Mirrored Madnesses, or--Both Houses, Plague On

"...sometimes I can think six impossible things before breakfast."

One of the more prevalent ironies in most political debates is the fact that a categorical position often lays the seeds of its own contrary argument. 

Sometimes this is due to the simultaneous pursuit of contrary aims.  Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry illustrated this last year, explaining that "stop-and-frisk" put liberals in a "moral bind" because it presented an opportunity to advance their vision of a "gun-free polity" through a means they "revile" as "comprehensively wrong".  

[I personally AM for stop-and-frisk; I think a gun-free polity; especially anywhere in the US, is well-nigh impossible [nor truly desirable], but I hold other positions vis-a-vis registration and restrictions that lead NRAniks and other categorical absolutists to label me as an ammophobe.  C'est la vie.]

Other times, it occurs when two advocacy movements ostensibly on the same side of the political fence make a zero-sum claim to the mantle of their movement's authenticity.  This has been occurring on the conservative side for a while; even before David Brooks' piece about "Republican Incompetence" a few weeks ago where he decried notions or "revolutions" as the antithesis of everything conservatism is supposed to stand for, former W. staffers were decrying their former boss as traitorous to conservatism.  [This doesn't even consider the bandying of the term "RINO".]

Then there's the ultimate progressive brouhaha between the radical feminists and transgender activists about what defines a woman and why either side is [and isn't] in consonance with progressive principles.  [And all this was happening before and after the Jenner saga.]

Recently, the efficacy of so-called "conversion therapy" was called into serious question with the disbanding of one prominent "ex-gay" "ministry", the legal finding that one prominent "therapy" outfit engaged in consumer fraud, and the very public distancing of two religious organizations--one Southern Baptist, the other Orthodox Jewish--from the practitioners of said "therapy", if not decrying the possibility of said "therapy" ever having any efficacy.

[What actually makes the persistence of the idea even more borderline criminal is the possibility that there are reparative therapies for victims of abuse who might have developed unwanted inclinations as a result, it probably actually existed and was efficacious before the moral wingnuts and panicked relatives latched on to "conversion", and now it's going to be lumped into that category.  However, this time the burden of proof has to be upon the practitioners of the real therapies to distinguish themselves from the "converters"; the proposed bans should go through in all states, if not on a Federal level.]

However, while I am all for bans on "conversion" "therapy", I wonder if my erstwhile progressive "allies" would feel the same about transsexual operations [especially ones designated for minors!!!].  Yes, there are differences between all these scenarios, and I almost share the progressive vitriol for religious-influenced activity turning into a horror show [which is what specifically makes "conversion therapy" particularly galling, the base assumption being that it must work because G-d wouldn't allow anyone to be born irrevocably gay].  But at the very least, not only are pro[re?]gressives guilty of hypocrisy, but they are just as guilty of the same type of categorical thinking as their theocratic opponents.

I personally can't stand either.  But I think the theocratic right will claim me faster than the regressive left.

Such is the life of a self-hating conservative.