Not a good enough reason
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. That’s an old saying, i.e. there’s no one author. Anyway is it true?
I don’t know. The most obvious answer is that it depends. Is the enemy of your enemy otherwise a fine upstanding person? Then by all means make friends with her. Is the enemy of your enemy a bad person who has never done a kind or generous thing in his life and is intent on destroying as much of the world as he can before he stops having a pulse? Then no, he’s not your friend, no matter how profoundly he hates your enemy.
There are some gc feminists who should be paying more attention to that distinction.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, but not in the way you might assume. To trans activists the real enemy is gender-critical feminists who correctly recognize that sex is a material reality that isn’t negated by gender, which matter with respect to sport and single sex services. TRAs are quite happy to have the likes of KJK praise conservatives who are against transgender ideology because they can then smear all left-leaning GCs with the same broad brush and marginalize them politically. There is no place in the Democratic Party for GC feminists as a result and that’s exactly what TRAs want, rather than admit that sometimes actual material sex matters.
What makes someone an enemy, especially in a more or less democratic political system? If someone agrees with you on 95% of the “issues”*, is the disagreement on the other 5% really enough to drive you into the other camp? What if it’s 70/30? 55/45?
And what if the other camp happens to be right about that one issue, but for the wrong reason? Are they really your friends?
John Oliver talked about this the week before the election. His point was that you can disagree vehemently with a candidate (Harris, in this context) on some, even many, issues, and still vote for them with the idea that you can then nudge them toward your views, while the other guy is intent on blowing up the system. Of course he was saying that in the context of Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon–he’s very much bought into the TRA narrative–but it’s a valid point when it comes to trans issues as well. A Harris administration wouldn’t have been great in that regard, but on rule of law, abortion, the environment, education, and just in general safeguarding what democracy we have she would have been so much better.
But that’s the problem with single-issue voters–they’re so wrapped up in the one issue that they forget to see the whole picture. I’ve never voted for a presidential candidate that I’ve been completely happy with, but I’ve always been convinced that overall I made the better choice, even if it was 55/45.
*I’ve never liked that term, but I can’t find a way to put into words what bothers me about it.
The saying never meant friend as in comrade. It means friend as in something potentially useful. The rain is your friend when you don’t want to play baseball today. This kind of friend can even be your enemy, like the virus that kills invading aliens.
Kara Dansky details her fruitless efforts to get Democratic lawmakers to understand this issue in her book “The Reckoning”. She is among the people who could not bring themselves to vote for Harris over the gender ideology issue, but I think she’s in the camp that didn’t vote in that race.
I can understand not voting. I can understand, a little bit, voting for Trump over this issue. I cannot for the life of me understand full-throated cheering and glee at the Trump victory. That bothers me a lot. How can anyone look at Trump, with his history and his campaign, and come to the conclusion, not that he might be “less bad” for women, but that he’d be positively great for women and we should be thrilled?
What of “my friend is the enemy of my enemy,” a quite frequent line of thinking? Mightn’t it lead to a perverse incentive to create enemies so as to make more friends?
It occurs to me that right-wing omniphobic religious zealots and pro-“gender identity” activists are codependent. A great part of the gender identity movement hinges on claims of oppression fueled by the far-right’s hatred, while of course there’s a certain sort of conservative pseudo-pundit who is overjoyed to enrage listeners by recounting the latest antics of men who pretend/believe to be women. They both use each other to cause infuriation and enable their respective doctrines to gain traction. I don’t know to which extent exactly that is the case, but the greater the worse: if sufficient, it means that pointless yet controversial positions will cause a movement to grow more than helpful but undramatic ones. In other words, it’s possible that there is a selection mechanism here that is causing both movements to steadily become more insane.
Mosnae # 5:
I think you have a point that the “omniphobic religious zealots” (like Matt Walsh) and the extremist gender activists (like the “Abolish the Family” writer Sophie Lewis) feed off each others’ activities. It does seem like there’s a “nuclear escalation” scenario at work here: as one side becomes more extreme, the other side ramps up its positions.
Gender-Critical Scientist Colin Wright has now endorsed Donald Trump:
https://x.com/SwipeWright/status/1854463035756122553#m
Sad to see a scientist supporting Mr. Ivermectin.
I haven’t trusted Wright since he cozied up to Moms for Liberty. He supports them and Trump . . . but Wright is an evolutionist??
I am so done with politics . . .
Well, let’s be exact here. He says he supports the statement, not that he supports Trump.
Ophelia – Wright has just posted another tweet where he declares support for both Donald Trump and Elon Musk:
Trump green-lighting @elonmusk to head DOGE is what pushed me over the edge to actively support Trump in the final weeks leading up to the election. Before that, I wasn’t going to vote at all.
https://x.com/SwipeWright/status/1856823200661065992#m
He then talks about “out of control” spending, and says the Trump Administration will be more likely to use money effectively.
So Wright does support Trump, and not just because of the gender stuff.
Fine, but the tweet you quoted in #7 wasn’t a general support of Trump, which is all I was saying. I like accuracy.
It seems to me like the least likely to use money efficiently is someone who could bankrupt a casino, has gold toilets, and likes showy, ostentatious displays.
As for Musk, he wants to destroy all government spending (though I doubt he intends to get rid of government subsidies that increase his own wealth). That is one thing that could earn him the ire of Congress – challenging their pet pork barrel projects, thereby potentially costing them the election next cycle.