Do We Really Need Krishan Patel?
And to what extent?
(For a free abridged audio version of this essay, please follow one of these links: Spotify, YouTube)
Introduction
In the same way that it's probably bad to threaten Matt Yglesias with violence, it would be wise for us to overlook Krishan Patel’s shortcomings as a bigot who mocks people’s mental illness: Matt Yglesias may be a bit too chummy with problematic people like Jesse Signal, but he also wrote One Billion Americans which is a pretty solid book that promotes more immigration. On that same theme, Krishan Patel has a deep-seated drive to dehumanize people he does not understand - but only if it doesn't contradict his strong desire to adhere to his party line. So, as long as we convince his party that certain groups deserve respect, we should be safe from the man.
Koreatown, Los Angeles, 2020-ish
When I first met him in person at a New Liberals meetup, I introduced myself as Standard.
Krishan: Standard! What kind of name is that?
Me: Oh, it's a long story. Basically I have DID and this was the only name my personalities could agree on.
Krishan made it clear that he was skeptical about the existence of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), formerly called Multiple Personality Disorder. Of course, I’d already had some experience with winning people over on this, and I knew Krishan in particular could be won over by some well-placed appeals to authority. So, I ignored his snide, condescending remarks about being brain-poisoned by TikTok, and cheerfully rebutted-
Me: What? Come on, the DSM-V says it’s real.
But I’d already known that it wouldn't be the end of the conversation, because when people say, “DID isn't real,” they usually mean something like "You're weird, and I don't like that.”
That sentiment became the unstated theme of our short, challenging dialogue, reflected in the ever-growing disgust on Krishan’s face.
I took this all in stride with a smile, because:
I knew that plenty of liberals, even the Bernie voters, were skeptical and hostile towards the idea
I already knew how to respond
Once you've had one conversation with a skeptic, you've had them all. It quickly becomes mechanical, dispassionate, and routine. Pluralphobia uses a lot of the same arguments as transphobia, so all I had to do was remember the rebuttals for transphobia, and slightly tweak them! So I turned on my Whitespeak-
Krishan: You function too well, you're too smart to have it! I've seen your tweets.
Me: Yeah, it took a long time for us to work out a way to coexist peacefully - you should've seen me in childhood.
Krishan: Oh, so it’s just a coincidence that you have it just when it was getting popular on TikTok?
Me: Well, I saw it getting more accepted so I figured it was safe to come out of the closet.
Krishan: This is way too rare for you to just have it! What are the odds?
Me: Have you ever heard of Bayes’ Theorem?
Once he ran out of lines, he ordered an Uber to attend a comedy set by Sarah Silverman. But before he left the New Liberals meetup, he shook my hand seven times—one for each personality that was in my mind at the time.
I originally took that as a socially awkward but good-hearted attempt to say, "I don’t fully understand it, but I don’t have to in order to support you and believe you.” Of course, that was a mistake.
June 19, 2024
Even setting aside the remorseless misgendering1 from Krishan, it really hurt to see our USC graduate publicly mock and bully me for me for my condition.
Of course, enough time had passed for Krishan to forget that he once denied my DID on the basis of my high functioning. This allowed him to blissfully, and effortlessly flip to using my condition to support the case for my retardation.
And from what he wrote, it seems like he never intended to communicate respect when he shook my hand multiple times. Instead, it was just subtle mockery that he kept in his back pocket until he had the chance to publicize it.
The Soldier You See
Back at the meeting in 2019, the then-head of the Los Angeles chapter and I were talking about immigration policy, and we eventually came to open borders.
Krishan, to put it lightly, was against the whole "stupid idea."
Me: But the case—
Krishan: It’s never going to pass!
Head: Aside from feasibility, there's a pretty strong—
Krishan: Nope you're wrong, I don’t care.
I chalked his abrasiveness up to some autism that was rooted in good-faith, and didn't resent him for it. People were and still are forgiving of my forgetfulness because of my DID, and as a person on the autism spectrum, I could relate to coming off as more mean as intended. “Maybe he,” I thought, “was just trying to say that he only wanted to talk about feasible stuff.”
I considered Krishan to be neurodivergent but fundamentally kind for all these years in spite of all the red flags. Like when he referred to furries as "degenerates" and strongly implied they were subhuman scum, and still continued to take anti-furry jabs at various people even after “apologizing.* Or when he defended himself with the classic, “I'm friends with one of them!” line. When he espoused strong anti- japanese porn views, I foolishly thought he was sensible enough to separate his disgust response from his ethical stances.
Other doubts did start creeping in, of course. For one thing, he never seemed to express any opinions that his immediate circle would consider controversial. Most people have opinions all over the political spectrum that average out to some point on the left or right, but Krishan’s opinions seemed carefully tuned, crafted, and censored to appeal to a particular place on the line: the center-left.
So a question began to formulate in the back of my mind: “Is he just going along with whatever his friends think? Is that why he never says anything new, and instead just re-words ideas from other people?”
“Is… is he consciously doing this?”
The Soldier We’ll Love
Because of what I've seen, and in spite of the fact that a handful of my friends have told me that they don't like Krishan either, I trust that he will come around to accepting that DID is real, that he was wrong to call me a delusional faker. I estimate it'll probably happen right after Pew reports that most Democrats think it's real, and right after I become respected by his close circle.
In time, Krishan will rise through the ranks of the political establishment, praised for his moderate, sensible ideas. Future historians may celebrate his willingness to change his views as society progresses. This much is likely, as he will spend his career carefully scrolling through pollings of Democratic voters, adjusting his opinions to whatever the lot of them say.
Luckily for us, we plurals can work with this arrangement. Some progress is being made with putting plural acceptance in the mainstream; once we convince enough people in these circles that plurality is real, the cause will be blessed with center-left coding and Krishan will adjust his language like a good, loyal follower.
He may be despicable towards any social justice2 that lies outside the comforting womb of the center-left, but he's still really good at fighting for the center-left. And in time, all his hate speech towards my people will be forgiven, because he'll be a senator voting for a bill that adds DID to the ADA's protected disabilities list.
The Soldier That Could Be
Of course, this is all contingent on the median voter getting better, not worse over time. We are not at the end of history, and the whims of destiny could make the average American much more bigoted and hateful, dragging Krishan along. We must keep in mind that this man is more of a double-edged sword than a person who thinks for themself - he has essentially chosen to emulate, channel, and promote whatever is believed by people slightly to the left of the average American.
For example: If World War III begins, and we fight some foreign government - a surge of xenophobia and jingoism will rise, leading to a popular policy involving some sort of internment of recent immigrants. Krishan would likely support throwing those barely-Americans into camps, but will have the grace to not use any slurs.
In Conclusion
Krishan Patel will never be a great man of history, leading the people. Instead, he will represent a big chunk of the people, no matter where they go. In a way, he is a perfect model of a politician in a Democratic system, because his mission, consciously or not, is to reflect the will of many people, however good or bad it may be.
Krishan Patel need not be hated or feared whenever he spews bigotry, because it is not him doing it. What he says is whatever the center-left believes, making him nothing more than a walking, breathing aggregation of some of the USian people’s opinions.
Krishan Patel, bless his heart, may be a hollow shell of a human being. But if things go right he could become our hollow shell of a human being.
And let's be clear, here: Krishan has still refused to refer to me as a she, even though he's since made a dozen-ish tweets about me! This is something he's doing on purpose! A warning to transgender women out there: he'll only use your pronouns if you pass his vibe check.
He lets himself make skull-measuring schizophrenia diagnoses about other minorities. Personally, avoiding this is not a difficult standard to hold myself to because I'm not an Uncle Wong.