All Togther

An old quote that I came across again recently...

“The left has lost its fucking mind, and you can quote me on that,” [Joseph] Uscinski[, a political science professor at the University of Miami and the co-author of the book American Conspiracy Theories] said. “They spent the last eight years chastising Republicans about being a bunch of conspiracy kooks, and they have become exactly what they swore they were not. The hypocrisy is thick and it’s disgusting.”

Ummm... did I miss the part where literally the whole of the American Left got up and said that, to a person, they didn't believe in conspiracies? Personally, I'm of the opinion that anyone who claimed that no self-identified Leftists in the United States believe in conspiracies is an idiot, not a hypocrite. Of course, I understand that what's really being alleged here is institutional hypocrisy, but give me any group of people larger than a beach volleyball team and I'll be able to find something that one of them says that doesn't comport with what another of them does. Someone pointing out that members of another group engage in bad behavior (or dubious thought) when members of their own group do the same is not hypocritical in and of itself.

And it's also the invocation of the mysterious "they." That nameless, faceless group of people who become stand-ins for entire demographics. Which is what makes them useful. Professor Uscinski doesn't have to point any specific individuals or even groups of people who have gone from chastising Republicans for their conspiracies to harboring their own - he simply has to claim that "they" are hypocrites, and QED.