A relative used to post about Demonrats and also Mooslims, until he got off Superpoke (or maybe was banned or got his account stolen) - he's not a small-town doctor, so I'm sure he's not Minivan. Just wanted you to know that your memory isn't flawed in this case.
Great read ! Your short version on Twitter took my breath away.
One point: "Nothing happened to Minivan" contradicts "overweening grievance". He clearly grieved and felt he lagged behind or had no power on others. That's fertile ground for hating or imagining enemies or creating conspiracies. Think of all the bloodshed in past centuries that fed on it, mostly due to ideology: often religious wars (Crusades, sacking Constantinople, Inquisition, Protestants, 80y war, Anabaptists, witch burning,...), then nationalism (19.c.), then supremacy (20.c., Darwin, race).
See Zweig's "Die Welt von Gestern" for an account of the media nightmare leading up to WWI. Likewise, Communism in Germany of the thirties was feared in many circles (shopkeepers, industrialists, Christian families...), the threat got exploited, hatred became OK and an avalanche ensued.
So "Nothing happened" is true for Minivan as much as for you or me: we all carry a seed of hatred that only asks to be watered - call it the original sin if you want.
Also: "observable reality" is very subjective - alas.
back before the world melted down (and we learned a few things about ourselves, our friends, our families), I had a friend named Allan. we met at church during HS, and stayed friends for a while after.
Allan and I are no longer friends. and I no longer go to church. but how we stopped being friends is very much like this - Allan was my Stove Minivan.
Outstanding piece. Your substack title "the reframe" is absolutely on target, because this is a great reframe of the problem, an effective reframe. One of the things that has happened too, is that the utter irrationality (lack of connection to reality and what one's eyes tell them) of the Minivans of the world, is that some of us in trying to change their minds end up defending things we used to attack, or at least criticize. Like the FBI, the Fed, or big Pharma. Which ads to our ineffectualness.
We find ourselves fighting against their "morality" based attack on abortion by citing statistics on maternal mortality, or incidence of complications in spontaneous abortion, when we really need to be saying is that denying women control of their own bodies is morally wrong.
Fascinating read. I cling to some famous cases of effective persuasion like Derek Black, the white-supremacist-leader-to-be who learned through persuasion from friends that his family's views were wrong and repellent. But I admit that such cases are very rare.
Some of my high school classmates in the Midwest were still using "Demonrats" as recently as last summer.
A relative used to post about Demonrats and also Mooslims, until he got off Superpoke (or maybe was banned or got his account stolen) - he's not a small-town doctor, so I'm sure he's not Minivan. Just wanted you to know that your memory isn't flawed in this case.
Great read ! Your short version on Twitter took my breath away.
One point: "Nothing happened to Minivan" contradicts "overweening grievance". He clearly grieved and felt he lagged behind or had no power on others. That's fertile ground for hating or imagining enemies or creating conspiracies. Think of all the bloodshed in past centuries that fed on it, mostly due to ideology: often religious wars (Crusades, sacking Constantinople, Inquisition, Protestants, 80y war, Anabaptists, witch burning,...), then nationalism (19.c.), then supremacy (20.c., Darwin, race).
See Zweig's "Die Welt von Gestern" for an account of the media nightmare leading up to WWI. Likewise, Communism in Germany of the thirties was feared in many circles (shopkeepers, industrialists, Christian families...), the threat got exploited, hatred became OK and an avalanche ensued.
So "Nothing happened" is true for Minivan as much as for you or me: we all carry a seed of hatred that only asks to be watered - call it the original sin if you want.
Also: "observable reality" is very subjective - alas.
back before the world melted down (and we learned a few things about ourselves, our friends, our families), I had a friend named Allan. we met at church during HS, and stayed friends for a while after.
Allan and I are no longer friends. and I no longer go to church. but how we stopped being friends is very much like this - Allan was my Stove Minivan.
Outstanding piece. Your substack title "the reframe" is absolutely on target, because this is a great reframe of the problem, an effective reframe. One of the things that has happened too, is that the utter irrationality (lack of connection to reality and what one's eyes tell them) of the Minivans of the world, is that some of us in trying to change their minds end up defending things we used to attack, or at least criticize. Like the FBI, the Fed, or big Pharma. Which ads to our ineffectualness.
We find ourselves fighting against their "morality" based attack on abortion by citing statistics on maternal mortality, or incidence of complications in spontaneous abortion, when we really need to be saying is that denying women control of their own bodies is morally wrong.
Fascinating read. I cling to some famous cases of effective persuasion like Derek Black, the white-supremacist-leader-to-be who learned through persuasion from friends that his family's views were wrong and repellent. But I admit that such cases are very rare.