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Civility Kills
P.J. O’Rourke’s 2004 tongue-in-cheek titled book Peace Kills lampooned American foreign policy saying “imperialism has never been so funny.” He took the reader globetrotting while pointing out what happens when America tries to have a war “without hurting anybody” (Kosovo). Visiting Egypt in the aftermath of 9/11 he said: “There is a question that less sophisticated Americans ask (and more sophisticated Americans would like to): Why are the people in the Middle East so crazy?” We laugh because it’s true. Fourteen years later, America’s war isn’t so much in far-flung regions with people calling us imperialists, but more so with our neighbors, coworkers, family, and friends. America is at war with itself.
For as long as I can remember I have followed politics and culture. For those who watch/listen to Whiskey Politics and wonder when I started interviewing, I picked up the microphone at the age of 10. After my strict cockney Father barked “Lights!” (the British version of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman’s “Light Out!”), I would count 30 Mississippi before reaching under my bed, fumbling around until finding my radio/cassette recorder, hitting play and record, and do my version of Cavett or Carson.
I had the best guests in my darkened bedroom, often moderating debates with Jimmy Carter and Anwar Sadat or Ayatollah Khomeini. Jeff Lynne would talk about ELO but an angry John Lennon kept butting in saying Lynne was stealing his sound. Ponch and Jon from CHiPs debated the best and worst parts of LA to patrol. The constant for me, I always played it down the middle. The straight man (boy) who kept the guest from going too far off-subject. Even as a preteen I valued civility. It’s something I have maintained in most areas of my life. But 40 years later, I am now second-guessing whether civility is our best approach.
The SCOTUS debacle wasn’t the first hint of us breaking at the seams. Our country’s political divide has always been there, but we usually saw the partisan vitriol stemming from the activists and special interests, not the politicians. Granted there are many historical examples when politicians threw mud, but they were outliers. The mainstream party would smack the offender, the media would question our undignified politics and then we would all go back to watching “Cheers” together.
This feels different.
November 8, 2016, was a pivot. We have grown men and women, activists, and politicians at the highest levels of power acting out with the ferocity of a screaming child so unhinged they can’t help but hyperventilate. Normal parents have the ability to put that child into a timeout and let them tire themselves into rational thinking. But our country no longer has normal parents on the Left. The leaders, who are supposed to be the adults in the room, are now promoting this behavior, which has led to violence.
Hillary Clinton is being celebrated (by 90 percent of the media) for instructing her flying monkeys to let the hate flow through you. “Democrats cannot be civil with Republicans,” she said (unless Republicans bow down to Democrats).
Eric (the only Attorney General to ever be held in contempt by Congress) Holder said, “Michelle [Obama] always says, ‘When they go low, we go high.’ No. No. When they go low, we kick them.”
This comes on the heels of a few weeks that were not just damaging for the players on stage (namely Justice Kavanaugh and Dr. Blasey Ford) but for our union. The Democrats decided to triple-down on obliterating Kavanaugh by utilizing vile and disgusting gutter politics, the likes most of us have never seen. Uncorroborated attacks on an accomplished family man would at least had the civil liberties advocates come out in droves screaming “due process!” but even the ACLU joined the sharia law-like mosh-pit and wanted to stone the accused.
Now let’s play a game:
Let’s say a Trump Bro sprayed bullets toward Democrat congressional reps at a softball game and a leading Democratic Congressman came within an inch of being killed.
Let’s say a Democrat Senator was physically attacked outside his home by a neighbor causing several serious injuries.
Let’s say Obama’s cabinet members and leading Democrat politicians were being shouted out of restaurants.
Let’s say the Democrat Senate leader was followed and shouted down at airports.
Let’s say an MSNBC morning news anchor was stalked and followed and shouted at by two men through New York City’s Starbucks and his subway ride home.
Let’s say Obama’s family members and officials faced constant death threats, enraged emails, and protestors screaming outside their private residences.
The game is simple: How would the media and Democrats (irm) respond to this?
Two years after the election that shocked the world, Hillary Clinton, her supporters and much of the media still refuse to accept the results. Michael Goodwin’s October 6 New York Post opinion piece suggested something that should, should chill both sides:
Instead, we face something more akin to the combustible climate that historian Christopher Clark described as the origins of World War I. In his book, “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914,” Clark illustrates how none of the great powers wanted war, but all felt free to escalate the buildup in the certainty that the other side would back down.
As the Left’s leaders actively encourage fighting, how does the Right best respond? Of course, civility would be preferred.
However, when a rabid dog is attacking, do we calmly sit down to have a polite and dignified conversation as its frothy mouth is biting our neck?
Published in General
Wow, why would any sane person live in Portland these days?
This is a real question, not a rhetorical one: What is “due process” when you are face to face with a mob? It tends to work better when you are backed by force. We have not yet returned to the days when physical assaults on the Senate floor are cheered by the Democrats, but that is because of better security than what was in place in Sumner’s day.
Unfortunately, these days “the Left” includes the executives controlling the force in some cities do not have high regard for the truth, for the rule of law, for the sovereignty of the people or for separation of powers. The mob is part of their power base.
But he didn’t get into fights or screaming onslaughts, either. I’m not saying we have to follow anyone’s definition of “civil”–I’m not even sure what that means anymore. But we don’t have to shoot people either.
When we fight back, we should take care to call out only the leaders of the party and leaders of the mobs by the bad names they have earned, and not all members of the D party. We can let the under-informed D voter off the hook for that behavior, allowing them to save face and maybe move to the right shaking the dust off their feet as they go. Let’s not pull a Hillary and call them all deplorables.
Part of his support for Kavanagh was his tweets, part of it has was his much condemned rhetoric aimed at Blasey Ford; this was all decried as “not civil.”
Rod Dreher has a column out in which he calls attention to an Atlantic article by Yascha Mounk that asserts that PC is widely unpopular in the US
So. A wealthy, powerful group of people, very secure in their own lives are “frightened” (for which read “rationalizing hatred”) and have money to spend trying to permanently transform the country in order to feel less “frightened.” The thing is, when someone is in this psychological state, facts and reason are not reassuring, they exacerbate the “fright.” Violent rhetoric, seeing others be violent, and ultimately their own violent action will relieve the distress – temporarily.
Right, well, this is why we have to remove them from power. For now, we’re able to do that at the ballot box for the most part (not so much in the institutions — we can only vote with our money when it comes to Hollywood and higher education). When that’s no longer the case? I guess that’s the point at which both sides get violent.
It’s diabolically clever for the Left to go after men. If they had targeted conservative women and their children, our men would have already pushed back forcefully. The Left has bought some time by going after white men, but after Kavanaugh, I’m hearing a lot more women concerned for their fathers, husbands, and sons. We’ll find out in a few weeks just how far they’ve overstepped.
At first I thought his denunciation of Ford’s rocky testimony was a mistake. Don’t personalize it. But, Trump gets what a lot of us are still struggling to accept. The Left will attack what you say and believe no matter how civilized you are about it. It’s the advantage we now have of their boy-who-cried-wolf tactics. If we’re all racists, rapists, misogynists, … none of us are. Just tell the truth (Ford didn’t have an evidentiary leg to stand on) and let the Left respond psychotically. Normal people will respond to the truth.
Some may be able to do that. My precinct was over 95% for Hillary. Gavin Newsom is likely to be my next Governor. My vote doesn’t count for much.
I don’t think Hillary Clinton really wants the Left to engage in violence. She just thinks that anti-civility talk is what Democrats want to hear, so she’ll be the mouthpiece. Whatever is required to prop up her own standing and popularity, she’ll do. Violence, peace, whatever. She’s got coffers to fill.
Trump does it in the moment, on the fly which is when it’s going to count. Writing a column about it a day or two later… not so much.
Because the organs of mass and social media are under the control of Mounk’s Progressive Activist “tribe” the tribe will use the organs to make the normal people feel isolated and uncertain of the truth. When the normals realize what’s going on it’s a threat to the power Progressives have. Trump’s genius is to bypass the media (tens of thousands of people at his rallies, and they all talk to their families, friends and coworkers) and to use Twitter for his own purposes. Twitter can screw with his feed temporarily, but they can’t shadowban him they way it could me (if I had a feed) without major repercussions.
That’s the only sequel I want to see made and am I’m in the mood to see.
I disagree. While it may not cause a win it does represent a moral choice and statement. It lets people know the your perspective exists. It also improves the national numbers so adds to the legitimacy when a GOP does win. Your vote count as much as anybody’s, so does your point of view. It needs to be acknowledged.
You’re right as far as this goes, and giving D normals a face saving way out is a good idea, but it’s the “thought leaders” and the money behind them who are the real problem. Rush has been saying for years that it’s not so much that reporters and talking heads are, as Glenn Reynolds likes to say “Democrat activists with bylines” as that the infotainment industry is directing things and the Democrat pols are the ones who get it done.
Based on what? Like all Americans, over the years she has seen 60s radicals tear apart Chicago, OWS in New York, Oakland, and Portland, Antifa in Berkeley and elsewhere and other Leftists engage in violence and has never condemned any of it. So, until she condemns it in a clear and convincing way, I’m not sure she is opposed to it. Whatever serves her purpose.
Oh, I vote. I also have a lot of practice grinning and bearing it.
Yeah, wow, what’s keeping you in California? Colorado is a nice place to live and we need a lot more Californians of your persuasion to save us from the Californians of the other persuasion who’re relocating here now that they’ve totally screwed up California!
She’s too smart to incite the riot herself, but Soros, Steyer, and the rest will pay the people who will, and the elected and appointed Progs will do their part once in power.
I understand that, most my life my area has been Democrat. So Democrat that GOP did not even run candidates because hey always lost. So Democrat that I am a member of the Democrat party so I can vote in their primaries and chose the most Conservative Democrat candidates and voting in the main is almost a waste of time since just the Democrat always gets elected.
I think we agree. She’s not opposed to violence, but that doesn’t mean she really wants it. I think, for her, the ends justify the means. Whatever helps her, she’ll take it.
Of course, you’ve aptly described the current problem. I’m not 100% sure how to respond other than to actively support more protest groups on our side to march in DC. to counter all the Dem groups. George Soros and others contribute big $$ to pay these people while we rely on volunteers. We must step it up. Getting the attention of the press is key.
I am a fan of the Chicago way. But I am a realist enough to understand that conservatives elites love to embrace their losing with style method. It is going to take a lot to get them to do what is necessary to win.
I am into my 73rd year. Even though I went to my first Goldwater Rally—a mock nominating convention organized by the YAF circa 1959-60—I have never been a John Bircher or HARD right anything. Just a conventional, pretty well (Jesuit) educated Constitutional Conservative. My (ahem…) experienced observation is that we on the right continue to be too scattershot in our complaints and carping.
It’s not the Liberal Democrat we need to oppose. S/he barely exists.
It’s The Left.
Is every idea put forth by the Center-Center Right/Right a great one? No.
Is every BAD idea put forth by The Left a BAD idea? No…..BUT….if it is IS a bad idea, the odds have become overwhelming that it’s a Left idea. Open borders. Single-pay health care. Government unions. Opposition to voter ID. Destruction (unintentional or not) of the traditional nuclear family (If it’s a Steve and Bruce nuclear family or a Heather and Eleanor nuclear family it’s now sacrosanct). Abortion as a virtue. Transgender bathrooms where a 35 year old-male can, if he feels like it can use a public bathroom with an 8 year old girl. Mindless, absolute extirpation of any religious symbolism anywhere, any time and at any place in the public sphere. Centralized, ever increasing government control. Total antipathy to subsidiarity. Total antipathy towards traditional institutions mainly because they were the products of (dead) white masculine toxicity….The list goes on….and on ….and on. Each and every one of the aforementioned ‘ideas’ are products of The Left and we must oppose The Left and defeat The Left in the garb of its bastard offspring, The Modern American Democrat Party, at the ballot box every time we get the chance. Our Republic and our children and grandchildren hang in the balance. The Left must be destroyed…La sinistra….delenda est.
I believe you are right. Speaking of ‘liberals’, and ‘the Left’, and even ‘Progressives’ is to speak of a staggering amount of people.
Some of our pundits like to use phrases like, ‘this is a perfect example of the left’, and it’s tasty red meat. It is also judging a vast swath of people on the actions of a single person. It is sloppy thinking, however satisfying it may be (I know it’s satisfying – I do it myself).
A piece of this is the ‘silence is consent’ idea wherein we claim everyone on Side A is cool with [outrage de jour] because of Failure to Adequately Denounce. Come to think of it, that’s the kind of thing we get accused of in connection to Trump’s behavior – both from the left and our putative allies.
You are correct. When they line us against the wall and shoot us we need to be sure we do not offend or cause anybody any discomfort to them or second thoughts.
This is exactly it. We must differentiate between the Left and their useful idiots, the liberals.
One name to write down is Sheryl Sandburg, who seems to be Mark Zuckerberg’s ideology enforcer at Facebook. She has been active on this and other issues.
I bookmarked this Blog Post awhile ago, and still need to process it. It’s long and wordy, and certainly a response to these questions.
radical book club: what Righties can do
Read the whole thing. It’s great.
As others have said, President Trump is not a cause of the current “incivility.” He is a response to the environment Democrats have been setting up over the last several decades. See also @fakejohnjanegalt comment #12 above.
I too am convinced we have major projecting going on. Since the 2016 election it has been particularly obvious.
I am so astonished by the apparent lack of self-awareness that I find it hard to believe that they really don’t see what they are doing. Yet I worked with a person who often complained about the chaos and conflict around her but never recognized that her own behavior contributed to that chaos and conflict. One of my “favorites” was she often complained that a person with whom she was having a disagreement would copy on an email on the subject many people only marginally connected with the matter. Then she would copy many additional people on her email about the other person. So I guess it really is possible that Clinton, Holder, Schumer, Pelosi, and various media people lack critical self-awareness.