Diary (August 22, 2020)

Online diary of Karl Jones for Saturday August 22, 2020.

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Diary

Be Above Jokes

I am too hard on others for my own good.

I am here in agreement with the goals, but I get ruthless about certain kinds of rhetoric and logic.

We, the liberals, the self-reflective, the progressive — we have to be above jokes.

Critically, we must be above malice. We must not indulge schadenfreude. (I'm not saying you are motivated by these qualities. These are the ideals.)

Even in a private chat group.

I often imagine: What would my enemy say about this? If I joke about doing thus-and-such to confound a Trumper, and word reaches Trumper websites, then my enemy announces "See how the Evil Libs secretly confound us!"

We are the Enlightenment. The less clear-minded we are, the less we do our work.

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Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles