one product of the ongoing attacks on the united states is that my political and ideological moderation have been reinforced. when i see that the attacks on the united states are being perpetrated by religious extremists(islamic and now right-wing christian), and when i see the distasteful responses from the extreme political right (it’s americas fault for being secular sinners)and the extreme political left (it’s americas fault for being america), it just makes me see the sanity and wisdom of political and ideological moderation.
i know that religious and ideological and political extremism can be attractive because they’re simplistic and dynamic, but they’re also erroneous and dangerous, as we’ve seen far too often in the last decade.
in my past i’ve been an extremist both politically and theologically, but as i’ve gotten older, and hopefully wiser, i’ve become much more moderate. and i know that ideological moderation is distasteful to a lot of people, for it lacks the aggressive dynamism of extremism, but it just seems to make more sense as well as being less dangerous. in years past i used to define myself as a marxist, conservative christian, extreme left-wing person. now i think i’d rather just define myself as a human being.
hopefully now i’m just a regular person interested more in wise and practical solutions to problems than in any specific ideological orientation.
i guess that, ideologically, at the end of the day i’d rather live in sweden than the sudan. i’d rather live in a town where the school board doesn’t ban books. i’d rather live in a place where tolerance and diversity are celebrated and seen as positive virtues. for i find that the people whom i respect and get along with tend to be open minded and quietly reasonable rather than closed minded and aggressively didactic. cos the actions and words from closed minded and aggressively didactic extremists over the last 5 weeks have really turned me off.
so, that’s it for now.
thanks for reading.
-moby