Michael Cohen hearing
Ok the Republicans are the minority and they’re hostile, while the Democrats are the majority and…not friendly, not affectionate, but not hostile in the sense of hostile to Cohen’s presence and testimony. Grant all that. It’s Democrats versus Republicans, with all that follows from that.
But if the two were reversed would Democrats be this assholish? This challenging, this stern, yes, but it’s more than that – there’s also taunting, sneering, raging, screeching. Do Republicans give themselves permission to be Trump-like in the era of Trump in a way they wouldn’t have before?
Update: Rep. Carol Miller, R-West Virginia, thinks it’s “a game” to establish whether or not Trump is a criminal.
It’s not a game, Representative Miller. It couldn’t possibly be more serious.
Update: Oh, Miller is angry that they have postponed hearings on child separation to do this one. Well who does she think is behind the child separation policy?!
Maybe this answers my question about would the Democrats carry on so grotesquely if they were in the hot seat.
https://twitter.com/Amy_Siskind/status/1100824186182881283
There are, it has to be said, some truly awful people on the Republican side of the culture war, and some of those probably are ‘dumb as fuck’. That said, we’ve established pretty thoroughly over the last few years that there are some pretty awful progressives and liberals as well, some of whom may also be DAF. I suspect the ratio makes Democrats look good by comparison if nothing else, which is damning with faint praise.
The thing that bother me most about this kind of rhetoric though is that it creates an othering. When one side does it without response from the other it’s bad enough. It creates an environment where communication across the political barrier slows to a trickle and, at worst, where a pogrom becomes a possibility. When both sides start doing it communication ceases, moral high ground is lost and the potential for civil war looms on the horizon. For anyone considering that an alarmist statement, look at history. Civil wars and revolutions seldom start overnight. Sure there needs to be a spark, but the tinder can be years, even decades in the preparation.
In my own country there is much tut tutting about US politics from people of all political parties, yet there has been a distinct rise in people taking very harsh Trump-lite stances on some issues and even a few political tricks and phrasings picked up from the Republicans reminiscent of US politics maybe a decade ago (kinder gentler times I know). It is a matter of public record that the National Party here has taken advice from consultants who have worked with the Republican Party.
Rob, I think part of the problem is that Twitter is a bad medium for political discourse, and Facebook, YouTube, and other social media, while perhaps allowing more nuance, also tend to become an echo chamber where you can shut out the other side. And people who never listen to anything other than either FoxNews or MSNBC may have no idea what their neighbor really believes.
In short, the so-called democratizing of the Internet has become a social media wasp’s nest.
All true, but this discussion and attitude is spilling into face to face life as well. Nastiness and contempt don’t stay compartmentalised, they colour attitudes (for or against) of even those who read but don’t take part.
@Rob:
The problem is that there isn’t “both sides” here; there’s one tribe that wants to kill/imprison/enslave/punish everyone and then there’s everyone else of the myriad other tribes. They cannot be communicated with and some kind of great conflict is more or less inevitable. In a way it’s cathartic to get all of that in the open instead of pretending we can co-exist; it’s also horrifying.
BKiSA, The whole bloody mess is both horrifying and terrifying. There is a ‘both sides’ to the extent that there is always a pool of ignorant, prejudiced and hateful people that can be co-opted, directed and used by others with an agenda. In a functioning society, those people are marginalised and seldom heard from. The Republicans have spent decades fostering and developing their use of those people and at some point actually lost control of them. They now are the Republican party. There is a similar (although possibly smaller pool) that left wing forces could tap into if desired. I think that any move in that direction, whether formal or not, is reprehensible and dangerous. The trick is, how does a liberal and peace seeking group defend itself against what increasingly appears to be a coming conflict, without itself accelerating the arrival of that conflict?
I got a vision of The Blob overrunning the GOP; it was actually fun for a moment, until it started coming for us.
At this point, I can’t say what is right. I know playing nice guy hasn’t worked, and playing Mr. Nasty has worked beautifully for the Republicans. The problem is, the things that work for Republicans do not work for Democrats, so I fear we’ll sacrifice our consciences for only bad consequences, and it isn’t worth it even if we do win if we become them in the bargain. So, yeah, I’ll go with not calling people dumb as f*** (though sometimes I will be sorely tempted).