Notable Quote - David French - Granite Grok

Notable Quote – David French

Emphasis mine:

…As soon as I read these words, I was transported back to a moment during my one appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher. Joy Behar and Maher lamented that Democrats were “too nice.” They’re echoing a common (though certainly not universal) refrain on the left. Progressives see themselves as tolerant, open-minded, and eager to engage with critics.

Yet this is precisely the opposite of the way conservatives experience and perceive progressive culture. Yes, of course there are progressives who “yearn for inclusion, civility, and dialogue,” but there are also progressives who despise conservatives, attempt to silence conservative voices, and systematically exclude conservatives from the “dialogue” they allegedly crave. Observe the campus free-speech wars. Is the academy evidence for proposition that lefties temperamentally yearn for civility? Observe late-night television. The cheering, hooting progressive crowds clamoring for more mockery and more derision are hardly yearning for dialogue. Observe progressive political arguments. The doomsday rhetoric directed against policies such as tax cuts or net-neutrality repeal is comically over-the-top. Dianne Feinstein even used the now-tiresome “people die” rhetoric in the government-shutdown debate. Her side lost anyway.

Air America didn’t fail because it was too mean. It failed because liberal audiences like a different kind of mean than the conservative talk-radio style. Let’s look at Hohmann’s example of counter-programming, Pod Save America. I’m a frequent listener, and it’s certainly an engaging podcast, but when the hosts fix a target, they bring it down with profane ferocity. The tone is a cross between the lacerating wit of Stephen Colbert and the in-the-weeds wonkery of Ezra Klein. They supplement their F-bombs with quotations from Government Accountability Office studies.

We’re still endlessly debating how we “got Trump” in 2016. But one of the chief reasons is that many Republicans — down to the very marrow of their bones — believed that the GOP had been “too nice,” and that nominating gentlemen like Mitt Romney meant that the party was unilaterally disarming in a no-holds-barred political war. There is still deep rage at the way in which lefties who allegedly yearn for civility painted Romney as a greedy, racist monster who was indifferent to cancer deaths and sought to put African Americans “back in chains.” No, Democrats aren’t losing because they’re “too nice” or because they yearn for dialogue. The better explanation is that they’re losing in part because their own incivility and rage drive millions of Americans to the polls to vote in perceived self-defense. Their own incivility and rage falsely escalate too many political disputes to matters of life and death. What’s the argument after claiming that Republicans are intentionally killing people? Is there a rhetorical step beyond that?

 

-David French (lawyer, writer, speaker, blogger)

 

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