Comment by bsder
8 days ago
Martin Luther King was pretty clear what he thought of "the middle":
> I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice
I think holding political opinions on the basis of what a famous (historical) person feels about them is sort of the thing being criticized here.
Sounds like a kind of dumb thing to criticize, then. Picking the side of Martin Luther King Jr. on civil rights is…uh…kind of a difficult position to argue against.
Yet, huge swaths of the US electorate to this day oppose Martin Luther King Jr.'s goals, message, methods, and outcomes.
It's an example of when "not being tribal" is wrong, because one side wanted to keep denying civil rights to a group of people. The correct side was to protest and put pressure on the system. Take the war in Ukraine. There isn't a middle ground between resisting Russian aggression for Ukrainians and fighting back. You either resist, or you get conquered. Not all issues and situations have some happy middle ground where both sides are equal parts wrong/right.
you can be "not tribal" and still protest/put pressure on the system, has nothing to do with being moderate
tribalism refers to how you get your beliefs, not what you do with them
yep, this is the "intentional" moderate which I also classify as tribal
distinctly different from the "accidental" moderate who could harbor indignation against racial prejudice as one of their views
https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
The person receiving the pointy end of a spear doesn't much care whether you explicitly chose to stab him or whether you stabbed him because you are following your tribe.
the difference is the person stabbing of their own independent accord can be convinced to stop
the tribe-following stabber cannot