In these days of political polarization, I’m hearing a lot of complaints about “whataboutism,” the phenomenon of answering a question about the actions of one person or group with an example of something similar done by someone else. Trump mishandled classified documents! What about Hillary Clinton, for example? But yeah… what about Hillary Clinton? Were the two treated equally by the law, the press, and public opinion?
The cornerstone principle of the American experiment – the thing that makes our country exceptional to those that came before us – is the idea that we are all created equal. There is no (or should not be) any distinction under law between citizens. No separate rules for kings and dukes are different from those that apply to the peasants. Or, in other words, in the United States of America, everyone, no matter their race, sex, economic status, occupation, etc., is supposed to be measured by the same yardstick, and everyone is supposed to be given the same fair shake.
And when some are not, that’s when people really get upset. Civil disruption levels of upset. It’s when the torches and pitchforks come out. With right and good reason, this is where whataboutism comes in. (Not deflection, which is like when my wife asks if I’ve taken out the garbage and I reply, “What about them Yankees!”) Whataboutism shines a light on precedent and fair play.
Let’s take the Declaration’s promise itself, “All men are created equal.” What about women? Am I right? What about enslaved Blacks? No victimized group ever succeeded in securing justice by invalidating the underlying principle of equality in our founding document; rather, they succeeded by insisting that the principle is very much valid and therefore must be fairly applied – “What about us?” The Declaration is the anvil, and whataboutism is the hammer, and the two combine to, over time, beat any inequalities out of the system.
Whataboutism is the crowdsourced means by which the citizenry can hold society’s enforcers, both legal and social, accountable if they stray from the obligation of our social contract — to treat everyone equally. It is an essential tool that should not be ignored or belittled.
Which brings me back to the recent controversy over State Senator Sam Douglass. This young man was forced to resign his senate seat after a media feeding frenzy fueled by misleading and incorrect official statements by politicians of his own and opposing parties calling for him to step down because of offensive remarks made by others – not him – in an online chat. In that chat, while some did make some egregiously racist and antisemitic remarks, Douglass did not. He was a cyber-bystander, if you will.
Nonetheless, the “mainstream” Vermont media – VT Digger, Vermont Public, Seven Days, WCAX, WPTZ – all wrote multiple stories about this event, distorting the truth and playing with words to create the false impression that Douglass was the author of the offensive comments. He wasn’t.
Okay. If that’s how we deal with politicians associated with others who hold offensive views…. Yup… here I go… WHAT ABOUT….
Our federal senator, Bernie Sanders, is standing side by side with, hand in raised hand, endorsing a candidate for the US Senate in Maine who has a freakin’ Nazi SS death’s head tattoo on his chest. This guy, Graham Platner, has had this “Totenkopf” tattoo for eighteen years and never thought to have it removed. [Related: Morning Update: “Maine’s Secret Nazi?”]
In addition to his questionable body art, Platner has a social media history that includes offensive comments regarding sexual assault, insults toward Blacks, and hostility toward police. These are things he posted himself in his own words that are every bit as offensive as the things Sam Douglass was merely in the virtual room for while other people commented. And Bernie is not just silent about all this; he is unapologetically endorsing – double down endorsing – Platner!
So, where is all the outrage from Phil Scott, Senators Scott Beck and Philip Baruth, Rep. Jay Hooper, and all the rest who called on Sam Douglass to resign, calling on Bernie Sanders to resign from his US Senate seat for supporting, by the Douglass standard, an anti-Black, misogynistic, antisemite? Crickets.
Where’s the pearl-clutching media frenzy from Digger, Vermont Public, Seven Days, and the rest? A direct and a Google search shows none of these publications has done even a single story on Sanders’ unapologetic support for the racist, antisemite, excuser of rape culture, let alone leveled any criticism. Someone in 2900 pages of back-and-forth texting sarcastically says, “I love Hitler,” and Sam Douglass is keelhauled and excommunicated from politics, but Bernie Sanders knowingly and actively endorses a guy who chose to decorate himself with the same artwork Heinrich Himmler and the guards at Auschwitz wore on their collars and…. Meh.
WCAX and WPTZ did do one article each on the Sanders/Platner connection, and both were basically apologies for the racist Nazi lover and his patron, cutting and pasting Platner’s explanation unchallenged and calling it news. They were careful not to mention the word “Nazi” in the headlines of the articles and toned down the SS symbol by describing it as having “links to Nazi symbolism,” and the “image has been associated with Nazi police.” This is like saying Lynyrd Skynyrd performed in front of a banner that has been associated with the Confederacy. Anyway, the gist of what they’re trying to sell in this case is that, hey, the guy apologized for the whole Nazi thing and should be forgiven because there are more important issues at stake.
So, what about Sam Douglass? Why didn’t he, for much lesser offenses, get to apologize and let bygones be bygones?
And then, of course, WHAT ABOUT State Senator Becca White (D-Windsor). Like Douglass, she is very young for the position she is in. And recently she had her picture taken with someone wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with “Is he dead yet,” a plea for the death of President Trump, who, of course, has been the victim of two serious assassination attempts. Though she wasn’t wearing the shirt, White chose to distribute the photo of her with her arm around that message on social media.
White is also buddy buddy Mohsen Mahdawi, the anti-Jewish, pro-terrorist activist who, to quote Newsweek, “…led mobs in chants calling for the eradication of the Jewish State…was an active member of Students for Justice in Palestine—a group that has repeatedly aligned itself with Hamas‘s call for global ‘resistance’ in the wake of the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That ‘resistance,’ by the way, was explicitly defined in an SJP toolkit as including ‘armed struggle’ and ‘confrontation by any means necessary,’ under a command structure directly coordinated with Hamas.”
I’d say these actions and associations are on par with, if not a little worse than, what Douglass was accused of. But no one called White to resign her seat, or even to apologize for her pro-assassination stance or to disassociate herself from the documented antisemite and his calls for political violence.
I’m not going to say which approach is correct for this kind of thing – swift expulsion and public shamming or ignore it and move on or something in between – but I will say whatever the reaction is it should be equally applied to all sides and at all levels. Because that equality of treatment is THE American value that makes this place work, and we all have a responsibility to uphold it. And those who don’t work to uphold it – especially those in positions of influence — need to be called out because a society with double standards, “protected” classes, rules for thee but not for me, isn’t just, and leads to some very bad places. After all, kings rule arbitrarily and with bias. And we’re all about no kings, right?
