Guest post: The lone, tiny island of common ground
Originally a comment by Artymorty on Then he announced an Australian DOGE.
I think a lot of people were dabbling in conservatism because they’d been alienated by the left’s creeping dogmatism. But with Trump 2.0 everybody realized no matter how badly the left had been tainted by extremism — and all of us in the gender trenches have the scars to prove just how bad it got — the right is dangerous, too, so much so that it’s become an existential threat to democracy.
I’m furious at the Liberal party. I’m furious at the CBC. I’m furious at pretty much all of Canada’s progressive apparatus. But I’d rather work to repair it than to see the conservative apparatus take over. Every time I read the right-wing National Post I’m reminded I’d rather see the CBC overhauled than dismantled. Every time I hear what the Tories or the People’s Party have to say on just about any issue besides gender extremism, I’m reminded that gender is the lone, tiny island of common ground between me and them, and the rest is a vast ocean of get-the-fuck-outta-here-with-your-backwards-bullshit.
Some stubborn optimism still lingers in me that Trump 2.0 will flame out soon and spectacularly — and in the aftermath the left will do some soul searching and come back to its principles.
I will give Rome Nero and when he is done with Rome, Rome will be done with emperors altogether. It will be bad, exceedingly bad… worse even than Caligula but they have to have the whole terrible truth about just how bad it can be before they come to their senses. Let all of the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out.
— Robert Graves, I Claudius.
Claudius was tragically wrong: Nero was indeed a disaster, but instead of spurring reform or a return to republican values, Rome simply continued deeper into autocracy. The imperial system adapted, survived, and endured for centuries after — often brutal; never democratic.
Claudius’s grim, utilitarian gamble was rooted in the belief that Rome still had a moral centre that could be shocked back into balance. History proved otherwise. Now the US has its Nero, and it’s facing the same test.
Seeing how high the stakes have gotten, Canada and Australia smartly decided not to take the bet.
It’s probably always difficult to remove despotic rulers without violence. Perhaps impossible. After all, they get their power by being utterly ruthless against the population, most of whom are decent people who don’t have the disposition to stand up to anyone. Most people aren’t enamoured of violence. Most people believe that personally killing a dictator is morally worse than standing by and letting the dictator kill millions.
I don’t think you’re even on common ground with the right on gender. They don’t want to abolish gender roles, they just want every girl and woman to stay strictly within their roles. So even though superficially you and they agree that sex can’t change, the conclusions they draw from that fact are worlds apart.
It’s like saying they agree with you on the effects of gravity, but they want to push you off the cliff and you are not so keen on that idea.
WaM, not only that, but they want to shove gay people back into the closet. They wouldn’t mind forcing all those gay men to marry the women they are shoving back into the kitchen. Serves both right for being uppity.
Good point. The gop here in Virginia is going through a crisis right now because the only candidate they have for Lt. Governor this year, who is otherwise a fire-breathing MAGA type, happens to be openly gay. Gov. Trumpkin is trying to push him out, but he won’t go, and they don’t have anyone to replace him anyway.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/05/04/virginia-youngkin-gop-gay-reid/
I think we can see the two problematic views as converses:
A. Gender naturally stems from an individual’s intrinsic sex
B. Sex naturally stems from an individual’s intrinsic gender
Both of these are of course deeply wrong. However, although it draws harmful and erroneous conclusions from it, view A does correctly grasp that individuals are sexed. And that’s the common ground. View B has no comparable merit in itself.
But then, we must remember that view B spawned in response to view A. So B does get something right in that it is no longer A and does not make the same error as A. In this respect, I do have a bit of common ground with view B, too.