Always Cursing the Referee
A few years back, Freddie de Boer called us the “Planet of Cops” : “I mean everyone — liberal, conservative, radical and reactionary. Blogger, activist, pundit, and writer, obviously, but also teacher, tailor, and candlestick maker. Cops, all of them. Cops everywhere.” Huh? A few examples will clarify: “The self-appointed Twitter police… People who want to scour test scores to get teachers fired are cops… Conservatives have always been cops, obviously…” And this is where we are currently: “You search and search for someone Bad doing Bad Things, finding ways to indict writers and artists and ordinary people for something, anything.” And then we have the inconsistencies in stances. What one side sees as all-too-human consistencies in their side is seen as hypocrisy by the other side: “In real life we’re all guards and prisoners at the same time. We are all informants on each other. Contemporary political culture is an autoimmune disorder.” de Boer wrote al...