1. They’re rhetorical tools of varying quality Some of them are like a stihl, some are like a 1 and done walmart chainsaw. Just because you see someone using a good one, you can’t thing “chainsaw good.” (bias acknowledgement, chainsaw indeed good imho) At their best, they’re great lenses for describing the landscape of a situation or a problem at hand that gesture towards good actions. At worst, they’re useless. Approach each situation critically and openly.
2. If we’re good materialists, we must look at the following.
a. who is employing them
b. what’s the consequence of them getting what they want
c. who else is on their side
The consequences matter most. As leftists or varying stripes, we need to think ultimately about who wins and how, and what actions follow from these analyses
It is indeed incumbent upon us to “fuck our feelings” sometimes and be open to these nuances. Otherwise you can become doctrinally inflexible, and in situations as complex and rapidly-shifting as the modern political landscape, you gotta meet complexity and variety with complexity and variety. Why throw out a good tool because you saw an asshole using a similar one to do something dumb?
