I have no doubt at all about the pervasiveness of racism and other bigotries in the UK (can’t speak for the USA at all). It isn’t a blind spot, it is just an unwillingness to accept the consensus approach and interpretation where I don’t agree with it. There would of course be no anti-pit-thread for the myriad times where I have accepted and agreed with the consensus.
The theme from the threads that you link to shows a consistency in my opinions and my thoughts.
Anyone who thinks they know what I think just from the titles you created, well I suggest they read what I wrote in those threads.
Because again, we see a continuation of a pattern. You yourself have choosen to title my views in a purposefully uncharitable way.
e.g. looking at your words, Anyone would think I was a Trump sympathist when nothing could be further from the truth.
Ultimately I dislike knee-jerk reactions, one-dimensional, polarised thinking and have a deep antipathy for identity politics. I’ll continue to speak out against those and pull people up on it when I see it happening.
I know it annoys people if I refuse to merely step into line, pay lip service to the accepted view take the path of least resistance but it isn’t done out of sheer contrariness for the hell of it. The pushback I get is probably down to what Freud called “the narcissism of small differences” that people you share 99% of a worldview with will be apopectic over that 1% in which you differ.
The Trump thread is a case in point. I can despise Trump and dispair of his supporters, hate his politics, wish he’d never been elected and hope for his incarceration (all of which I am on record for,including the very thread you link to) but the moment I suggest pouring scorn on all those who voted for him is not a helpful way to ensure he gets booted out? Knives are sharpened and, regardless of the wide areas of agreement, people assume that I don’t mean what I say.
Hey ho, it is disappointing but not unexpected and you just have to ride it out in the knowledge that you yourself are being as honest and consistent as possible. It is why I put huge stock on being quoted honestly and accurately because I either mean exactly what I write, no more, no less, or where I miss-spoke or I’m ambiguous, I have to withdraw it or put it right. Others are less swift to do so or fail to do so at all.
I make my living out of questioning the orthodox positions and assumptions of brutally smart people and it can be massively uncomfortable for all concerned but I do it really well.
I’m not smarter than them but I do get paid to consider alternative views, to challenge logical chains, to weed out woolly thinking and unsubstantiated claims, to push people into doing the same, to elaborate exactly why pretty much every conclusion that seems obvious is not as simple or as clear-cut as it seems.
They never are and it is precisely that fact that leads me to engage in the way I do.