“Well, you’re hurting people like me now, which is OK, but if things continue like this you’ll end up attacking people *you* currently like. And *then* where will we be?” https://twitter.com/metaauthor/status/1276081935664787456

Just as dystopias (wait is the plural of dystopia dystopiae?) on some level legitimise the status quo, slippery slope arguments and reductio ad absurdums (absurda?) more often than not merely reify the current situation as 'acceptable'; the new baseline. https://twitter.com/metaauthor/status/949775960953507841

And of course, we should expect that in times of decline the past should metastasise and become ever more unbearable in order to legitimise the present. https://twitter.com/metaauthor/status/1047461990141251584

For Butterfield, Whig historiography is necessarily the point of view adopted by the 'victors' of a period of history, while Tory historiography (often oversimplied as 'we are the lesser sons of greater sires') is the 'loser' narrative.

What is the Whig to do, therefore, when he finds his victory leaves 'the sedge wither'd from the lake, an' no birds sing'? It becomes necessary - psychologically necessary - to alter the written record of the past.