Vulnerability is, to some degree, a choice

I can’t find it now but several days ago I received an email from an organization I have a peripheral relation to that they are committed to “protect[ing] their vulnerable population.”  Protecting people is good but “vulnerable” didn’t sit well with me.  One of my goals in life is to avoid being vulnerable.  You and I may have limited ability to affect whether we’re marginalized but vulnerability is, to some degree, within our control.  If a bully punches you, gouge him in the eyes.  Impress upon him that his aggression will cost him.

I write this in the context of the Democratic Party having inflicted no meaningful damage on Trump for his lawlessness.  That’s not recent.  It goes back to his first term.  People have let Trump skate all his life.  He’ll continue until he’s forcibly stopped.

The criminal interview:

This is where the criminal decides if you are safe to attack.

Yes, with all violence, the assailant’s safety is a critical factor in deciding whether or not to attack…

“Can I get away with it?” is a major motivation for what people decide to do — or not do. Hence, the interview.

This is one interview you want to fail. If you fail, the assailant decides that he cannot successfully, or easily, attack you. Then if he is a criminal, he will proceed to seek easier prey.

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Identity Politics

As much as left-wing identity politics are counterproductive and annoying, right-wing identity politics are vile.  Trump and co are right-wing identity politics 24/7/365.

Michael Ignatieff, I was born liberal. The ‘adults in the room’ still have a lot to learn:

By the late 1990s, the conservatives began to gain power by playing to the resentments of the ignored. The authoritarian right, especially, understood that it could build an entire politics on mocking the blindness of the liberal elite. It didn’t need solutions; stoking the rage was enough. We are now the embattled object of that rage. What will it take to earn the trust of those whose discontent we ignored? Liberalism in the next generation will need to save social solidarity from the “creative destruction” of the market by rebuilding the fiscal capacity of the liberal state and investing in the public goods that underpin a common life for all. Saying this, at a high level of generality, is easy enough: The tougher part will be finding the language and the cunning to convert a radical liberalism into a politics that wins elections and a governing strategy that pushes change through the veto-rich thicket of interests waiting to derail our best-laid plans.