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SYMBOLIC_ACTION

                                             January  29, 2015
                                             February 27, 2026


I've been known to sometimes take a line like:

   The left has a tendency to obsess about symbolic issues
   because the real one's are so hard to address.

That's a nice dig, and it expresses well how I feel on occasion,
but it oversimplifies, of course.

  With human beings it's hard to know what will work.
  Even when activists do something that seems silly
  and pointless, if it gets people debating whether
  it's silly and pointless, and that means that maybe
  it wasn't. They wanted to engage your attention and
  they did, so that means that they've won that round.

  But then it's also possible to make moves that really
  do strike almost everyone as so silly that it discredits
  a side. If anyone who wants to can use that as an excuse
  to ignore the side, then winning that first round might
  make it harder to win others.


       The left frequently tries to manipulate
       culture by arguing about naming, by
       inventing new language rules-- literally        Reversing the
       symbolic issues.                                polarity on
                                                       Sapir-Whorf.
       They then proceed to act as thought
       there is *no difference* between                      WHORF_THREE
       they symbolic and the actual.
                                                             BABEL-17
           E.g. if you use language that they've
           decided is sexist, then you are sexist,
           and arguing that you hadn't heard that
           it's supposed to be sexist or that you
           don't agree that this particular
           construction is that bad or anything
           else like that simply confirms the case.

           This fanaticism about small points
           can be seized on and used to discredit--

               A continual annoyance with me is every
               attempt at internal criticism on these
               cases gets adopted by the right who          CORRECT
               run with it hard in all directions
               until the issues is unrecognizeable.         ORIGINALPC

                                                            VIRTUE_SIGNALLING

   But then, while you can find examples of
   the left being hypersensitive, it's also
   not hard to find cases where the right
   tries to apply that complaint to defend
   the indefensible.

       Complaints about symbolic attacks
       that become another symbolic attack.

          And around we go.

            Perceptions

            Symbol and substance

            "Symbolic meaning" vs some "true meaning"?

            New usage vs established usage.

            Tools for change vs actual change


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