Thing is, it kind of informs the entire piece. I don't think that the author's thinking is fully crystallized. I think that it's based on "vibes," and political digressions are a part of that.
Ultimately, the author is reacting to what he's hearing on BlueSky, which is a left-wing-coded sort of echo chamber:
> This essay was in part triggered by a bizarre opinion I saw re-tweeted on Bluesky, asserting that the very act of world-building is "fascistic":
> "I view worldbuilding as fairly fascist tbqh. Refusing to allow spaces for the reader's imagination to flourish. Removing the part of the contract between writer and reader that is communal and shared. Grabbing them by the hand as you try and map out a land that does not exist."
He knows that it's a bizarre opinion, and yet he feels compelled to generalize from it.
I think that it's such a strange and uncommon -- truly bizarre -- opinion that it must not be generalized from. Then, I suppose, there'd be no essay -- but it contained few or no true insights, so that's okay.
>Ultimately, the author is reacting to what he's hearing on BlueSky, which is a left-wing-coded sort of echo chamber:
Sure, but I don't understand why that requires him to ramble about anti-vaxxers, some weird political stunts by RFK Jr. that I never previously heard about, or how various billionaire's pet projects are somehow dystopian (the linked article there is even worse). It certainly doesn't require him to use the phrase "inexplicable, unprecedented, intrusion from the Taliban dimension" to describe and validate a plausible take on the political strategy of the Republican party in the USA.
And then at the end he seems almost unaware that the "pale, male and stale" catchphrase is intended as an insult. The whole thing reads to me like a smorgasbord of political signalling. It's as if he's afraid that fen who come up with arguments like the quoted one will try to paint him as a fascist otherwise.
If you're dealing with a commonplace, non-"bizarre" opinion or characteristic, generalize all you like.
If you're dealing with a batshit insane, self-evidently "bizarre" take -- made by somebody terminally online in what is well-known to be an echo chamber -- then it's the height of folly to generalize from it. I'm completely sure that < 0.01% of the reading public shares that weird opinion, so why write about it as though it's indicative of a normal viewpoint or coming trend? That is the height of folly.
Ultimately, the author is reacting to what he's hearing on BlueSky, which is a left-wing-coded sort of echo chamber:
> This essay was in part triggered by a bizarre opinion I saw re-tweeted on Bluesky, asserting that the very act of world-building is "fascistic":
> "I view worldbuilding as fairly fascist tbqh. Refusing to allow spaces for the reader's imagination to flourish. Removing the part of the contract between writer and reader that is communal and shared. Grabbing them by the hand as you try and map out a land that does not exist."
He knows that it's a bizarre opinion, and yet he feels compelled to generalize from it.
I think that it's such a strange and uncommon -- truly bizarre -- opinion that it must not be generalized from. Then, I suppose, there'd be no essay -- but it contained few or no true insights, so that's okay.