The Well Rounded Outcast

If you've read the earlier posts of this blog, you know I have radical tendencies in my politics. I'm that libertarian guy in pretty much any circle I'm a part of, the real thing, votes for third party candidates, engages in real activism and even ran for office one time.

And obviously my politics evolve over time. I fancied myself a Marxist for a minute or two in high school, though Hunter Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke soon blew away the competition. Marxist revolutions always suck for some reason, and Marxists always seem to think the problem is with leadership. If I were king, and king I will be, there shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny and so on and so forth. Which is a Shakespeare quote and that's what I came here to talk about.

Not Shakespeare per se, but the way I think. I think the reason my own radicalization has never been dangerous has a lot to do with the broad exposure to literature I stumbled into as a curious and precocious child.

Dad was a high school teacher who had, at some point, thouight he might aspire to doctoral endeavors, become an English professor. It's not what he was cut out for, he'd have probably been very happy and successful as an engineer. But he accumulated the books, I doubt he read half of them. I do the same thing, I hoard books, buying books with every intention of reading them along with the dozen others I haen't gotten to. I purged a lot of paperbacks in my divorce, but I come by my hoarder tendencies honestly, and I spent a lot of time in the stacks downstairs rather than being bullied out in the neighborhood.

And what a library it was! There was Steinbeck, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, etc., but there was also Trout Fishing in America and Robert DePugh's Blueprint for Victory. Before I was initiated into the Science Fiction Convention scene, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Roger Zelazny. I was describing my dad's library to the late Rich Nadler and he observed, "Your dad was kind of a head."

Which, I still laugh out loud at, literally. My dad is a lot of things, but a head is not on the list. I know he taught the Martian Chronicles to an English class, so I'm sure he read some Bradbury, but I'd be shocked if he could tell you who Philip K. Dick or Roger Zelazny eve are. I don't know why he had those books, but I think exposure to such a broad world of ideas fortified me against the worst dangers of radicalization.

Another example of how I'm That Guy, and I'm telling you, all the That Guys that you know are probably as susceptible to radicalization as me or Ted Kazinksi or whoever you want to pick who did something horribly consequential for ideological reasons. But susceptible to radicalization doesn't mean dangerous. Most of us are just obnoxious Sovereign Citizen types. Just bring up Orwell around me.

I love George Orwell, and not for the reasons you think. Because I've already identified myself as a libertarian or some sort, one would expect me to love how Animal Farm and 1984 critique socialism. Don't get me wrong, those books are great at exactly that, and I'm glad they teach those books in school but it's not enough Orwell for me.

Down and Out in Paris and London and Road to Wigan Pier should be taught as well. They are very, very different books from the two you're familiar with. My elevator pitch is this: If you think he hates socialism, wait til you get a load of Orwell on capitalism. Orwell was a committed socialist and you don't have to agree with him about that, but you should hear what he has to say.

Which is what makes us True Believers such a pain in the ass at parties. We actually study the opposing view. To be sure, we do it to armor ourselves for battle, know your enemy, all of that. That's why Charlie Kirk's death is a sobering thing to me. The cunt who shot him is one of us, of course, but so was Charlie. I identify with Charlie Kirk because while I've never been racisit the way he was, I've certainly been a less successful version of Charlie back when I worked for Rich Nadler in the right wing press. I think it's horrible that he was killed that way, I also think that Charlie himself would give the scene high marks for irony, he was in the act of running his mouth combatively on the subject of gun law when he was shot by an unhinged lunatic.

And that lunatic was probably just like me if I hadn't been exposed to so many philosophies and extreme ideologies in my dad's musty book hoard.

I lived next door to a hoarder who didn't lock their front door and had an arsenal of firearms ranging from black powder to high power rifles just lying around, and when I was eighteen I had romantic notions about the Irish Republican Army. But this is why my exposure to ideas kept me harmless, there was almost nothing I hadn't looked at from both sides by the time I was in adolescence. I might change my mind about where I land on an issue as I learn more things, gain nuance and understanding, but I know the broad outlines of why almost anybody is advocating anything.

I think that's also why it's important to push back on censorship. It does matter what ideas kids are exposed to in their libraries, but that's the reason to include more diverse viewpoints, not less.