The only writing I consistently like from Erik Loomis is his series on American graves, where he visits the graves of notable people and writes biographical sketches of them. Today he did Eldridge Cleaver.
In the bio, Loomis notes the various horrors that Cleaver perpetrated in his life, while lauding his leftist critiques of White Capitalist America. For instance, he blames Cleaver's youthful rapes and other violence on the racist structure of America. Except...that racist structure was present for every young Black man in America and they didn't all become rapists. Look, structural racism produces all sorts of horrible side effects, but to blame Cleaver's monstrousness on racism is to ignore that Cleaver himself was a monster.
Loomis notes that Cleaver "went off the rails" late in life becoming a Moonie, a Mormon and then a Republican. It seems to me that this sort of "horseshoe" movement from far left to right is fairly common. I would wager it's fairly common for two reasons. One is a sort of person who wants to see the world burns and doesn't care if their lawn chair is to the right or the left.
The other is that for people like Cleaver, leftist politics isn't a conviction, it's a pose. It takes his snarling hatred and gives it a sheen of political respectability. It was convenient (and probably kept him out of the jail cell that he belonged in), and once that convenience was unnecessary, so was the politics.
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