Noah, readers one and all, please forgive me for the length and the emotional content of the following comment. I am genuinely upset about the events of the recent past. To give you my background, I am 73 years of age. I have a degree in law and have practiced law since 1980. I was an administrative law judge for 27 years. I have a master’s degree in public administration, worked as a management analyst after getting that degree in local government before law school, and have a bachelor’s degree in political science with an emphasis in political philosophy. I have dedicated my life to serving my country and have served faithfully and well for many years. I am a conservative Republican. Sick to death of what I have watched for 25 years, on Friday I emailed Speaker Nancy Pelosi and asked her to impeach President Donald Trump.
Hopefully, the events of the last few days and weeks have been a wake-up call for the country. We are a country drunk and staggering on the intoxicant of hate filled speech, exaggerations, and outright lies. If one is not yet sick and hung over from this diet of abuse, then there is still too much of the lethal intoxicant left in the blood stream.
What has happened this last week is what happens when political leaders, academics, media, bloggers, and ordinary people lose control of their emotions and let their worst instincts lead them astray into saying and doing things that should never have been said or done. Not just for a few days or months, but for years, and decades building up on both sides of the political aisle. People like Mr. Trump, unfortunately, are not a disease that we will soon be cured of, but rather one of the latest symptoms of the disease. Whatever their political opinions, our supposed political opponents and enemies are fellow Americans. They are our brothers and sisters in the noblest political experiment in the history of the world. If they were our neighbors, and we didn’t have a pandemic, we would likely be talking with them over the fence and inviting them to dinner or even supporting them with chores and dinners when they were ill. You probably would like them even though you might continue to disagree with them politically. None deserve hate filled speech. None deserve half-truths, lies, and outright libels. They deserve respect, empathy, and a fair hearing on their concerns.
I will point out that when people exaggerate to make a point, they are lying. Period. An exaggeration can never be the truth as it moves beyond the core of the truth. Unfortunately, there will always be some, perhaps many, who take exaggerations literally, which eventually leads to consequences like what we have observed this week. The truth is that there is always some election fraud. I suppose it is inevitable. But there is no credible evidence of widespread fraud that would change the result of the presidential election. The exaggeration of widespread systemic fraud has proven lethal to some this week. Recently, when a friend of ours said that President-elect Biden was evil, my wife pushed back. Our friend paused, thought, and then said simply that she did not trust Mr. Biden’s policies. The first statement was not fair, the second was. Unlike love, which is a gift from one person to another, trust is something that is earned. Hopefully, Mr. Biden will be able to earn the trust of his detractors, though that remains to be seen, and will depend in large part on how he treats them. Hopefully, our friend will keep her heart and mind open.
Exaggerations come in many forms. The worst perhaps is labeling. For years I have been emotionally unable to watch the news. For weeks I have been telling my wife that the reason I refuse to watch the news is because of adjectives. Yes, adjectives – a part of speech. More precisely, adjectives that are used to describe people or their ideas. Calling one with whom you disagree an extremist is a cue to yourself and others to stop listening to them. To call a person a bigot or a racist is also a cue to yourself and others to stop listening to them. And it is always a conversation ender. Calling someone a communist or socialist has the same effect. A person so labeled knows he or she will never be given a fair hearing. A wedge is driven between us with the words we choose to use. The presence of the wedge causes people to express themselves ever more wildly while everyone retreats to their respective comfort zones and silos and listens to what they are comfortable hearing. Everyone, left of center or right of center, needs and deserves better than labeling of that kind even if we suspect it might be true. The labeling is too explosive and in almost every case is a gross exaggeration. We have far too many voices in this country who will not allow a fair hearing for others, and they stand on either side of the political aisle. And after the events of this last week those voices have lost all credibility and no longer deserve to form opinion or lead.
Anyone in media who pretends to shape opinion, anyone in politics who pretends to lead any part of this great people needs to give everyone their respect and empathy. And a fair hearing on their thoughts and concerns. A few years ago, a litigant verbally exploded in a mediation proceeding I presided over and angrily expressed his feelings of contempt, disdain, and fury toward the other party in such a way that I was forced to end the mediation and send the case on to hearings. There was no point in continuing in the poisoned atmosphere we had. He proudly told me afterward that as long as he told the truth he could say it any way he liked. He was wrong, of course. I informed him that a brutal truth is always more about brutality than it is about truth. What he had said was not said to inform or persuade but to harm. We need to stop harming in our speech at every level of our society - and it needs to start at the top. Now!
This country, as a whole, needs to sober up, get through its self-inflicted binge of verbal abuse and brutality, and get back to work – with one another. We can start by minding our adjectives.
Views of what's causing this need not deny its reality. I'm always surprised how little attention is given to the structure of electoral politics – baking competition into the logic of democratic representation right from the ground up. The beauty of taking this seriously as an idea is that it gives us a hack that could be introduced into electoral politics as a check and balance which, in my experience calms things immensely. I wrote this up <a href="https://quillette.com/2019/02/16/polarisation-and-the-case-for-citizens-juries/">here</a>
As part of the vast diaspora of midwesterners to the left coast, I spent a lot of years apologizing for the "holy innocents" I left behind. Maybe about a decade ago, it finally hit me: what if my leaving represented not a character flaw in myself, or an abandonment of what I left behind, but rather was simply because the people I left were parochial shitbags who couldn't be bothered to either learn something or listen to people who did.
Anyway, I think you're right. No more cultural anthropology on the Trumpistas. Time to accept them for what they are: asshats with guns and a deep sense of undeserved entitlement.
Unfortunately Noah misses the point about strong/weak vs good/evil. History is written (tweeted) by the victors. Whatever the strong believe IS the “good” and whatever the weak believe IS the “evil”. Of course what is actually Good and Evil is completely independent of strong/weak. The strong are just as likely to be Evil as the weak are. So how do we make sure Good prevails? By making sure the weak always have a voice. Thankfully the strong (good) failed at silencing the weak(evil) on many issues related to civil rights, women’s rights, sexual rights, ect. If you don’t let the weak have a voice, it’s only a matter of time until you become the Evil.
Unfortunately, the author doesn't define what a coup is. Not everyone calls the 1/6 event a coup. In the peer-reviewed Journal of Peace Research (http://www.uky.edu/~clthyn2/powell-thyne-JPR-2011.pdf), authors Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne provide the following definition: "a coup attempt includes illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive." The 1/6 events, whatever you want to call it, wouldn't be a coup by that definition.
It strikes me that it was relatively easy to not investigate the roots of Nazism, and simply oppose it, because it was foreign-born and could be dealt with using the tools of foreign policy (and eventually military force). But we can't defeat Trumpism on the battlefield and make its proponents surrender; armed conflict will be the exception, rather than the rule. Instead, we'll have to defeat it on the battleground of ideas, which has always been murkier and weirder terrain. A better comparison is to racism, rather than Nazism, and frankly that scares me because we mostly managed to suppress Nazism, but racism was far harder to put down and we never managed to do it completely (even though we obviously made progress over the years).
Regarding nerds taking things down, isn't another possibility that the lawyers, accountants and PR people at these companies realized that hosting insurrectionaries is bad for business? I guess you're applying the word "nerd" more broadly than just technical workers?
Maybe a better approach for rebutting the BLM argument when talking to Republicans friends who do, genuinely, fear BLM/Antifa would be to acknowledge that parts of the protests WERE violent.
The small number of violent protesters were vastly outnumbered by the huge numbers of peaceful protesters, and the violence was mostly against property rather than people. You can also blame a lot of the violence on police escalation. But we should acknowledge that there were a small number of people on our side who were deliberately choosing to engage in violence.
This was uncomfortable topic for those of us who have not borne the brunt of police violence. As a cis-presenting normie-looking white person, it is ABSOLUTELY not my place to criticize the tactics of people who are struggling to fight an injustice that I do not have to face. As someone who benefits from the current system, my picayune thoughts on acceptable violence aren’t especially relevant.
Even though a lot of democrats felt uncomfortable talking about it, we collectively did try to counter the violence. Where possible, people who engaged in violence faced legal consequences. The small number who openly advocated violence faced censure. Democratic leaders overwhelmingly condemned the violence, and tried to calm the situation.
If your Republican friend is truly scared of BLM/Antifa, then you can argue that their best strategy is to condemn the violence on their side as well. It is a lot easier for them to consistently condemn violence if they are willing to condemn ALL violence. And if more people on the right are willing to condemn all violence, then it makes it easier for those of us on the left to counter violence on my side.
Maybe framing the issue this way… violence vs non-violence, rather than left vs right.. can help your Conservative friend find an off-road from his current views.
I like the theoretical concept. I see that it could have benefits. I am a pragmatist, however. "Legislative Juries" need to start at local levels and expand. No fair letting formal interest groups be part of the jury. No juror can have a dog in the fight although respectful input from interest groups should be allowed. After one has experience one could consider expanding.
This is what a proper assault on a parliament looks like, but at the time the Hong Kong Legislative Council was attacked by a well organized group supported and endorsed by the USA government, nobody called it an "coup" or an "insurrection":
“On 1 July 2019, hundreds of protesters stormed Hong Kong's Legislative Council, (Legco), spraying graffiti and defacing symbols of the Hong Kong law-making body. The ransacking of the government building marked a turning point in a protest movement against a now suspended extradition law.”
Besides maybe some folk at Mother Jones, who was saying Silicon Valley is right wing? Not that long ago, the Westboro Baptist Church made it a stop on their God Hates Everyone tour. A little longer ago, but well within living memory, the founders of Google announced, as a major discovery, that It Is Possible To Make Money Without Being Evil -- to the right wing, this is creed.
Noah, readers one and all, please forgive me for the length and the emotional content of the following comment. I am genuinely upset about the events of the recent past. To give you my background, I am 73 years of age. I have a degree in law and have practiced law since 1980. I was an administrative law judge for 27 years. I have a master’s degree in public administration, worked as a management analyst after getting that degree in local government before law school, and have a bachelor’s degree in political science with an emphasis in political philosophy. I have dedicated my life to serving my country and have served faithfully and well for many years. I am a conservative Republican. Sick to death of what I have watched for 25 years, on Friday I emailed Speaker Nancy Pelosi and asked her to impeach President Donald Trump.
Hopefully, the events of the last few days and weeks have been a wake-up call for the country. We are a country drunk and staggering on the intoxicant of hate filled speech, exaggerations, and outright lies. If one is not yet sick and hung over from this diet of abuse, then there is still too much of the lethal intoxicant left in the blood stream.
What has happened this last week is what happens when political leaders, academics, media, bloggers, and ordinary people lose control of their emotions and let their worst instincts lead them astray into saying and doing things that should never have been said or done. Not just for a few days or months, but for years, and decades building up on both sides of the political aisle. People like Mr. Trump, unfortunately, are not a disease that we will soon be cured of, but rather one of the latest symptoms of the disease. Whatever their political opinions, our supposed political opponents and enemies are fellow Americans. They are our brothers and sisters in the noblest political experiment in the history of the world. If they were our neighbors, and we didn’t have a pandemic, we would likely be talking with them over the fence and inviting them to dinner or even supporting them with chores and dinners when they were ill. You probably would like them even though you might continue to disagree with them politically. None deserve hate filled speech. None deserve half-truths, lies, and outright libels. They deserve respect, empathy, and a fair hearing on their concerns.
I will point out that when people exaggerate to make a point, they are lying. Period. An exaggeration can never be the truth as it moves beyond the core of the truth. Unfortunately, there will always be some, perhaps many, who take exaggerations literally, which eventually leads to consequences like what we have observed this week. The truth is that there is always some election fraud. I suppose it is inevitable. But there is no credible evidence of widespread fraud that would change the result of the presidential election. The exaggeration of widespread systemic fraud has proven lethal to some this week. Recently, when a friend of ours said that President-elect Biden was evil, my wife pushed back. Our friend paused, thought, and then said simply that she did not trust Mr. Biden’s policies. The first statement was not fair, the second was. Unlike love, which is a gift from one person to another, trust is something that is earned. Hopefully, Mr. Biden will be able to earn the trust of his detractors, though that remains to be seen, and will depend in large part on how he treats them. Hopefully, our friend will keep her heart and mind open.
Exaggerations come in many forms. The worst perhaps is labeling. For years I have been emotionally unable to watch the news. For weeks I have been telling my wife that the reason I refuse to watch the news is because of adjectives. Yes, adjectives – a part of speech. More precisely, adjectives that are used to describe people or their ideas. Calling one with whom you disagree an extremist is a cue to yourself and others to stop listening to them. To call a person a bigot or a racist is also a cue to yourself and others to stop listening to them. And it is always a conversation ender. Calling someone a communist or socialist has the same effect. A person so labeled knows he or she will never be given a fair hearing. A wedge is driven between us with the words we choose to use. The presence of the wedge causes people to express themselves ever more wildly while everyone retreats to their respective comfort zones and silos and listens to what they are comfortable hearing. Everyone, left of center or right of center, needs and deserves better than labeling of that kind even if we suspect it might be true. The labeling is too explosive and in almost every case is a gross exaggeration. We have far too many voices in this country who will not allow a fair hearing for others, and they stand on either side of the political aisle. And after the events of this last week those voices have lost all credibility and no longer deserve to form opinion or lead.
Anyone in media who pretends to shape opinion, anyone in politics who pretends to lead any part of this great people needs to give everyone their respect and empathy. And a fair hearing on their thoughts and concerns. A few years ago, a litigant verbally exploded in a mediation proceeding I presided over and angrily expressed his feelings of contempt, disdain, and fury toward the other party in such a way that I was forced to end the mediation and send the case on to hearings. There was no point in continuing in the poisoned atmosphere we had. He proudly told me afterward that as long as he told the truth he could say it any way he liked. He was wrong, of course. I informed him that a brutal truth is always more about brutality than it is about truth. What he had said was not said to inform or persuade but to harm. We need to stop harming in our speech at every level of our society - and it needs to start at the top. Now!
This country, as a whole, needs to sober up, get through its self-inflicted binge of verbal abuse and brutality, and get back to work – with one another. We can start by minding our adjectives.
Thanks Noah
Views of what's causing this need not deny its reality. I'm always surprised how little attention is given to the structure of electoral politics – baking competition into the logic of democratic representation right from the ground up. The beauty of taking this seriously as an idea is that it gives us a hack that could be introduced into electoral politics as a check and balance which, in my experience calms things immensely. I wrote this up <a href="https://quillette.com/2019/02/16/polarisation-and-the-case-for-citizens-juries/">here</a>
As part of the vast diaspora of midwesterners to the left coast, I spent a lot of years apologizing for the "holy innocents" I left behind. Maybe about a decade ago, it finally hit me: what if my leaving represented not a character flaw in myself, or an abandonment of what I left behind, but rather was simply because the people I left were parochial shitbags who couldn't be bothered to either learn something or listen to people who did.
Anyway, I think you're right. No more cultural anthropology on the Trumpistas. Time to accept them for what they are: asshats with guns and a deep sense of undeserved entitlement.
Unfortunately Noah misses the point about strong/weak vs good/evil. History is written (tweeted) by the victors. Whatever the strong believe IS the “good” and whatever the weak believe IS the “evil”. Of course what is actually Good and Evil is completely independent of strong/weak. The strong are just as likely to be Evil as the weak are. So how do we make sure Good prevails? By making sure the weak always have a voice. Thankfully the strong (good) failed at silencing the weak(evil) on many issues related to civil rights, women’s rights, sexual rights, ect. If you don’t let the weak have a voice, it’s only a matter of time until you become the Evil.
Unfortunately, the author doesn't define what a coup is. Not everyone calls the 1/6 event a coup. In the peer-reviewed Journal of Peace Research (http://www.uky.edu/~clthyn2/powell-thyne-JPR-2011.pdf), authors Jonathan Powell and Clayton Thyne provide the following definition: "a coup attempt includes illegal and overt attempts by the military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat the sitting executive." The 1/6 events, whatever you want to call it, wouldn't be a coup by that definition.
It strikes me that it was relatively easy to not investigate the roots of Nazism, and simply oppose it, because it was foreign-born and could be dealt with using the tools of foreign policy (and eventually military force). But we can't defeat Trumpism on the battlefield and make its proponents surrender; armed conflict will be the exception, rather than the rule. Instead, we'll have to defeat it on the battleground of ideas, which has always been murkier and weirder terrain. A better comparison is to racism, rather than Nazism, and frankly that scares me because we mostly managed to suppress Nazism, but racism was far harder to put down and we never managed to do it completely (even though we obviously made progress over the years).
Regarding nerds taking things down, isn't another possibility that the lawyers, accountants and PR people at these companies realized that hosting insurrectionaries is bad for business? I guess you're applying the word "nerd" more broadly than just technical workers?
Maybe a better approach for rebutting the BLM argument when talking to Republicans friends who do, genuinely, fear BLM/Antifa would be to acknowledge that parts of the protests WERE violent.
The small number of violent protesters were vastly outnumbered by the huge numbers of peaceful protesters, and the violence was mostly against property rather than people. You can also blame a lot of the violence on police escalation. But we should acknowledge that there were a small number of people on our side who were deliberately choosing to engage in violence.
This was uncomfortable topic for those of us who have not borne the brunt of police violence. As a cis-presenting normie-looking white person, it is ABSOLUTELY not my place to criticize the tactics of people who are struggling to fight an injustice that I do not have to face. As someone who benefits from the current system, my picayune thoughts on acceptable violence aren’t especially relevant.
Even though a lot of democrats felt uncomfortable talking about it, we collectively did try to counter the violence. Where possible, people who engaged in violence faced legal consequences. The small number who openly advocated violence faced censure. Democratic leaders overwhelmingly condemned the violence, and tried to calm the situation.
If your Republican friend is truly scared of BLM/Antifa, then you can argue that their best strategy is to condemn the violence on their side as well. It is a lot easier for them to consistently condemn violence if they are willing to condemn ALL violence. And if more people on the right are willing to condemn all violence, then it makes it easier for those of us on the left to counter violence on my side.
Maybe framing the issue this way… violence vs non-violence, rather than left vs right.. can help your Conservative friend find an off-road from his current views.
One thing I try to remember is that a lot of people just do this for fun, like watching football or something. Hard instinct to battle.
I like the theoretical concept. I see that it could have benefits. I am a pragmatist, however. "Legislative Juries" need to start at local levels and expand. No fair letting formal interest groups be part of the jury. No juror can have a dog in the fight although respectful input from interest groups should be allowed. After one has experience one could consider expanding.
This is what a proper assault on a parliament looks like, but at the time the Hong Kong Legislative Council was attacked by a well organized group supported and endorsed by the USA government, nobody called it an "coup" or an "insurrection":
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-49157807
“On 1 July 2019, hundreds of protesters stormed Hong Kong's Legislative Council, (Legco), spraying graffiti and defacing symbols of the Hong Kong law-making body. The ransacking of the government building marked a turning point in a protest movement against a now suspended extradition law.”
Besides maybe some folk at Mother Jones, who was saying Silicon Valley is right wing? Not that long ago, the Westboro Baptist Church made it a stop on their God Hates Everyone tour. A little longer ago, but well within living memory, the founders of Google announced, as a major discovery, that It Is Possible To Make Money Without Being Evil -- to the right wing, this is creed.