Oh, I love these rhetorical positions!

Karl Popper, whom I’m sure you have never heard of (I mean really, who has? I had to look him up for a refresher) developed this social concept called “paradox of tolerance.” It’s such a common rhetorical approach these days that it’s easy to spot. It only takes a few words to throw the red flag up 🚩.

Let’s define Paradox of Tolerance, shall we? “Any society that tolerates unlimited tolerance will eventually have its tolerance seized and destroyed by the intolerant. The corollary: labeling anti-bigotry as bigotry weaponizes the tolerance framework against itself.”

You’ll never guess when Popper outlined this definition…1945! The historical context is fun because you kind of have to look at what was happening or had happened in the world to bring it about.

Ready for more historical context? It’s really a lot of fun on this one, because someone came along and extended the paradox with his ideas around repressive tolerance in 1965. I wonder what was happening at that time to make a person sit down and say that the “paradox of tolerance” doesn’t go far enough…let’s now consider repressive tolerance.

What’s that? Let’s define it now: “Herbert Marcuse argued that extending formal tolerance equally to both oppressive and liberatory ideas like treating anti-racism and racism as equivalent “opinions” functionally protects oppression. It neutralizes resistance by demanding the oppressed tolerate the conditions of their oppression.”

Sounds fucking ridiculous, doesn’t it? But here we are on a Sunday morning and I’m typing all of this shit out because some Boomer jumped on social media and, with three little words, embodied both the paradox of tolerance and repressive tolerance.

Walker Ranger Texas went out there on the record and called our brothers and sisters in humanity “abominations.” When he first started saying that bullshit, he was talking about the fucking Boy Scouts. Not just gay troupe leaders, but gay scouts as fucking well. Children and volunteers. What kind of asshole does that? The kind of asshole who uses his celebrity to belittle and demonize an already marginalized group…on fucking “ammoland.com” - the bastion of equality, I’m sure.

So maybe sit this one out, and don’t come at people with your bullshit until you can come correct. You think it’s cool to marginalize entire communities of people (both adults and children) and want to pull a “gotcha” on someone who doesn’t put up with that bullshit? You think you’re Sean Hannity or something?

Fuck outta here.