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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

One more point on this.

I'm watching Coco Gauff and Muchova in the US Open semifinals yesterday. Great match. Both playing their asses off, and a wonderful ending where a 19 year old, first teenager a long time, makes it to the finals.

But while Gauff is on an early roll, a pack of protestors start screaming, shutting down play for 15 minutes, potentially imperiling the hot streak Gauff had been enjoying in the match.

Really? Is that how fucking nuts we've become? These miscreants are going to fuck with a couple players who've trained for years to get where they are just because these ostensibly aggrieved sorts feel so fucking deeply about something?

Yes. That is the case. People are so invested in their "causes," and so blindered to the annoyance they cause everyone else, that they Just Don't Give a Fuck about Gauff, Muchova, or the thousands of people (and if you've been to the Open, you know it's filled with lots of middle class and even working class folks who've paid a decent sum and traveled considerably to be there) in the stands.

This mentality can be written off as a few whackjobs doing what whackjobs do. But it's better described as what it is: Fundamentalism. These nuts (one of whom glued himself to the floor) are a microcosm of the types of anti-democratic zealots who are imperiling "democracy." They are so fucking sure -- so fucking sure -- that their cause is so important and their desires must be immediately met that they'll take almost any measure to push it forward.

They're on a continuum with MAGA and the extreme Progressives/Woke. Ask a MAGA person how he or she can support a clear authoritarian and they'll tell you some nonsense about how the US is imploding and will be communist if Biden is allowed another term. Utterly fucking unhinged. Ask a strident Progressive/Woke person how they can be so extreme, how they can deny facts, reality, biology, etc. to foist narratives of dubious credibility and demand bizarre policy fixes, and they'll tell you theirs is a cause that is so essential and so immediate that any and all means must be taken. And both will tell you it is totally fine to try to censor and shame into silence their opponents rather than debate them. And burn their books if that option is available.

These people are nuts - zero sum gamers, fundamentalists, as whacked as the fucking Taliban in their zeal.

And it is that organically demented mindset - the certainty that "I am right, and on the right side of history, and therefore entitled to be as mad a zealot as I like!" view - that threatens "democracy" more than anything else. As long as that persists, the middle cannot compromise. And no compromise by the middle? Well then, no functional government or society.

Funny that you don't even mention what they were protesting. It's a lot easier to both sides when you don't even attempt to grapple with the substance.