Matt Gurney had a discussion with one of his readers that left him shaking his head in disbelief:
I had an interaction today with a reader that's indicative of a lot of things that are wrong with our society and why we can't have nice things. A short (promise) thread.
The reader had read something I'd written a few months ago that was mildly critical of a conservative. +
— Matt Gurney (@mattgurney) June 5, 2020
The reader haughtily asked if I’d ever make such a criticism for a Liberal.
I said yes.
The reader didn’t believe me, and said, oh yeah, show me an example?
As it so happened, I actually had a column of mine open in another tab; I was referring back to it for research. +
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The column in question contained a perfect example of me saying a very comparable thing about a Liberal as I had about the Conservative. So I had, OK, here you go. Pasted the link and replied.And the reader replied right away. The reader was very confused.
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The reader had questions about how I could criticize both a Conservative and a Liberal. The reader asked about agendas — who had insisted I write one piece, and why had they then permitted me to write the other?I wrote both on my own initiative, I explained. +
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And I made criticisms of both gentlemen, the Conservative and the Liberal, because they’d both done things that pissed me off.The reader didn’t believe this was possible. There had to be another explanation, or an ulterior motive. +
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I eventually disengaged. But I’ve been thinking about that all day. There’s a grown-ass person in Canada, totally literate and presents very normally, who really struggled to understand that someone could be critical of both the left and right without being compromised.END
