Maddy wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 7:55 am
What's most obvious to me:
(1) That there is a group of people who want to believe that there is a Garden of Eden in which every want can be fulfilled without any corresponding cost. These generally are NOT the people who live simple, low-impact lives. They want all of the perks of modern living, including $70,000 EVs, and the ability to "self actualize" free of the constraints of work, and are continually in search of a technology that will allow them to claim that their quest for the next and better gadget is somehow bettering the world.
(2) That these people generally have an overinflated view of their intellectual abilities and, as a result, do not think it at all officious for them to prescribe how other people should live.
(3) That these people have a curious inability to comprehend, and incorporate in their views, the concept of a pluralistic society. They tend to view those who do not agree with them as ignorant and/or unwilling to see the truth. This is the "identity trap" described by Harry Browne. Other people are seen either as clones of oneself or as people who SHOULD be clones of oneself.
Good thing you and me and all others here were not "loyalists" during Revolutionary War times!
"There were many reasons to remain loyal: devotion to king and Crown, business connections with the imperial bureaucracy, caution, apathy, and, sometimes, frustration with the excesses of the patriot masses. We must remember that no more than half the (white) colonists were outright patriots. Yet rebel crowds (or mobs, depending on your point of view) from that fraction took it upon themselves not just to protest but to take up arms, to engage in acts of violence, and, frankly, to enforce adherence to their own cause. This drew the ire of many a loyalist — or even neutral — observer. Consider a brilliant satire penned by New York loyalists in 1774 and titled “At a Meeting of the True Sons of Liberty.” The authors mock the patriot penchant for dramatic proclamations and list fifteen farcical “resolutions.” The fifteenth, and final, is instructive:
RESOLVED, lastly, that every Man, Woman, or Child, who doth not agree with our Sentiments, whether he, she, or they, understand them or not, is an Enemy to his Country, wheresoever he was born…and that he ought at least to be tarred and feathered, if not hanged, drawn and quartered; all Statutes, Laws and Ordinances whatsoever to the contrary notwithstanding.
The loyalists and the many fence-sitters — the latter group surely had sizable numbers — found the patriots exhausting and intrusive. Some took up arms for the British cause, others disseminated loyalist pamphlets, and many held their tongues until it was all over.
Often, neutrality or conscientious loyalism was seen by the patriots as unacceptable. With British regulars pinned down and concentrated by the mere existence of Washington’s Continental army, patriot militias policed allegiance to the rebellion in unoccupied towns and villages. It is not that there weren’t plenty of loyalists; it’s that the British always overestimated the number prepared to throw in their lot militarily with the fleeting, ever-on-the-move British army. By trying hard to raise such loyalist units, the British ended up fomenting a civil war, while lacking the troop numbers and mobility to back their colonial allies in the distant cities and hamlets."