Something I've noticed about liberals (and when I say "liberals", I'm never talking about disciples of John Stuart Mill-- you know who I'm talking about) is their tendency to engage in fake bafflement. They regularly pretend not to know what their opponents are talking about, and this is done with a certain amount of theatre.
For instance, they'll ask question such as: "What even is cancel culture"? They express bemusement, and say things like: "How can such-and-such be complaining about cancel culture when he has his own radio show/newspaper column/podcast?". (They presumably wouldn't be impressed by an argument like: "How can this feminist complain about the glass ceiling when she's at the top of her profession?")
They'll talk about "woke" as if it's some elusive concept, one they have to struggle to even comprehend. I mean, what even is woke? Isn't it just good manners? Isn't it just using people's preferred language to talk about themselves? As though it didn't go far, far beyond that...
They will express similar bafflement about concepts such as masculinity, femininity, Englishness, Irishness, the war on Christmas, hateful rhetoric towards men, and so on.
In a similar way, they'll deliberately misundertand any conservative claim of social decline to be an assertion that such-and-such a time was a "golden age". Any evidence to the contrary immediately proves nothing has really changed and it's all in the conservative's imagination.
But I feel a bit stupid now, because after engaging in some research, I realise that lots of people have noticed this. Lots and lots of people. Lots and lots and lots of people. In fact, it's become a meme on the right. I didn't realize this, although I had heard one or two other people make the point in passing.
I may as well post this anyway.
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