BACK during the maddest depths of the War on Terror, the writer Norman Mailer described the fragility and hysteria of an all-powerful America as equivalent to mythical Adonis sniffing his own armpits every few minutes to reassure himself that he was still the most gorgeous man on Earth. Poor Adonis, you see, was so wracked with doubt, he needed to self-convince that even his worst failing – his rank body odour - rendered him irresistible to a goddess like Venus.

“What would we think,” Mailer asked, “of someone who’s seven foot tall, weighed 350 pounds, was all muscle, and had to be reassured all the time? We’d say ‘that fella’s a mess’.” As a democracy, he noted, America had to learn to take criticism, to acknowledge its mistakes. “It’s an obligation to improve all the time, not to stop and take bows and smell your armpits and say: ‘Ambrosia’!”

As someone who supports the notion of Scottish independence – while having little faith in the current blueprint or road map – to me, Mailer’s words apply to vast swathes of the Yes movement. The SNP is in power, but still the Yes movement inhabits a constant zone of victimisation. "Poor me," it endlessly cries.

Yet worse than this endless grievance addiction is the refusal and rage which greets any discussion of the failings of the Yes movement or the SNP. Like Adonis, even the rotten armpits of the Yes movement smell of peaches and cream. Nothing needs improved. Every criticism or word of advice is a "yoon plot". To critique, is to betray. Therein lie the seeds of destruction. How can the Yes movement ever hope to convince undecided voters, when the very questions those undecided voters understandably want answered are greeted with hostility and contempt?

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This depressing state of affairs came into sharp relief when I watched the reaction among many Yes voters to a lengthy interview I’d conducted with Professor James Mitchell from Edinburgh University, the nation’s leading political scientist.

Professor Mitchell’s critique of the SNP Government and the current positioning of the Yes movement was scathing. And rightly so. Any thinking person can see the SNP is a failing government. Of course, it’s not the Tories, but not being the Tories simply isn’t good enough. Likewise, the flaws in the prospectus for independence (what little prospectus there is) and Nicola Sturgeon’s "Alice in Wonderland" scheme to get Indyref2 are so big they’d accommodate an Edinburgh tram.

As a moderate independence supporter – someone not motivated by nationalism, flags or exceptionalism, but simply a desire for a more progressive society and a fear that Westminster is irredeemable – spending a few hours in the company of the professor was good for my brain. Like you, I hope, I find it important to test my world view as much as possible. If I think X, I want to ensure X stands up to scrutiny. So when someone who’s rather clever – like the professor – starts questioning X, then one of two things happen: I either find credible evidence to intelligently refute that questioning, or I discover there’s no defence, save raw faith and pointless ideology, and re-evaluate X. Either way, challenge, debate and reasoning make for a healthier mind, and a sounder set of principles.

Now, I agreed with much of the professors’s assessment, particularly his view that the SNP has become “fundamentalist” – a “mirror image” of the Conservative Party in terms of hardline nationalism. I also concur with his view that Brexit – and an inevitable border with England – makes the SNP’s current positioning on independence utterly flawed. Huge amounts of work must be done to bring the philosophy of independence up to date. Where I differ with the professor is in his optimism that Westminster can be reformed. I see no prospect of that – thus, my remaining support for independence … for now.

The response to Prof Mitchell from far too many Yes voters was hate, abuse and denial. He was sneered at for being “an expert”: proving his point that Yes hardliners are no better than Brexit hardliners. He was desperate for publicity, they said, a unionist ideologue. The same people who thanked me last week for making the point that when it comes to extremist political abuse there’s no difference between Yes and No voters, were denouncing me as – yip, you guessed it – a quisling for interviewing Prof Mitchell. As clearly, reporters, rather than trying to reflect the world as accurately as possible, champion the beliefs of everyone they interview.

One wonders what these Yes fundamentalists make of former SNP ministers like Alex Neil who made public his view that when it came to Mitchell’s thoughts: “Unfortunately too much of this is true”? Is Mr Neil a traitor too in the eyes of these folk, who do their campaigning behind a keyboard and with hate speech rather than handshakes?

If this fragility and rage were kept solely to social media, it would be bad enough. But with three-quarters of Scotland on social media already, Twitter now – sadly, horribly – matters. The paper wall between real life and cyber-life has long gone.

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So, let’s be blunt: if the Yes movement is so thin-skinned it cannot take criticism, nor find intelligent ways to respond to that criticism, then it’s game over. The project is done.

Clearly, there’s the same dogmatic idiocy in much of the unionist camp. Labour’s plan to never do a deal with the SNP is an evident example of ideology as brain damage. And yes, unionists have failed to come up with any alternative to either the status quo or independence, leaving Yes voters like me stuck between the scylla of Westminster and the charybdis of poorly planned and conceived independence.

But, for now, I remain an independence supporter, and so I’d like my "side" (a detestable phrase) to get its act together and win, in a way which creates a fairer and better society. The only way to do that is to improve. The only way to improve is to learn from valid criticism, and continually self-criticise. Sadly, experience warns that the dominant strain in the Yes movement simply won’t listen – because for the fragile, not listening is easier than the truth.

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