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Does being a writer determine your politics?

 I get a newsletter from a Substacker who will remain nameless. "They" are progressive politically, but I have enjoyed and been moved by their writing.  They train others in writing as wel.  

The title of this week's is "How Writers Can Oppose Trump's Bad Policies."

Does this imply Biden had no bad policies?

Does this imply a writer can't support Donald Trump (not that I do, so much, but it seems to be an implication or assertion without support)? 

Does one have to be progressive in politics to be a good writer? Is anyone who supports Trump incapable of good writing? Does it diminish our humanity or creativity or something?

This writer, who is a naturalist and environmentalist, says that their goal is to make life better. I appreciate that. I can see how from their perspective there might be a massive, unbridgeable disconnect between support for Trump and a better ecology (that word is a clue to the writer's identity, to those who know Southern literature; that book is a masterpiece, by the way). 

Perhaps. Perhaps the issues are complicated, require nuance, require parsing such that we have to reject some things and not others, rather than embracing something wholesale without thought. 

I am reminded of something Walker Percy wrote to the liberals of his day. https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/04/walker-percy-and-abortion

“If I had anything to say to the liberals,” Percy told one interviewer, "it is that I agree with them on almost everything: their political and social causes, and the ACLU, God knows, the right to freedom of speech, to help the homeless, the poor, the minorities, God knows the blacks, the third world—their hearts are in the right place. It’s actually a mystery, a bafflement to me, how they cannot see the paradox of being in favor of these good things and yet not batting an eyelash when it comes to destroying unborn life."

As writers we should instead reserve the right to disagree and call out both sides when they abandon American citizens to terrorists, find no other good in the world than the extensive of abortion, and when they are narcissistic leaders who refuse to help an ally or when they nominate people for important positions with a view of misplaced loyalty over competence (this covers both sides, thank you). 

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