Long time readers will know that Kissinger has been a frequent target of this blog. For example, see:
et cetera
(...and that's not even counting all the times I've made little throwaway references to Kissinger over the years when I wanted to use him as an example of evil--like in my review of The Count of Monte Cristo, etc.)
Now, looking back at all these posts from the past 20 years, I do admit to some embarrassment about them. There was certainly a performative element to hating Kissinger. (It was a way of virtue signaling on the Left.) There was also an element of bandwagonism in my Kissinger hating. (The people I admired, Chomsky, Hitchens and Tom Tomorrow, all hated Kissinger, so I hated Kissinger.)
Now that I reflect back on my 20 years of blogging, I look back with embarrassment on posts that reflect virtue signaling, performative hating, and tribalism. In the future, I hope to do better.
...which is not to say that any of the awful things that Chomsky, Hitchens, Shawcross, etc. attributed to Kissinger are not true. I'm sure it's all true. It's just to say that I regret appropriating their anger for my own virtue signaling.
On a related note, see also:
1 comment:
...okay, maybe I'm being a little bit hard on myself. At the time I wrote all those posts, my emotions were genuine. It is through hindsight that I'm able to fully appreciate how influenced I was by others. I came through my opinions not through my own careful research of neutral sources, but through simply adapting the opinions of opinion leaders on the left.
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