Why I (Think I) Didn’t Go Crazy

"This side is being mean to me, so I'm gonna go over there" is neither logical nor wise

I’ve made the mistake of engaging in a bunch of nonproductive Twitter interactions with folks who are quite far to my right in the last few months, and one common refrain I hear is that it’s ridiculous I still “side with” the left given that “they” were mean to me, “canceled” me, occasionally threatened to kill me, etc. (I’m going to use the term canceled throughout this post to reference high-profile instances of public shamings over someone’s behavior or views. I know it’s not a perfect term and is sometimes weaponized.)

I find it surprising that anyone would make this argument given the very obvious problems with it.

The basic idea appears to be that I should be repelled by what I’ve seen on the left, and that therefore I should be on the right. I know that this is the basic idea because I most commonly hear this line when I criticize Donald Trump or Elon Musk. That is, the interlocutor is surprised (or, more often I think, feigning surprise) to see me criticizing conservatives given my own unpleasant experiences with folks on the left.

Like an increasing number of problems in our fallen world, this belief is partly the result of being too online. If a significant chunk of your day is given over to partisan Twitter warfare, you’re likely to be exposed to a disproportionate chunk of the other side’s nastiest and most deranged people. So I’m really skeptical of any sweeping statement about “the left” or “progressives” or even “Democrats.” These are all heterogeneous groups, and they all overwhelmingly consist of people who are neither online nor super angry about politics. Online, you’re seeing a very specifically selected-for subset of people who want to be performatively angry — this does not reflect the average person or voter. This shouldn’t even need saying in 2025.

Another error people make when it comes to figuring out post-“cancellation” life (their own or others’) is to assume that the grass is greener elsewhere. Surely it is — at first. If you are the subject of an even mildly visible cancellation campaign, folks on the other side will reach out to you to express their condolences and to sometimes gently (or not so gently) suggest you be a bit more open-minded about their own side’s political project. That’s especially true for intraleft cancellations, which often culminate in a lot of outreach to the victim from the right.

I’ve posted this cartoon before but I think it captures something very real, even if the guy on the left already comes across as a bit of a relic (whereas the guy on the right is up for an undersecretary position in the State Department I KID I KID).

In my own experiences, the right is much more willing to greet potential new acolytes warmly in an attempt to bring them into the fold. That can be seductive to the victims of recent cancellations, especially if the cancellation cost them large chunks of their social and/or professional networks, which can be a genuinely traumatizing experience. (I know people overuse the term traumatize but close your eyes and imagine a world in which overnight, even a quarter of the people you usually interact with socially or professionally now refused to touch you with a ten-foot pole, and some of them had taken to social media to publicly denounce you. This would be traumatizing!)