-explained as being a challenge to gender roles and to boring/traditional/bigoted norms that say you can't be who you want/be yourself. It has performed a massive con-trick of making its adherents think they're opposing something staid, restrictive and traditional, when they're actually opposing freedom from gender roles, which feminism had made progress with. And that works on so many people because they either can't or won't think it through.

I think a lot of people who are liberal/progressive politically actually have conservative, and more than that, incurious, temperaments. Their political views are held as received objects.

Most of the discussion is here is about people realising that left wing ideas are not always as good as they thought. However you rarely see people saying I realised that my right wing ideas didnt work. The Blair/Brown response to the financial crisis was correct, the economy was improving and austerity slowed that recovery. Sunaks poor control over furlough spending has left us with bigger debts than were necessary as has Boris giving contracts for his mates.

Seems like one of the big differences between left and right is being prepared to admit you arent perfect.

Nrtt, cold custard is actually really nice, genuinely gobsmacked to find that out.

Interesting thread. Thank you to all the posters who've made such intelligent and thought provoking contributions.

Surely people saying they are more right wing now shows that (newly) right wing people are willing to admit they're wrong?

But it is interesting that you don't see as many comments from people who were previously conservative and have gone over to the left.

Part of that may be because many conservative and right wing people are more than happy to criticise the tory government and tory policies. It's not so tribal as the left - there's not so much of a purity spiral.

I think maybe because many people on the left see certain policy approaches as ideologically mandated, it is difficult for them to back away from them. It's more common for conservatives to be pragmatic about policy even if they are looking for certain kinds of results.

I read once about a guy in social work school wanting to do a study on whether certain social welfare programs that had recently been started were effective. And his professors wouldn't allow it, because they said social welfare was part of their core values.

You do get conservatives like that, maybe especially around deregulation, but overall I think it's less common, at least now.

There are a fair number of people now saying they were wrong about Brexit.

Many people who voted con in 2015 hoping to get another coalition have said they were wrong.

A fair number of people who supported austerity have said they were wrong to.

But i think its less of a big deal to do this from the right in the uk because politics are less tied in with identity than the British left. (I think there is a Brexit identity that's fading, and I think there is an American Right identity but that's not replicated here in quite the same way).

I started the Brexit process as being pro EU and and ended up in the middle. When the vote came in as in favor for Brexit, I accepted the result and saw it as a civil revolution.

Does it work out economically for me, no. However there are benefits to Brexit which can’t be ignored. Currently there is a big discussion going on talking about funding. Germany has said debt should be raised by the individual countries, not the ECB. Basically Germany don’t want to tie themselves in. I get it but you don’t get to benefit in the good times and leave people high and dry when it gets a bit tough.

This one is interesting. Conservativism is a very broad church these days, more so, I would argue, than the left, although it could be argued that the current narrowness of the left is a relatively recent phenomenon.

But in my area, a lot of Conservatives didn't vote for Sunak in the first leadership election because he was "too rich." Another comment I heard a lot was "we have to get rid of these public-school boys at the top of the party; they have no idea how ordinary people live."

However, I have also heard the same from local Labour people about Momentumites, so ... I guess it's swings and roundabouts. The Tories suffer from stuffed shirt, over-rich, over-privileged buffoons who don't know how the other half live, and Labour suffers from pampered, privileged, middle class kids who think they know how the other half live and get it wrong.

However, I will say that I once thought there was an important role for business people in government. Not to dominate, not to control, but to feed in a different perspective in terms of governance and policy.

To some extent, I still think there is a place, but I now have significant reservations. Over the last seven years, I have worked within an environment where there is a very successful businessman who is involved in local government, and what I have seen has alarmed me. I now think the worlds are just too different that there is very little that translates.

Conservativism is a very broad church these days, more so, I would argue, than the left, although it could be argued that the current narrowness of the left is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Do you remember the 2010 election with Gordon Brown and David Cameron both saying "I agree with Nick" and both willing to enter into a pact.

This is such an interesting thread, thanks to all who have made such thought-provoking posts.

I've been having a bit of a revelation recently about the fact that without realising it, I think many of my political assumptions were quite idealistic and utopian.

This is largely due to listening quite a lot to Douglas Murray and finding his simple question: "compared to what?" very thought-provoking and in the end, a killer question with no real answer except, actually yeah, good point.

I realise that I was comparing our society, to some kind of socialist/ green/ matriarchal/ liberal/ <insert other worthy but unrealised and unrealisable> Utopia which has never existed and will never exist. His argument is roughly, that our society and our values (IE roughly western European enlightenment) has many faults, but if you compare it to any other society that has ever existed, it's good and worth defending.

I've always been hard left and vaguely positive about the idea of revolution. But having considered the question for a long time, I now think that the society we live in, has within it the tools we need to improve it. There is no such thing as a perfect society. There are no perfect people. But European thought produced societies which within them, as well as containing the seeds of their own destruction (tolerating the intolerable, tolerating those who work to undermine and destroy them) also contain the tools to improve society.

Yes, there is structural racism, sexism, classism, ageism, disablism etc. But there is also freedom of speech, freedom to organise and a philosophy which grew out of both christianity and the enlightenment, which supports and tries to promote the idea that we are all equal and all deserve to have equal opportunities to participate in and benefit from our society, even outsiders, even those who want to destroy that society. I can't think of a better jumping off spot to build a better society, than that.

a philosophy which grew out of both christianity and the enlightenment

The fact that much of our culture and philosophy is heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian myths/narratives could be a part of why we invest in/are attracted to the idea of 'progress' (progressing towards some hazy ideal/utopia).

Western narratives lean heavily on the idea of redemption, heaven-focussed ideas - even if not explicit within them, I think it's worth considering why we think of even, say, evolution as 'progress', when the actual theory of evolution/survival of the fittest is purely reactive (and in fact accidental mutation leading to potentially better or worse outcomes) - utterly random, and responsive, not looking forward or progressing towards something.

I think 'conservative' ideas are equally as liable to problems, tbh. Clinging to tradition is not necessarily inherently a better idea than change-for-the-sake of change!

There is a balance between valuing what we have and considering what needs to be changed - the essential and difficult factor is just as it says in the serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

I also question universities more and their motives without trusting them automatically.

That's an interesting observation Arabella, have you read Sapiens by Yuval Harari? It's an amazing book and he points out that the move from hunter gatherer to agriculture was not wholly progress as we've always just assumed. Really made me rethink some basic assumptions.

Other things that gradually made me fall out of love with the left were:

• the refusal to countenance the idea that Julian Assange might have sexually assaulted or rape a woman or women, because men whose politics you agree with cannot commit rape. George Galloway's disgusting video in which he made it clear that being "in the sex game" meant women could not expect to have any say in what happens during that sex.
• the refusal of the Guardian and other "progressive" outlets to cover issues like Aimee Challenor and the WiiSpa incident honestly
• the refusal of most left wing people to even engage with the trans issue
• the outpouring of the most visceral misogyny by left wing men against women they call witches terfs. - it felt like left wing men had been bottling up all their resentment and hatred against women having some equality and saw an opportunity to unleash it.

I think it's certainly true that the idea of a telos comes out of our Christian roots.

Orthodox Christianity though was clear that this was not something that existed as a historical force - we weren't heading towards a perfect society. There were people and groups that tended to think that way but doctrinally that was not the belief.

It's when you get these secularized, and materialistic, versions of it that you get the myth of progress, particularly in humanism and marxism. So this sense of an end has to be something physically instantiated in this world. And always weirdly to me, there is no real explanation, in a secular materialist construct, why things would be that way. It's a real blind faith, far more so than any of the religions with platonic philosophical roots.

I used to believe we could agree to differ, even on deeply held beliefs. On the rare occasions when this didn't happen (usually religious fundamentalists and separatists), the aggressive ones would be deemed by society to be the bad guys.

Got that wrong.

Yes, same for me. I’ve started reading republican websites, opinions etc. Found out a lot of stuff that the left newspapers glossed over or never mentioned. If you want to find the truth about the left, read the right and vice versa.

I’m still pro choice etc + it’s not a contagion or that I agree with everything or the majority I read, but it’s been an eye opener.

Im also still pro free speech and it’s frightening how the totalitarian the left has become, and it extends to more than trans issues. Especially the new gen, they can’t even hear “dissenting “ opinions, it’s like they’re wannabe fascists. The future doesn’t look great if and when they get in power, if they’ll be the majority.

I think the battle is now with the youngest (pre teen gen), on trans and freedom of speech. If they don’t learn the value of free speech, etc, the future is sealed. Parents here have a great responsibility pushing back against indoctrination in schools, teaching the value of free speech and dissent etc.

Thanks for the book rec, ScreamingBeans, looks fascinating. Ordered!

Mangy thanks, that's interesting especially once I googled telos. I wonder if religious ideas generally tend to solidify and morph from deep spiritual responses into more superficial narratives as they spread. Or maybe it's just the inevitable consequences of a religion coming up against materialism/consumerism.

I find the idea of 'growth' a bit weird like that, too. Are we to just endlessly keep growing on and on? Why?

Western narratives lean heavily on the idea of redemption, heaven-focussed ideas
It’s interesting as well that this also plays a part in New Age thought which was/is posited as an alternative to Christianity. Themes include the idea of ‘ascension’ - some of us are highly evolved souls who will live on a ‘new earth’. Not too dissimilar to the idea of the ‘saved’ really. They also still talk of angels and that Earth has a special place in the Universe.

It fascinates me as it shows how deeply embedded some of these ideas are in the collective psyche.

A great thread - @RedToothBrush , I think you and I have the same recommended readng list for people!

I've loved the engagement from both sides of the political divide on this , it's been very constructive.

Yes. An attempt to escape our suffering mortal finitude?

She wasn't party to the case in London. She was just a witness. She didn't require legal representation.

Are you saying that Musk has given money for the bond and that he's telling quite a few people who are happily telling other people but the press hasn't heard? Hmm.

Interesting what you were saying about free speech and the young generation. How can they know or value free speech when it doesn''t exist? It largely doesn't exist now compared with say, fifty years ago, which obviously they haven't experienced.

By coincidence I just read this article after seeing your post - it's by a mother about her ferociously righteous and intolerant teenage-to-twenties brood. It would be amusing if it weren't so bleak. The readers' comments are something to behold - almost comically scathing and unsparing of the mother.

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11408939/Cancelled-home-four-children-insist-opinions-offensive.html#comments

I think part of this is how we grow and learn. Some, I guess most, people are in a fairly closed social set where ‘group think’ is the norm, and is usually moulded as young adults. Because we might be ‘left’ then mostly we think we have to agree with the whole ‘set’ of left leaning. If we are conservative then people tend to feel that they can’t be a mixture, as that makes them stick out. Mostly it is quite uncomfortable to ‘stick out’ so we go along with the majority think.

I think we are not being taught to challenge or to apply critical thinking within our families, friendships and at school / uni or work.

I’ve noticed that in my friends I was probably one of the most ‘lefty’ when we were younger, but that is partly because I wasn’t afraid of weighing things up in my own mind. My father was conservative, my mother in the middle, and a socialist step father, but we grew up poor and I hated seeing injustice. I stuck up for people being bullied as I was bullied myself. We had lodgers from all over the world and the dinner table was full of debate. I think that was very healthy.

My friends were middle class and not poor. They had very academic parents and lots of debate also. However as we have all grown in the years, I notice most of my friends have become smaller in their thinking, buy into every left or socialist guardian rhetoric, and to me have become totally detached from the realities for many people. I feel alienated myself as they seem to understand my background less and less, in a way that I think they were more open to when I was younger. Now absolutely every one of their peers and workmates feels the same way. They are all a London set, in the media, charities, NGOs, solicitors, medics but sitting around the dinner table everyone agrees with each other and there is no real debate anymore.