Daniel Oppenheimer at Persuasion:
On May 18, 2022, Elon Musk posted to Twitter a declaration of divorce from the Democratic Party. “In the past,” he wrote, “I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party. But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican. Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold … 🍿”
This caught my attention because I’m a student of “Goodbye to All That” letters to the political left. These letters—or essays or books—were some of the key texts for my book Exit Right, which was a study of six prominent Americans who abandoned the left at various points in the 20th century. They were fascinating for what they revealed about their authors at a moment of peak intellectual and psychological stress, when their old identities were being sloughed off and new ones were taking shape.
The letters were fascinating, too, in their similarities across time.
More here.
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