a value i’ve always strived to uphold is intellectual charity. people i disagree with are good people like me. try to understand the circumstances and beliefs under which a good person might come to believe what they do. 1/

with age my eyesight has changed, my focal range has grown narrower and more brittle. something similar has happened to my capacity for intellectual charity. 2/

i do my best, of course, in arguments and conversations to behave charitably. but beyond the confines of a live conversation — in which the presence of a real human does encourage stretching toward mutual comprehension — i find myself more and more just quietly writing off political adversaries. 3/

these are just bad fucking people, i find myself thinking. 4/

i don’t take this as a positive development. i wonder how much of it is my increasing age, my decaying soul, and how much reflects the changing times. /fin