You’re not safe. Life isn’t safe. The world isn’t safe. But you can’t live hiding under the rug. And some things are worth doing. Square your shoulders, decide what you have to do. Then do it. Death will come either from it or from merely living. Death is the price of being alive. * * * As for “We can’t reconcile.” and “We can’t share a nation with people like this.” Well, your ancestors did. After the revolution, after the civil war, wounds were bound, and people learned to live together, even though each had done horrible things to the others. You will too. And most of them not-media-personalities are mostly dumb, lied to and histrionic. Which is bad enough, but not evil incarnate.
You're not the first to face this
Via Instapundit, Sarah Hoyt:
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After the revolution, after the civil war, wounds were bound, and people learned to live together, even though each had done horrible things to the others.
Not wrong but reconciliation happened mostly because enough horrible things were done *to them* that the people who advocated and committed violence decided it wasn't working. See also Germany and Japan in 1945. There is no peaceful solution when people think violence is working for them.
This is a very thematic post for the Hall.
In Iraq, I often sat down and ate with men who’d been trying to kill us not long ago. Christopher is right; this was the Surge and just after, and we had successfully conveyed that there was at least more benefit to working with us than fighting us.
At that point it wasn’t too difficult to reconcile. You still have to give them a reason to reconcile. Even the victors of the Civil War ended up giving a lot back by the Redemption period of the 1870s. Some of what they gave back was easy for them but very hard on Black Americans in the South. We mostly gave access to money and jobs, and guarantees that we’d protect them. If we’d kept our word about the latter, Iraq would be a happier place; but the Obama administration and the Clinton State Department chose to walk away from it.
I think the transgender activists in particular feel like they’re fighting for their very survival, and as Sun Tzu points out it’s dangerous to engage in an enemy’s Death Ground because they will be driven to greater effort and effect. It’s often wiser to offer a road of retreat, which is another sort of ‘giving them something.’ So far neither side has been willing to compromise on this issue, and there aren’t all that many of them so outright victory is possibly an option (if expensive). On the other hand, the Agency has often organized that community in other nations— Burma, for example, had significant USAID funding directed at organizing and supporting its trans community — which implies that they were thought to be useful weapons if needed. Like the Sacred Banders of Ancient Greece, perhaps.
Maybe it would be a good idea to start thinking what the reconciliation compromises might be. Nobody’s ready for them yet, but that’s the road to peace when the time comes.
Yes, but in the transgender case, we didn't push them into a corner. They talked themselves into a corner with all their talk of trans genocide and now some of them think they need to shoot their way out.
At least for the War Between the States, you could make a similar claim. There was a long period of escalating rhetoric on both sides, where some antislavery activists felt there was no choice but to fight, and some slavery advocates likewise explained that their whole way of life was being threatened. By the time John Brown came around, there was a lot of such rhetoric to support his chosen actions. Abraham Lincoln could say that he was prepared to save the Union by freeing the slaves or by freeing no slaves, but by then such de-escalation wasn't enough because few believed it. You could say that each side talked themselves into believing it was necessary.
For that matter, the guerrilla war in "Bleeding Kansas" arguably several years before and after the main conflict.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleeding_Kansas
So let's be careful about talking ourselves into the necessity of fighting; it may become necessary, but it isn't yet. You don't want to convince yourself of it. Still, Havamal 38; it's a dangerous time, and it is not unwise to keep your weapons handy.
I agree with you, Grim. I've seen enough bloody broken bodies to last me a lifetime and then some.
It is good, though, to understand what's really going on. We didn't back them into a corner; they invented the situation they think authorizes their violence. If we start there, maybe we can figure out a way to talk them out of their corner and let them see life can go on even if they don't get everything they want.
On the other hand, if we are satisfied by warning ourselves not to back people into corners, we've missed the reality of our situation.
Yes, at some point there needs to be a conversation on what really would be an acceptable compromise; and that may not come until after Christopher's suggested tipping point that the violence no longer seems to be working for them.
We also, though, have to think about what really would be acceptable. The obvious criteria that seem fair to me don't satisfy either side remotely: the one side wants not only to be able to suppress speech ("Your speech is violence"), but to be able to command it ("Call me ma'am!"). The other side seems to want to legislate this lifestyle out of existence, which really is the kind of threat people will kill over (indeed, it is parallel to the Southern argument: an attempt to use the force of the Federal government to destroy everything they cared about by eliminating their way of life).
I feel like we should protect children, allow the adults to do basically what they want, but stand firm on free speech: you are free to ask people to call you by your preferred pronouns and go along with the presentation of yourself as a man/woman, but you can't command them to do so or punish them for not doing so.
Yet that's not a compromise either side will currently consider.
The other side seems to want to legislate this lifestyle out of existence
As I see it, the other side wants to protect kids and keep biological men out of women's sports and restrooms. I haven't seen legislation that would go beyond that. Is there legislation that goes beyond that? Is anyone really trying to legislate that lifestyle out of existence?
A list of things I support that trans activists may find beyond the pale.
(1) No tax money for trans procedures.
(2) No requirement for any person or institution to go along with the view that a man is a woman or vice versa, whether in conversation, sports, bathroom access, or prison assignment.
(3) No trans procedures on minors.
(4) No proselytizing captive audiences of minors at public schools over parental objections.
(5) No immunity from crimes on the ground of trauma from attitudes like (1)-(4).
Otherwise, it's your body, go for it.
I think if they just would have left the kids alone they'd have gotten most of the rest of what they wanted.
But the trans activists believe there are trans kids who need to be affirmed in their transgenderism and if they aren't they'll commit suicide. So, keeping trans activists from going after the kids is genocide.
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