A thread on #BoycottMSNBC, the reality of fake news, and the self-defeating nature of the Left-Right political dynamic:

The liberal aversion to the term “fake news” is based entirely on the fact that Trump uses it. For some reason, our collective amnesia has deep-sixed the phrase’s origin, which was with *liberals* who pointed the finger at fake news as the fuel for Trump’s rise. Trump flipped it.

By adopting a phrase with broad applicability and making it radioactive to Left-wingers, Trump channeled the American Right’s ability to appropriate ideas, images, and institutions at will. The American Left, obsessed with purity, is afraid to contest occupied territory.

One would imagine that the natural and logical thing would be for the Left to simply appropriate it back. But now it’s tainted, and purity for the Left is its own reward, prized far above pragmatism, or even truth.

The logical thing for the Left to do with any Right-dominated institution or idea would be to openly contest it, or infiltrate it as the case may be. The Right does so all the time, and loudly announces their intentions. The Left’s response is to scold them during the Oscars.

Liberals have Hollywood and the Marxists have academia, but the Right has the military, the police, and the fossil fuel industry. You do the math: who has more bargaining power?

The Left-Right divide is a flywheel, in no small part because of the Left’s self-sabotaging moral psychology.

The irony is that the biggest shortcut to meaningful institutional change would be for more Leftists to become cops, commissioned officers, and bankers, to alchemize the system from within. Instead, they fantasize about revolution, pursue political pipe-dreams, and kick the can.

A notable exception among Leftists and liberals, having demonstrated a willingness to code-switch in conversation and openly contest ideas across the Left-Right divide, is @AndrewYang.

If you want to know why so many ardent Leftists hate @AndrewYang, it’s because he has the audacity to talk to people like @benshapiro and make arguments for Left-wing positions using language that a conservative audience can actually accept.

@AndrewYang places a much higher premium on results than on purity, without compromising the truth. He’s not infiltrating Right-wing spaces — he’s openly contesting them, saying that if you’re *really* a fiscal conservative, then you should back “socialist” ideas like UBI.

@AndrewYang is able to do this because he’s done his homework, having studied @JonHaidt’s work on moral psychology, as well as the complicated history of his favorite policies.

Yang understands that Freidman and MLK Jr. supporting UBI is not a contradiction, but an intersection of moral psychologies. Left and Right break down as soon as they are forced to interact in complex systems, and they balance each other like... yin and yang.

Our political system is dysfunctional in part because the Right is aggressive while the Left is defensive, and when the Left goes on the offensive it is often tactically impotent. Yang is the rare exception — he punched a hole through both bubbles at once.

Maybe, once this shakes out, @AndrewYang will do more than win the Presidency: he’ll help bring balance.

But that’s on us, too, #YangGang. Which is why #BoycottMSNBC was a smart move. We recognized that fake news is bipartisan. We can bridge the divide by criticizing both poles.

Sometimes you must first wound in order to heal. So getting aggressive, with a cool head, is important.

Let’s reclaim our institutions, our symbols, and our ideals for every American.

It’s not Left. It’s not Right. It’s Forward.