03/13/2026
There’s an observation I keep having but feel unable to put into a piece of writing that is useful, about how conflicting groups use the same underlying psychological defenses and rhetorical strategies against each other.
The statements made from these strategies are not objectively measurable in any sense, and are not of themselves persuasive unless you’re already predisposed to be sympathetic to one side or adversarial toward the other.
There’s a whole bunch of examples that come to mind that feel like they’d be so incendiary that it would be hard to talk about them. But I’m thinking about how members of Iran’s government implied the anti-government protestors were paid actors and terrorists, and members of the US government condemned those words while simultaneously referring to anti-ICE protestors as paid actors and terrorists.
Where I notice it building in the US online social media circus is the way left-wing and right-wing memes increasingly depict the other side as wanting nothing more than their side’s destruction and imprisonment, which means their side needs to be aggressive and pre-empt that. It feels like a symptom of a collective choice to reject collaboration and civil debate and instead move increasingly toward war.
And, of course, depending on what camp you’re in, you’re more likely to see the other side’s calls for your destruction and say, “See? They’re evil!” And to ignore or minimize your own side’s calls for destruction.
When I get to this point of writing these thoughts out, I imagine the people who will come after me because their camp is clearly in the right, and also how can you truly measure what is right or just without planting your foot somewhere? And if we step way back and look at this, is it too removed to be useful to anyone?
I guess I don’t really know. To me it all seems like a memetic war that feeds real-life violence. And perhaps when war comes all one can do is choose one’s side.
So then I delete whatever I’ve written and try to focus on what is within my power.
