{"id":73114,"date":"2026-01-26T01:00:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-26T06:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=73114"},"modified":"2026-01-25T10:53:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T15:53:06","slug":"qotd-twitter-isnt-life-its-far-more-important-than-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/01\/26\/qotd-twitter-isnt-life-its-far-more-important-than-that\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Twitter isn&#8217;t life &#8230; it&#8217;s <em>far<\/em> more important than that"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 25px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>[Progressives] did it in two stages. First, they convinced us that <em>process<\/em> and <em>outcome<\/em> are the same thing &#8230; and when the chips are down, process is <em>better<\/em> than outcome. Everyone knows the old saying &#8220;Those who can&#8217;t do, teach&#8221;. It was originally coined to make fun of this tendency, but look how that worked out. At the conceptual level, the Left wins because they make moral arguments, but at the practical level, how do they win?<\/p>\n<p>Because they <em>talk<\/em>. Constantly. They never, ever shut up. Most Leftists in my life \u2014 and in yours too, I guarantee \u2014 never <em>do<\/em> anything. We all know that the Left take zero interest in their communities. They don&#8217;t donate to charity. Let&#8217;s say one of those late April blizzards hits and their driveway is snowed in. While everyone else is breaking out the shovels one last time, the Leftist&#8217;s natural impulse is to jump on Twitter and start petitioning Congress for some giant, trillion-dollar snow removal bill. It has to have set-asides for Diversity quotas, of course, and isn&#8217;t the word &#8220;removal&#8221; triggering? And so forth, until the snow melts. Hey, problem solved!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m kidding, but I&#8217;m not joking. Leftists are <em>process<\/em> people par excellence. Even Stalin won that way, 99% of the time \u2014 even though he could have had the entire Politburo shot with a snap of his fingers, he got his way by grinding them down, meeting after meeting after endless meeting. Yes, eventually <em>someone<\/em> has to actually do something, but that someone isn&#8217;t going to be <em>them<\/em>; it&#8217;ll be some toady somewhere, who is only working as hard as he has to in order to get promoted up the totem pole, so that he&#8217;s the one in meeting after endless meeting, forever discussing, never doing.<\/p>\n<p>This reaches its apotheosis (apocolocyntosis!) in Twitter, and do you see what I mean? For the Left, tweeting about something is exactly the same as, if not better than, actually doing anything about it. Look around: we&#8217;re about to get into WWIII because of this. And speaking of missiles flying, we&#8217;ve all remarked on the Left&#8217;s signature &#8220;fire and forget&#8221; policy approach. To them, words are magic \u2014 healthcare, for instance, is now Affordable. How can it not be? It says &#8220;<em>Affordable Care Act<\/em>&#8220;, right there in the title! Don&#8217;t start in with your facts and figures, please \u2014 it&#8217;s Affordable, damn it! What part of &#8220;<em>Affordable Care Act<\/em>&#8221; don&#8217;t you understand?<\/p>\n<p>He who talks the loudest and longest, therefore, is the purest.<\/p>\n<p>Combine that with the second step for maximum effect: Emotional incontinence. Just as <em>talking<\/em> is the same as (better than!) <em>doing<\/em>, so <em>emotion<\/em> equals <em>competence<\/em>. She who <em>feeeeeeels<\/em> the strongest about an issue wins. This, too, has been obvious for a long time, so much so that Jonah Goldberg, of all people, had a good bit on it back when he was still somewhat convincingly playing a conservative. He joked about how stupid it was to be preoccupied with <em>caring<\/em> in practical life. Who would you rather have cut that tumor out, your best buddy \u2014 who really, really, <em>really<\/em> cares \u2014 or a brain surgeon? Even an utterly dispassionate one, to whom you are nothing more than a slab of meat?<\/p>\n<p>Again, and always: see Twitter. Maximum talk, maximum hysteria, always. I&#8217;m belaboring this because in our tabloid-culture society, the identification is complete: The all-talk hysteric is the brahmin; screaming about how much you <em>care<\/em> just IS morality. Never mind that your caring affects nothing in the best case scenario; worst case it ends up killing people (e.g. the Blue Checkmarks tweeting us into WWIII).<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <a href=\"https:\/\/foundingquestions.wordpress.com\/2022\/04\/17\/intro-to-the-way\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Intro to <em>The Way<\/em>&#8220;, <em>Founding Questions<\/em><\/a>, 2022-04-17.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Progressives] did it in two stages. First, they convinced us that process and outcome are the same thing &#8230; and when the chips are down, process is better than outcome. Everyone knows the old saying &#8220;Those who can&#8217;t do, teach&#8221;. It was originally coined to make fun of this tendency, but look how that worked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,41,13],"tags":[424,1020,1462,997,593,310],"class_list":["post-73114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-morality","tag-progressives","tag-severian","tag-socialjustice","tag-socialmedia","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-j1g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73114"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100537,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73114\/revisions\/100537"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}