It's a collective illness that social media has aggravated. And it's not just "the other side" doing it. Both sides have incentives to exaggerate their positions.
Sure, it's bad to demonize your political enemies, but this is such a blindly partisan take it's impossible not to push back.
Ever since the Oklahoma city bombing, the narrative in America is that all political terrorism is right-wing maniacs. And, sure there were shootings of pro-abortion ministers and attacks on black churches, synagogues. Fine. All of it evil. But don't pretend the left wasn't delighted to point and jeer at Republicans over this. You get a crazed right-wing shooter--or someone you can say was a right-wing shooter--and it's the top story on NYT and NPR for months. A lefty takes a shot a presidential candidate and the story is buried. Hmm.
We also had ELF attacks, LA riots, "Battle of Seattle" and a dozen other left-leaning riots*. We've have lefty school and senatorial baseball game shooters--that no one will cop to. Since the 2020 Floyd riots every act of vandalism and violence I can think of has come from the left. So now, instead of going, "oh shit, maybe we're the baddies," the left is like, "hey, come on! political violence is bad no matter who does it. let's not make it political." But you expect the Right to say, "yeah, gee whiz! We should all feel bad." Be real about this.
Right now, in the US, we have a serious and growing problem with political violence. It is undoubtedly, without exception, overwhelmingly coming from the left. That doesn't mean it always will, but it's dumb level-1 politics to pretend it isn't Team Blue doing the bad stuff in <current year>. Yes--stop it all it's bad, and often not political but personal, but seriously take some responsibility here and admit when your team is being bad otherwise there's no way any of this will end until the real jackboot of history comes stamping down. AFAICT, that's exactly what people want.
I don't agree with the right on a lot of this stuff. I never, ever, ever jump in on any conversation about the motives of violent actors because it's rarely simple and facts are obscured and often unknown. Instead I read garbage take after garbage take meant to take a tragedy and flip it into political cash money. What I see everyone sees and now you have a whopping majority of the country that is sending out a blazing middle finger from each hand. This piece is just more level-1, low-effort, partisan proselytizing for pissing point. Blech. Be real, dude.
Well you seem to have been unable to read the words I actually wrote and just have typed out your own grievances. It's good to have an example of the problem show up in the comments.
The OKC example is particularly ironic because Jamelle Bouie went on a tear against me once because I argued that McVeigh was not a white nationalist but instead was an anarchist.
"But as long as we continue to imply that the rare person who holds an ordinary political point of view but also an extraordinary desire to impose it with violence is representative of peaceful people as well, we will all continue to contort ourselves to deny basic facts about the news that we consume every day.
"When every fact on the news has to be enlisted in part of a larger war against our political Others, of course many conservatives can’t admit that every sign points to Minnesota shooting suspect as a disgruntled right-winger. If they admit that, we are conceding a fact to the progressives, and all of reality has to be subsumed by the mission of demonizing the other side.
"This is a sickness that is preventing us from doing what we actually should be doing after these acts of political violence: coming together as a country and rejecting the notion of violence as politics by other means.
"From far left to far right, nobody holds any responsibility for acts of political violence unless they committed an act of political violence themselves; peacefully advocating for your point of view, no matter what it is, is your right as an American."
1st paragraph: rare and random people do bad things but the problem is we deny 'facts' (political talking points) from the 'news' (political agents) so we can blast The Others with the sinner label.
2nd paragraph: Ackshully conservatives do this. they're doing this now. If they were better people we could move on.
3rd paragraph: Kumbaya
4th paragraph: Stochastic terrorism isn't real, it's just crazy random people. Ignore your lying eyes!
Listen, I'm a high-road guy. I do not ever celebrate violence, or doxxing, or tit-for-tat, etc. I agree with you that a complete rejection of political violence is necessary (though insufficient) for national unity. And sure, maybe I'm projecting (I haven't read your essays for about a year--maybe you're perfectly centrist), but I'm a disaffected lefty who has been watching, listening and reading as the left became the people they disparage--30 some years of incessant demonizing. Your essay is a "Be Nice" post-it note on the filing cabinet of hate. You claim to want reconciliation but still found a way to blame conservatives. Bruh.
There were 2 U.S. Senators, both Republicans, who turned an attack by a conservative suspect into a reason to demonize liberals. I can't really make up an alternate universe of facts for this instance, but the post was not trying to align with your politics or anyone else's.
It's the failure of the Left to condemn this violence outright, to continue ratcheting up violent and intolerant rhetoric, to pretend this ongoing increasing violence is 'business as usual', to present law enforcement as more of a problem than the rise of this violence itself, to underplay and excuse and even stay silent about this violence as if it is always a kind of justified 'response' to some right wing provocation, that makes your article an extension of all of this. And that's the problem.
You are so exactly right!!!
It's a collective illness that social media has aggravated. And it's not just "the other side" doing it. Both sides have incentives to exaggerate their positions.
Sure, it's bad to demonize your political enemies, but this is such a blindly partisan take it's impossible not to push back.
Ever since the Oklahoma city bombing, the narrative in America is that all political terrorism is right-wing maniacs. And, sure there were shootings of pro-abortion ministers and attacks on black churches, synagogues. Fine. All of it evil. But don't pretend the left wasn't delighted to point and jeer at Republicans over this. You get a crazed right-wing shooter--or someone you can say was a right-wing shooter--and it's the top story on NYT and NPR for months. A lefty takes a shot a presidential candidate and the story is buried. Hmm.
We also had ELF attacks, LA riots, "Battle of Seattle" and a dozen other left-leaning riots*. We've have lefty school and senatorial baseball game shooters--that no one will cop to. Since the 2020 Floyd riots every act of vandalism and violence I can think of has come from the left. So now, instead of going, "oh shit, maybe we're the baddies," the left is like, "hey, come on! political violence is bad no matter who does it. let's not make it political." But you expect the Right to say, "yeah, gee whiz! We should all feel bad." Be real about this.
Right now, in the US, we have a serious and growing problem with political violence. It is undoubtedly, without exception, overwhelmingly coming from the left. That doesn't mean it always will, but it's dumb level-1 politics to pretend it isn't Team Blue doing the bad stuff in <current year>. Yes--stop it all it's bad, and often not political but personal, but seriously take some responsibility here and admit when your team is being bad otherwise there's no way any of this will end until the real jackboot of history comes stamping down. AFAICT, that's exactly what people want.
I don't agree with the right on a lot of this stuff. I never, ever, ever jump in on any conversation about the motives of violent actors because it's rarely simple and facts are obscured and often unknown. Instead I read garbage take after garbage take meant to take a tragedy and flip it into political cash money. What I see everyone sees and now you have a whopping majority of the country that is sending out a blazing middle finger from each hand. This piece is just more level-1, low-effort, partisan proselytizing for pissing point. Blech. Be real, dude.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unrest_in_the_United_States
Well you seem to have been unable to read the words I actually wrote and just have typed out your own grievances. It's good to have an example of the problem show up in the comments.
The OKC example is particularly ironic because Jamelle Bouie went on a tear against me once because I argued that McVeigh was not a white nationalist but instead was an anarchist.
"But as long as we continue to imply that the rare person who holds an ordinary political point of view but also an extraordinary desire to impose it with violence is representative of peaceful people as well, we will all continue to contort ourselves to deny basic facts about the news that we consume every day.
"When every fact on the news has to be enlisted in part of a larger war against our political Others, of course many conservatives can’t admit that every sign points to Minnesota shooting suspect as a disgruntled right-winger. If they admit that, we are conceding a fact to the progressives, and all of reality has to be subsumed by the mission of demonizing the other side.
"This is a sickness that is preventing us from doing what we actually should be doing after these acts of political violence: coming together as a country and rejecting the notion of violence as politics by other means.
"From far left to far right, nobody holds any responsibility for acts of political violence unless they committed an act of political violence themselves; peacefully advocating for your point of view, no matter what it is, is your right as an American."
1st paragraph: rare and random people do bad things but the problem is we deny 'facts' (political talking points) from the 'news' (political agents) so we can blast The Others with the sinner label.
2nd paragraph: Ackshully conservatives do this. they're doing this now. If they were better people we could move on.
3rd paragraph: Kumbaya
4th paragraph: Stochastic terrorism isn't real, it's just crazy random people. Ignore your lying eyes!
Listen, I'm a high-road guy. I do not ever celebrate violence, or doxxing, or tit-for-tat, etc. I agree with you that a complete rejection of political violence is necessary (though insufficient) for national unity. And sure, maybe I'm projecting (I haven't read your essays for about a year--maybe you're perfectly centrist), but I'm a disaffected lefty who has been watching, listening and reading as the left became the people they disparage--30 some years of incessant demonizing. Your essay is a "Be Nice" post-it note on the filing cabinet of hate. You claim to want reconciliation but still found a way to blame conservatives. Bruh.
There were 2 U.S. Senators, both Republicans, who turned an attack by a conservative suspect into a reason to demonize liberals. I can't really make up an alternate universe of facts for this instance, but the post was not trying to align with your politics or anyone else's.
It's the failure of the Left to condemn this violence outright, to continue ratcheting up violent and intolerant rhetoric, to pretend this ongoing increasing violence is 'business as usual', to present law enforcement as more of a problem than the rise of this violence itself, to underplay and excuse and even stay silent about this violence as if it is always a kind of justified 'response' to some right wing provocation, that makes your article an extension of all of this. And that's the problem.