UW-Madison students call for removal of Lincoln statue

[The Magistrate]

99. Thank You, My Friend

One suspects the root of the problem is personality. In a country where it is not mainstream to identify as a person of the left (which for whatever the reasons may be is the case in the United States), people who do so are more likely to be persons to whom going against the crowd is a positive value. Yet politics is the art of assembling as large a crowd as possible, and success goes to whomever can assemble the largest crowd. This is something people who are proud they are 'not like everybody else' are unlikely to be good at. The thing can be learnt as a skill, when it does not come naturally, and people can observe what works and what does not and act accordingly. But many cannot temper their disdain for the specter of conformity sufficiently to do that, or even to see the need for doing it. They know they are different, and since they view being different as being better, then by rights it is they who ought to be followed, and if they are not, well, fiddlesticks to the poor herd....