Extreme Nonsense

Most extremes are unrealistic, nonsensical, dangerous or a combination of the aforementioned. There's a point when almost any idea, ideology or philosophy becomes too "pure." Oxygen is vital for our survival, but breathing pure oxygen will kill you; even in physical reality there can be too much of a good thing.

Freedom of speech is good, but we've seen time and time again that free speech fundamentalism swiftly becomes the right to insult, to be openly racist or bigoted. The far right neo-fascists who are banned from or demonetized on privately owned online platforms always whine about their First Amendment being taken away, when all they really want is the right to say the "n-word." And they can say that word in America; there are no laws against that. It's just that most online platforms have rather sensible house rules; I'd kick you out of my house as well. And the right to that kind of free speech doesn't protect you from the consequences of such hateful speech; you will be looked upon as an asshole, and be treated as such outside the (hopefully) small circle of your fellow racists and bigots.

True democracy with protection of the minority through an amendable constitution is a great thing. But that pure and true democracy isn't realistic. Not yet at least, as even with the assistance of all the modern technology available to us, it would be too cumbersome to have a vote on each and every single decision that has to be made. For now the representative democracy we have in most countries seems to be the best we can do. Of course the scales representation weigh down heavily to the side of the insanely rich upper classes, but that's not a problem with democracy, that's a problem with capitalism.

And there's the first and only idea or ideology that can't be pure enough: socialism. You see, we only speak in gradations of purity with regards to capitalism, with the social democracies of the Scandinavian countries the least pure, and the fever-dreams of anarcho-capitalists the most pure forms of that socio-economic framework. And even though social democracy is highly preferable, it's still capitalism and it still does nothing to remedy capitalism's built-in paradoxes, flaws and dangers. There's a reason why even the most progressive governments in the world will never look outside capitalism; it's because they want to preserve its built-in economical hierarchy. Sure, they're in favor of redistributing the wealth up to a point, but they'll never look for a system that would make redistributing wealth wholly unnecessary.

One of capitalism's greatest dangers is fascism. When its inherent tendency to accumulate the wealth into the hands of a few, when the gap between rich and poor becomes too big, which will always happen, the anger resulting from the inevitable discontent is all too easily directed at scapegoats who can't fight back. This happens in capitalism of the neoliberal kind, but also in the social democracies in Scandinavia. In the below linked video you'll find a discussion about how social democracy paved the way for fascism, a dangerous "extreme" ideology that's rising in so many western countries right now. The participants rightly point to the unwillingness of politicians and the people to look outside capitalism, to look for ways to break down its inherent hierarchical structures, as the main cause for this development. The explain how politicians can't truly serve the people in a capitalist framework, how that leads to deeply seeded distrust in politics and institutions, and how that results in support for fascist populists who promise to "drain the swamp." It;'s something I've discussed many times already, but this video brings another perspective than the usual condemnation of American politics you're used to get from me ;-)

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