Now, is this fair? Freddy Gray argues in the Spectator that the super-trendy progressives he encounters in public life turn out to be reasonable people in private interactions--in fact, that they are exploiting a persona for gig income, as an outrageous comic might do.
I have no doubt that there's a lot of this going around, the PC version of televangelist Jim Bakker, no more real than Chewbacca. But is it really true of most coworkers who obsessively share woke memes on social media? Are they only adopting protective coloration to avoid being pecked to death at the office, or do they believe that stuff?
Whether the beliefs are thoroughly examined at held at the deepest level I can't say, but I'd guess people in general--people outside show biz, at least--mean a good bit of what they say. To suggest that they're all faking, and congratulating them for being sensible in their private views, seems more of a gratuitous insult.
3 comments:
I get an up close and personal look at this, and I come down on the side of a number of commentators including Jonah Goldberg who I think I heard it from first. It's not they are consciously choosing an act but that they just don't preach what they practice. I'm close to someone who loudly champions leftist social justice causes but doesn't really follow through in private life. There is always an out, an exception, that switches on a much more conservative position when the rubber really hits the road.
Robert Conquest was right. Everybody is conservative about what (and who) they know best.
Occasionally I encounter progressive young women who complain about the phenomenon of so-called feminist men. These apparently turn out to be just men, who have been faking feminist views in order to pursue romance. Once turned down, the men often called them terrible names and are very rude and in explicitly sexist ways.
Another variation on the phenomenon you’re describing, perhaps.
This is bound to happen when most people treat political ideology as if it were musical taste or fashion. They want to be in the cool in group. So they adopt policies for those purposes (virtue signaling, essentially, but it's probably shallower than that even), but when it's their money/ child/ property, they fall back on the more traditional practices they saw work for their parents.
I'd love it if politics were to become really un-cool across the board.
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