Some of it, maybe, but my issue with this line of thought (and with the poem quoted by u/SoctaticMethod1 ) is that they both work from an assumption that the government picks its targets with a dartboard. That it oppresses for the sake of oppressing, that it has no favored classes or people with motivations steering the ship.
Sometimes, that may be true, but in this case, you have to remember that you’re applying it as “hey, black guy, you know those other black people telling you you’re noble, whites are evil, and they’re gonna take everything from whites and give it to you? Imagine if they turned on you!” (And you can substitute “gays/straights,” “trans/cis,” or any such pairing here). The argument that “it could be turned on you!” entirely misses the friend/enemy distinction. The goal is to give these powers to your friends to use against your enemies so that your enemies can’t create similar powers to use against you.
Truthfully, I find myself more aligned with the more authoritarian forms of the right for exactly this reason. I don’t agree with the normiecons and the lolberts going “but if we use the power of government against them, what if it turns on us?” That philosophy of surrendering power is exactly what got us where we are today, and I have no desire for my side’s end goal to be “take out the current crop of bad guys, set us back to 1990, and say ‘pretty please, ideology that ruthlessly infiltrates, subverts, and seizes power, don’t do that this time around!’” It is necessary to crush communism, and no moralizing poems about “what if the people that crush communism turn on you" will change my mind. Likewise for the black supremacists or the LGBT identitarians or whatever—it is necessary for them to seize power out of the hands of their opponents, they’ve been doing a bang up job of it thus far, and of course they aren’t going to say “but what if my enemies use this power against me,” because they are killing their enemies. Their enemies will be dead.
Some of it, maybe, but my issue with this line of thought (and with the poem quoted by u/SoctaticMethod1 ) is that they both work from an assumption that the government picks its targets with a dartboard. That it oppresses for the sake of oppressing, that it has no favored classes or people with motivations steering the ship.
Sometimes, that may be true, but in this case, you have to remember that you’re applying it as “hey, black guy, you know those other black people telling you you’re noble, whites are evil, and they’re gonna take everything from whites and give it to you? Imagine if they turned on you!” (And you can substitute “gays/straights,” “trans/cis,” or any such pairing here). The argument that “it could be turned on you!” entirely misses the friend/enemy distinction. The goal is to give these powers to your friends to use against your enemies so that your enemies can’t create similar powers to use against you.
Truthfully, I find myself more aligned with the more authoritarian forms of the right for exactly this reason. I don’t agree with the normiecons and the lolberts going “but if we use the power of government against them, what if it turns on us?” That philosophy of surrendering power is exactly what got us where we are today, and I have no desire for my side’s end goal to be “take out the current crop of bad guys, set us back to 1990, and say ‘pretty please, ideology that ruthlessly infiltrates, subverts, and seizes power, don’t do that this time around!’” It is necessary to crush communism, and no moralizing poems about “what if the people that crush communism” turn on you will change my mind. Likewise for the black supremacists or the LGBT identitarians or whatever—it is necessary for them to seize power out of the hands of their opponents, they’ve been doing a bang up job of it thus far, and of course they aren’t going to say “but what if my enemies use this power against me,” because they are killing their enemies. Their enemies will be dead.
Some of it, maybe, but my issue with this line of thought (and with the poem quoted by u/SoctaticMethod1 ) is that they both work from an assumption that the government picks its targets with a dartboard. That it oppresses for the sake of oppressing, that it has no favored classes or people with motivations steering the ship.
Sometimes, that may be true, but in this case, you have to remember that you’re applying it as “hey, black guy, you know those other black people telling you you’re noble, whites are evil, and they’re gonna take everything free whites and give it to you? Imagine if they turned on you!” (And you can substitute “gays/straights,” “trans/cis,” or any such pairing here). The argument that “it could be turned on you!” entirely misses the friend/enemy distinction. The goal is to give these powers to your friends to use against your enemies so that your enemies can’t create similar powers to use against you.
Truthfully, I find myself more aligned with the more authoritarian forms of the right for exactly this reason. I don’t agree with the normiecons and the lolberts going “but if we use the power of government against them, what if it turns on us?” That philosophy of surrendering power is exactly what got us where we are today, and I have no desire for my side’s end goal to be “take out the current crop of bad guys, set us back to 1990, and say ‘pretty please, ideology that ruthlessness infiltrates, subverts, and seizes power, don’t do that this time around!’” It is necessary to crush communism, and no moralizing poems about “what if the people that crush communism” turn on you will change my mind. Likewise for the black supremacists or the LGBT identitarians or whatever—it is necessary for them to seize power out of the hands of their opponents, they’ve been doing a bang up job of it thus far, and of course they aren’t going to say “but what if my enemies use this power against me,” because they are killing their enemies. Their enemies will be dead.