It's not the ideology, it's the ideas.
I don't care if you believe in God.
Not one bit. I know plenty of atheists who are morally upstanding and God fearing women who are morally bankrupt.
I don't care what political party you are a part of. I know people on all ends of the spectrum who are terrible. I know people on all ends of the spectrum that are great.
With the polarizing nature of how group thinking works, I worry more about the actions of your group than the identity of it. I don't care how you decide to label yourself: Leftist, Centrist, Right....(ist?)...I care about the ideas you present that come from that label.
It's not the ideology, it's the ideas.
Lately, there's been a rise of the Fake Centrist. What's a Fake Centrist you say?
We all know someone who is a Fake Centrist. Generally, they are a bigot who wants to hang with the cool kids of every group, but, never has the backbone to actually say what they believe.
Passive aggressively comments or likes divisive conversations because they "don't want to take a stand."
Fake Centrist are the bandwagon fans of politics and preach as if they are morally superior, despite not having the moral fortitude nor political consistency.
Faking reasonability and scolding bad ideas on "both sides" they tend to have a wet napkin where their spine should be. Think of a happy medium between Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, and Anthony Weiner, that's a Fake Centrist.
With the rise of the Fake Centrist, there's been a rise in the sometimes misplaced glorifying of the words of Sam Harris: The Fake Centrist Jesus(ironically). You can tell a Fake Centrist that listens to Sam Harris because he/she generally uses big words incorrectly that they heard on Sam's podcast.
I like Sam Harris. I think the idea behind his conversations are important and I applaud him for putting effort behind it. I find Sam Harris articulate, honest, and pure in his intent for wanting things to actually be better. His intellectual depth of knowledge and willingness to expand a breadth of different topics makes him an excellent podcast host.
I have plenty of criticism for how Sam Harris presses with inaccurate definitions that do more to polarize and push people apart instead of finding ears sympathetic to his arguments. For example, he over generalizes in terminology constantly when criticizing "The Left"(well, don't we all) instead of being specific and nuanced like he is with most political groups. He over extends the definition of the term "Political Correctness" to include when people are just factually incorrect, polarizing people who would agree with the core of what he says if he wasn't using common terminology with actual ignorant bigots. He misuses the term "Identity Politics" constantly and contextually convolutes the effects the society has on policy(Hint: All politics are Identity Politics). Calling "all Identity Politics poison" is an easy way to avoid the reality of how the world actually works for an ideologically pure logical world. These are problems I'm used to, while irritating, they normally don't get in the way of enlightening conversations.
My current gripe is with Sam Harris's most recent podcast and his comments on race and how misleading they are to his followers that think he's an intellectual giant.
Sam Harris's comfort zone isn't race. He normally avoids the topic, reasonably, and will occasionally make a high-level comment here and there when there are clear points of condemnation to point out. On his most recent podcast though, the first after the events in Charlottesville, Payless JC decided he'd chime in. It's now obvious why he doesn't chime in on race because Knockoff Middle Yahweh doesn't know what he's talking about.
Sam Harris most recent podcast was stupid.
I don't mean stupid in a "Two white can't comment on race because they're white" type of stupid. I mean objectively stupid. Ignorantly stupid. Blatantly hypocritical in the span of his own podcast stupid.
I'll ignore the bias he has towards Antifa and all of "The Left", even though you talk about context, distinction, and how important specifics are in this exact same podcast and completely ignore it.
I'll ignore that he framed this "White Identity Politics" as a backlash instead of an uprising. These people have always been around, black people have been telling other Americans for decades about the prevalence of these mindsets.
I'll even ignore that the guest he brought on Douglas Murray. A British Conservative who openly admits he doesn't know what he's talking about then proceeds with Sam to give stark condemnation of people trying to fight institutionalized racial problems.
Sam spent a considerable time today saying that the gripes in the Black Community(and in turn, the group Black Lives Matter) only exist because our parents went through problems(Jim Crow, Segregation) while dog whistling hard to white nationalist for a considerable amount of time about hypothetical disadvantaged states they are in.
This is naive. This is stupid. This is completely inaccurate. This is a dangerous thing to do. A majority of his followers take his word as gospel. He's an intellectual, he looked this up, right?
There is plenty of evidence, anecdotal and in depth studies that have been done, that show institutionalized discrimination against black people in our society. For example:
Drug arrest rates in spite of usage amount at the same/lower percentages.
Prison sentencing that's longer for the same crime for black people.
Identical Job applications though the ones with "Black sounding names" that get automatically filtered out.
Home loans for equally qualified black people that get higher interest rates because of their race.
Business loans for equally qualified black people that get denied because of their race.
I can keep going, the list is dishearteningly long. But, you get my point. This podcast was a hard miss.
His ideology is centrist traditional liberalism with a deep, methodical, fact based approach towards making a society that's better for all of us. Sounds great in theory.
The idea from that ideology is that Black Lives Matter is a cause without a reason and if only black people would get over the institutions that are actively discriminating against them we could move past all of this "identity politics" nonsense. This is a categorically stupid idea.
It's not the ideology, it's the ideas. Your mantra is worthless if your actions are ignorant.