The Antisocial Socialist

You know, I don't think I'll ever be able to control my reaction when I knock on a door and get some person who rants about immigrants and Muslims. My heart starts racing and I have to struggle to argue rationally. I have all the facts at my disposal and on my side, but still, it's emotional in a way I can never predict.

I am looking in the eye of someone who, 75 years ago, would have sent me to a camp. That's what it is. And there's a lot of it. I don't know if you can argue someone out of beliefs like that. My politics may have changed over the years but never in my life would xenophobia have made sense. It's like we're coming from entirely different worlds. In mine, borders are an abstract and absurdist notion, the policy of stopping what you're doing and standing for the national anthem is akin to children playing musical chairs, and the control of the free movement of human beings one of the worst travesties imaginable. To them, the lines you are born within—no matter who you are, how much you struggle, how much you suffer—determines whether or not you are fit for life. Any attempt at communication between us is–well, have you read Peter Watts' Blindsight? It's like that.

I invariably get at least one per night out canvassing. Last night's took about half an hour of my time, and I couldn't get away because she wanted to rant to me about immigrants, welfare moms, and the superiority of McDonald's coffee over Timmy's and I just wanted to flee. I'm still pretty queasy over it tbh.

What has to happen to make a person like that? What has to not happen? I'm genuinely struggling to understand.

Do governments think loyalty oaths are effective? Is it some sort of holdover from when people thought that magic words had some sort of supernatural power?

If I were, uh, disloyal, I'd just lie, because magic words are meaningless, and because I'm being forced to do so. In fact, I implicitly lie about a magical song every morning.