The Tiresome Demand to Coddle Republicans

[whitehall]

"Dame magazine"? The ironic thing is that the hypocrites who subscribe to the magazine could be indicted for using the demeaning term for women in public.

 

[CarlinAnnArbor]

The OP said it well. The republican party is now an extreme right-wing party. There do not seem to be any moderates remaining in it.

The right-wingers have always operated under the notion that they are entitled to assign every demographic group in society a "place," and all of us should be happy to stay in it, having been told by their John Wayne knock-off guys to "sit and stay" like well-trained dogs should.

The article was dead-on in pointing out that the right-wingers who took over the republican party always respond to finding out that the rest of us are, and have been, pissed off at their doings with expressions of shock and surprise. They never seem to realize that they have incurred our displeasure with their antics over a long period of time. By "our," I mean every group that they have tried to bully into submission, women, blacks, browns, LGBTs, and so many more.

Yup. Rush Limbaugh would blithely call women who wanted equal pay 'Feminazis', and that was back in the 1990s. And now they're surprised that people are finally sick of their shit and aren't going to take it any more.

That's not who he calls feminazis. And women do get equal pay for equal work.

 

[Synthaholic]

A twitter thread from Republican and War College professor Tom Nichols.


I am immobilized with a heating pad on my back, so you're all getting my Sunday night blast of ill-temper about Trump's latest attacks on Vindman and others. Bottom line: We are not required to think well of people who are still defending this. /1

This should be, in any sane country, a bipartisan moment. The President is now committing multiple impeachable offenses every day by demanding laws be broken at his command. Republicans - especially - should have cut Trump loose long ago as a matter of duty. /2

Yes, some support for Trump is "polarization." But it's also something darker: It's a party of opportunists manipulating an ignorant mass of propaganda-addled people. The GOP and its media enablers are as hollow and cynical a group as has ever existed in American politics. /3

"Polarization" implies that people give a shit about policies and ideas. I will fight all day long with @CharlesPPierce or @jentaub on the left, or @JayCaruso on the right, because we disagree about policies and visions for America. That's not this. This is something else. /4

This is what happens when a group of people whose lives are ordinary and full of normal problems spend too much time connected to an internet and a cable box that tells them their lives could be awesome but for the people in the Emerald City. An old story, with new technology. /5

What's also new is that the GOP - once called the party of ideas even by Sen. Moynihan in my lifetime - has now decided that being in power is more important than fidelity to ideas or to the Constitution itself. There is no legal or constitutional red line they respect. /6

Mass communication technology exploited by unprincipled and cynical leaders in wink-wink cahoots with foreign powers, demagogues getting rich by scaring rubes and old people, a sociopath with a cult following. This is something we once would have joined together to stop. /7

Nixon was heading for impeachment for a *fraction* of what Trump has done. Republicans know this. They once prided themselves on being the messengers to the White House that the line had been crossed. No longer. /8

But back to the main point: Our fellow citizens who affirmatively support this behavior do not deserve our understanding or our patient arguments. They are beyond this. They deserve our unyielding - and peaceful - disapproval. There is no obligation to be "understanding." /9

Their support for Trumpism should not produce shouting matches or ruined family dinners. It should produce resolute changing of the subject. Outside of family, it should lead to shunning of friends who insist on arguing over why Trump is right to smear combat veterans. /10

At some point, friendship and comity require shared values. Americans have broken friendships over early Communism, McCarthy, civil rights, Nixon, Vietnam. This was not a tragedy. It was the social opprobrium that is a sign of moral health rather than relativistic anomie. /11

This is another of those times. The President has become a raving paranoid on national television, name calling members of Congress, smearing military officers, promising secret revenge, demanding others in the govt break the law, deriding our intel and LE professionals. /12

There is no "but socialism" or "but abortion" hiccup that is acceptable. None. Republicans did not say "if we impeach Nixon the commies will roll over us and there will be abortions in the streets." They did their duty before the Constitution. The country eventually agreed. /13

I have no interest in debating anyone on why Trump's crimes are not impeachable. We all know better. Sens. Portman and Collins and Romney and yes, even McConnell, all know better. This is not a good-faith disagreement, and it never was. /14

The bright spot here is that this is not "Civil War 2.0" or a fascist movement. That would require commitment and bravery from the Trumpist inner circle. They are led by a cowardly man and they are cowards themselves. The rank and file are groupies, not activists. /15

There is no mass movement party here, no hard central corps of true believers who will advance the cause, because there is no "cause." Trumpism is about people who watch too much TV, who have shown, over three years, they have no real idea what to do with power anyway. /16

But the damage to the legitimacy and the long-term health of our institutions is now, in some cases, deep and irreversible. This will harm everyone long after this idiocy is over, except for the right wing grifters who will take their payday and skip town. /17

If you are still enthusiastically supporting Trump, your politics are morally flawed, or you are lying to yourself. More likely, you know what you're doing, and you're supporting him for the pure opportunism of using an increasingly sick man for your own parochial interests. /18

Either way, the rest of us are not obligated to respect those views, no more than we had to respect the supporters of Joe McCarthy, Father Coughlin, Huey Long, George Lincoln Rockwell, or any of the other hideous Americans who attracted a mass following. Enough is enough. /19x

 

[Synthaholic]

The first paragraph I bolded perfectly describes so many of the Trump losers on this USMB site.

 

[CarlinAnnArbor]

The first paragraph I bolded perfectly describes so many of the Trump losers on this USMB site.

The ones being coddled are the Dems who cant accept that THEY are losers. Maybe itll sink in in 2020 and theyll accept their place.

 

[Billiejeens]

The OP said it well. The republican party is now an extreme right-wing party. There do not seem to be any moderates remaining in it.

The right-wingers have always operated under the notion that they are entitled to assign every demographic group in society a "place," and all of us should be happy to stay in it, having been told by their John Wayne knock-off guys to "sit and stay" like well-trained dogs should.

The article was dead-on in pointing out that the right-wingers who took over the republican party always respond to finding out that the rest of us are, and have been, pissed off at their doings with expressions of shock and surprise. They never seem to realize that they have incurred our displeasure with their antics over a long period of time. By "our," I mean every group that they have tried to bully into submission, women, blacks, browns, LGBTs, and so many more.

Yup. Rush Limbaugh would blithely call women who wanted equal pay 'Feminazis', and that was back in the 1990s. And now they're surprised that people are finally sick of their shit and aren't going to take it any more.

That's false.

 

[Godboy]

Excellent op-ed that everyone who’s tired of whiny snowflake Republicans should read.


THE TIRESOME DEMAND TO CODDLE REPUBLICANS
The Tiresome Demand to Coddle Republicans | Dame Magazine

On Sunday evening, a stadium full of baseball fans banded together to boo Donald Trump, and chant of “Lock him up!” broke out. For a moment, for an evening, my Twitter timeline was joyous.

But in the morning came the scolds. The people who wanted to be sure to chastise the rest of us, saying that it was things like this that got Trump elected in the first place, and that he will be re-elected if they keep happening. These are the same types who, when Elizabeth Warren suggested, at the LGBTQ town hall, that those who “marriage is between one man and one woman” should just marry one person of the opposite sex, wrote plaintive op-eds reminding us that mocking people with traditional values like that will inevitably result in Trump being re-elected. You know, because there was definitely a chance in hell that anyone who feels that importantly about LGBTQ people not having rights was going to vote for a Democrat before then.

There is an element of absurdity in these pleas, considering the behavior of Trump and his followers. One can hardly imagine anyone writing a scolding op-ed to devoted Trump followers, urging them to stop sharing anti-Semitic frog memes or accusing people of running child sex rings run out of pizza parlors and be more “civil,” never mind one suggesting that Donald Trump’s lack of civility and respect for others could push people further Left. It just wouldn’t happen.

And yet, there is a strain of “wisdom” that if we are just nicer to conservatives, if we always take the high road, if we are civil, if we are more forgiving of bigotry (pardon me, “traditional beliefs”), if we are careful not to be “condescending,” if we don’t advocate for things they really don’t like or vote for people who “frighten them,” they will return the favor and be more moderate themselves. Or they won’t, and then all the nice white suburban Republican ladies will finally decide that the Republican Party has gone “too crazy” and rush into the waiting arms of the first moderate Democrat they see.


Conservatives themselves are often the first to push this sort of wisdom, and are frequently found on the internet claiming they’ve been “forced” to become racist because they were called racist by a liberal for saying a thing they did not think was racist. Like the prototypical abusive husband, they don’t want to hurt us, but we are just not good enough at walking on eggshells around them.

But here’s the problem: We’ve tried that before and it did not work. No one ever got a thank-you note and, if you will notice, John Kerry was never elected to the Oval Office. In fact, I would argue that coddling the Right for decades is what got us here.

For decades, the news media consisted of straight news, mostly centrist talk panels and right-wing talk radio/opinion shows. They would hear Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly talking about how evil and scary feminists and gay people and tree-huggers and peaceniks and immigrants and Black people were, and how they were going to ruin the country. They did not hear from any of those people. There certainly wasn’t a liberal equivalent to Rush Limbaugh, talking about how conservatives were bad people who were going to ruin the country.


Heck, in 2003, Phil Donahue was fired from “liberal” MSNBC, at the behest of “liberal” Chris Matthews, for opposing the invasion of Iraq. A memo that leaked after his firing read that network executives considered him a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” Yes. Phil Donahue—that Phil Donahue—was just “too radical” for MSNBC.

So if you were a conservative Republican in those days, you had every reason to believe that the vitriol only went one way. You hated all those sinners out there, but you didn’t ever hear directly from them, nor did you hear from them what they thought about you. They weren’t real people with thoughts and feelings like you had—they were boogeymen (and women).

One of the things I hear very often on the Right is that, from their perspective, racism was over, sexism was over, and everything was fine, everyone got along, but then all of a sudden, nothing was fine anymore. And it’s not that people weren’t discussing sexism and racism—we were—but they were not around or involved when they did. As far as they knew, from the end of the Rodney King trial to the dawn of the Black Lives Matter movement, there was no police brutality that particularly bothered anyone. After all, it wasn’t on the news.

Then social media happened, and all the conversations the Left had been having all along, in coffee shops, in college, at meetings of activist groups, at parties, in LiveJournals and blogs, were suddenly being had in full view of everyone. And it wasn’t just that people were still mad about bigotry, but that they were so much further along in their analysis and understanding of these issues than they were the last time the Right checked in. They were talking about privileges and microaggressions and intersectionality and ways people could discriminate without even knowing it. All of a sudden, as far as conservatives were concerned, people would think they were jerks if they made fun of a woman for being a “slut” or overweight. Women didn’t want to be catcalled. Trans people wanted to be treated like human beings instead of the shocking twist at the end of a Kinks song.

Liberals, they discovered, were even offended by all the things people on the Right had been saying about them all these years. That when we heard someone say something like, “Gay people cause hurricanes with their gay sex,” we did not think, “Oh, well, they just have traditional values and beliefs. Live and let live!,” and instead thought they were terrible, terrible people.

They found out that the vitriol did, indeed, go both ways. We didn’t like them any more than they liked us. We were not being tolerant of their intolerances. And that was a tough pill to swallow. And they got angry. So angry, supposedly, that they elected Trump in hopes that he would make it “OK” for them to be themselves again without any social repercussions.

More at the link.

Aww, do you need a safe space? Hilarious avatar by the way. I hope you arent using it unironicly because, that would be tremendously sad.

 

[impuretrash]

Republicans have never been coddled. Not in my lifetime. The conservative agenda has always been fighting a losing battle as far back as I can remember. We're marginalized and cast as villains. Even the most basic, fundamental principals of conservative thought like personal responsibility is portrayed by the mainstream as covert racism. This article reads to me like a sick justification for a one-party system, leftist totalitarianism.

 

[impuretrash]

Excellent op-ed that everyone who’s tired of whiny snowflake Republicans should read.


THE TIRESOME DEMAND TO CODDLE REPUBLICANS
The Tiresome Demand to Coddle Republicans | Dame Magazine

On Sunday evening, a stadium full of baseball fans banded together to boo Donald Trump, and chant of “Lock him up!” broke out. For a moment, for an evening, my Twitter timeline was joyous.

But in the morning came the scolds. The people who wanted to be sure to chastise the rest of us, saying that it was things like this that got Trump elected in the first place, and that he will be re-elected if they keep happening. These are the same types who, when Elizabeth Warren suggested, at the LGBTQ town hall, that those who “marriage is between one man and one woman” should just marry one person of the opposite sex, wrote plaintive op-eds reminding us that mocking people with traditional values like that will inevitably result in Trump being re-elected. You know, because there was definitely a chance in hell that anyone who feels that importantly about LGBTQ people not having rights was going to vote for a Democrat before then.

There is an element of absurdity in these pleas, considering the behavior of Trump and his followers. One can hardly imagine anyone writing a scolding op-ed to devoted Trump followers, urging them to stop sharing anti-Semitic frog memes or accusing people of running child sex rings run out of pizza parlors and be more “civil,” never mind one suggesting that Donald Trump’s lack of civility and respect for others could push people further Left. It just wouldn’t happen.

And yet, there is a strain of “wisdom” that if we are just nicer to conservatives, if we always take the high road, if we are civil, if we are more forgiving of bigotry (pardon me, “traditional beliefs”), if we are careful not to be “condescending,” if we don’t advocate for things they really don’t like or vote for people who “frighten them,” they will return the favor and be more moderate themselves. Or they won’t, and then all the nice white suburban Republican ladies will finally decide that the Republican Party has gone “too crazy” and rush into the waiting arms of the first moderate Democrat they see.


Conservatives themselves are often the first to push this sort of wisdom, and are frequently found on the internet claiming they’ve been “forced” to become racist because they were called racist by a liberal for saying a thing they did not think was racist. Like the prototypical abusive husband, they don’t want to hurt us, but we are just not good enough at walking on eggshells around them.

But here’s the problem: We’ve tried that before and it did not work. No one ever got a thank-you note and, if you will notice, John Kerry was never elected to the Oval Office. In fact, I would argue that coddling the Right for decades is what got us here.

For decades, the news media consisted of straight news, mostly centrist talk panels and right-wing talk radio/opinion shows. They would hear Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly talking about how evil and scary feminists and gay people and tree-huggers and peaceniks and immigrants and Black people were, and how they were going to ruin the country. They did not hear from any of those people. There certainly wasn’t a liberal equivalent to Rush Limbaugh, talking about how conservatives were bad people who were going to ruin the country.


Heck, in 2003, Phil Donahue was fired from “liberal” MSNBC, at the behest of “liberal” Chris Matthews, for opposing the invasion of Iraq. A memo that leaked after his firing read that network executives considered him a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” Yes. Phil Donahue—that Phil Donahue—was just “too radical” for MSNBC.

So if you were a conservative Republican in those days, you had every reason to believe that the vitriol only went one way. You hated all those sinners out there, but you didn’t ever hear directly from them, nor did you hear from them what they thought about you. They weren’t real people with thoughts and feelings like you had—they were boogeymen (and women).

One of the things I hear very often on the Right is that, from their perspective, racism was over, sexism was over, and everything was fine, everyone got along, but then all of a sudden, nothing was fine anymore. And it’s not that people weren’t discussing sexism and racism—we were—but they were not around or involved when they did. As far as they knew, from the end of the Rodney King trial to the dawn of the Black Lives Matter movement, there was no police brutality that particularly bothered anyone. After all, it wasn’t on the news.

Then social media happened, and all the conversations the Left had been having all along, in coffee shops, in college, at meetings of activist groups, at parties, in LiveJournals and blogs, were suddenly being had in full view of everyone. And it wasn’t just that people were still mad about bigotry, but that they were so much further along in their analysis and understanding of these issues than they were the last time the Right checked in. They were talking about privileges and microaggressions and intersectionality and ways people could discriminate without even knowing it. All of a sudden, as far as conservatives were concerned, people would think they were jerks if they made fun of a woman for being a “slut” or overweight. Women didn’t want to be catcalled. Trans people wanted to be treated like human beings instead of the shocking twist at the end of a Kinks song.

Liberals, they discovered, were even offended by all the things people on the Right had been saying about them all these years. That when we heard someone say something like, “Gay people cause hurricanes with their gay sex,” we did not think, “Oh, well, they just have traditional values and beliefs. Live and let live!,” and instead thought they were terrible, terrible people.

They found out that the vitriol did, indeed, go both ways. We didn’t like them any more than they liked us. We were not being tolerant of their intolerances. And that was a tough pill to swallow. And they got angry. So angry, supposedly, that they elected Trump in hopes that he would make it “OK” for them to be themselves again without any social repercussions.

More at the link.

Aww, do you need a safe space? Hilarious avatar by the way. I hope you arent using it unironicly because, that would be tremendously sad.

It's always a bad sign when a member uses a photo of a politician as their avatar like they're some kind of sports icon or comic book super hero.

 

[Godboy]

Excellent op-ed that everyone who’s tired of whiny snowflake Republicans should read.


THE TIRESOME DEMAND TO CODDLE REPUBLICANS
The Tiresome Demand to Coddle Republicans | Dame Magazine

On Sunday evening, a stadium full of baseball fans banded together to boo Donald Trump, and chant of “Lock him up!” broke out. For a moment, for an evening, my Twitter timeline was joyous.

But in the morning came the scolds. The people who wanted to be sure to chastise the rest of us, saying that it was things like this that got Trump elected in the first place, and that he will be re-elected if they keep happening. These are the same types who, when Elizabeth Warren suggested, at the LGBTQ town hall, that those who “marriage is between one man and one woman” should just marry one person of the opposite sex, wrote plaintive op-eds reminding us that mocking people with traditional values like that will inevitably result in Trump being re-elected. You know, because there was definitely a chance in hell that anyone who feels that importantly about LGBTQ people not having rights was going to vote for a Democrat before then.

There is an element of absurdity in these pleas, considering the behavior of Trump and his followers. One can hardly imagine anyone writing a scolding op-ed to devoted Trump followers, urging them to stop sharing anti-Semitic frog memes or accusing people of running child sex rings run out of pizza parlors and be more “civil,” never mind one suggesting that Donald Trump’s lack of civility and respect for others could push people further Left. It just wouldn’t happen.

And yet, there is a strain of “wisdom” that if we are just nicer to conservatives, if we always take the high road, if we are civil, if we are more forgiving of bigotry (pardon me, “traditional beliefs”), if we are careful not to be “condescending,” if we don’t advocate for things they really don’t like or vote for people who “frighten them,” they will return the favor and be more moderate themselves. Or they won’t, and then all the nice white suburban Republican ladies will finally decide that the Republican Party has gone “too crazy” and rush into the waiting arms of the first moderate Democrat they see.


Conservatives themselves are often the first to push this sort of wisdom, and are frequently found on the internet claiming they’ve been “forced” to become racist because they were called racist by a liberal for saying a thing they did not think was racist. Like the prototypical abusive husband, they don’t want to hurt us, but we are just not good enough at walking on eggshells around them.

But here’s the problem: We’ve tried that before and it did not work. No one ever got a thank-you note and, if you will notice, John Kerry was never elected to the Oval Office. In fact, I would argue that coddling the Right for decades is what got us here.

For decades, the news media consisted of straight news, mostly centrist talk panels and right-wing talk radio/opinion shows. They would hear Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly talking about how evil and scary feminists and gay people and tree-huggers and peaceniks and immigrants and Black people were, and how they were going to ruin the country. They did not hear from any of those people. There certainly wasn’t a liberal equivalent to Rush Limbaugh, talking about how conservatives were bad people who were going to ruin the country.


Heck, in 2003, Phil Donahue was fired from “liberal” MSNBC, at the behest of “liberal” Chris Matthews, for opposing the invasion of Iraq. A memo that leaked after his firing read that network executives considered him a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” Yes. Phil Donahue—that Phil Donahue—was just “too radical” for MSNBC.

So if you were a conservative Republican in those days, you had every reason to believe that the vitriol only went one way. You hated all those sinners out there, but you didn’t ever hear directly from them, nor did you hear from them what they thought about you. They weren’t real people with thoughts and feelings like you had—they were boogeymen (and women).

One of the things I hear very often on the Right is that, from their perspective, racism was over, sexism was over, and everything was fine, everyone got along, but then all of a sudden, nothing was fine anymore. And it’s not that people weren’t discussing sexism and racism—we were—but they were not around or involved when they did. As far as they knew, from the end of the Rodney King trial to the dawn of the Black Lives Matter movement, there was no police brutality that particularly bothered anyone. After all, it wasn’t on the news.

Then social media happened, and all the conversations the Left had been having all along, in coffee shops, in college, at meetings of activist groups, at parties, in LiveJournals and blogs, were suddenly being had in full view of everyone. And it wasn’t just that people were still mad about bigotry, but that they were so much further along in their analysis and understanding of these issues than they were the last time the Right checked in. They were talking about privileges and microaggressions and intersectionality and ways people could discriminate without even knowing it. All of a sudden, as far as conservatives were concerned, people would think they were jerks if they made fun of a woman for being a “slut” or overweight. Women didn’t want to be catcalled. Trans people wanted to be treated like human beings instead of the shocking twist at the end of a Kinks song.

Liberals, they discovered, were even offended by all the things people on the Right had been saying about them all these years. That when we heard someone say something like, “Gay people cause hurricanes with their gay sex,” we did not think, “Oh, well, they just have traditional values and beliefs. Live and let live!,” and instead thought they were terrible, terrible people.

They found out that the vitriol did, indeed, go both ways. We didn’t like them any more than they liked us. We were not being tolerant of their intolerances. And that was a tough pill to swallow. And they got angry. So angry, supposedly, that they elected Trump in hopes that he would make it “OK” for them to be themselves again without any social repercussions.

More at the link.

Aww, do you need a safe space? Hilarious avatar by the way. I hope you arent using it unironicly because, that would be tremendously sad.

It's always a bad sign when a member uses a photo of a politician as their avatar like they're some kind of sports icon or comic book super hero.

Especially when its the dumbest politician on earth.

 

[Lysistrata]

Republicans have never been coddled. Not in my lifetime. The conservative agenda has always been fighting a losing battle as far back as I can remember. We're marginalized and cast as villains. Even the most basic, fundamental principals of conservative thought like personal responsibility is portrayed by the mainstream as covert racism. This article reads to me like a sick justification for a one-party system, leftist totalitarianism.

Whatever the "conservative agenda" happens actually to be, can you people possibly go about it without involving other people in it? Please stop messing with whatever other people do or don't do and mind your own business? You people keep playing this obnoxious "stop the world, I have some to demand of you and I'll hold my breath until I turn blue!" It doesn't fly. You are marginalizing yourselves.

 

[Wyatt earp]

Republicans have never been coddled. Not in my lifetime. The conservative agenda has always been fighting a losing battle as far back as I can remember. We're marginalized and cast as villains. Even the most basic, fundamental principals of conservative thought like personal responsibility is portrayed by the mainstream as covert racism. This article reads to me like a sick justification for a one-party system, leftist totalitarianism.

Whatever the "conservative agenda" happens actually to be, can you people possibly go about it without involving other people in it? Please stop messing with whatever other people do or don't do and mind your own business? You people keep playing this obnoxious "stop the world, I have some to demand of you and I'll hold my breath until I turn blue!" It doesn't fly. You are marginalizing yourselves.

This coming from the ilk who play in the street?

 

[Leo123]

The first paragraph I bolded perfectly describes so many of the Trump losers on this USMB site.

Correction, those who support Trump are the WINNERS. Those who support Democrats are the losers.

 

[Godboy]

Republicans have never been coddled. Not in my lifetime. The conservative agenda has always been fighting a losing battle as far back as I can remember. We're marginalized and cast as villains. Even the most basic, fundamental principals of conservative thought like personal responsibility is portrayed by the mainstream as covert racism. This article reads to me like a sick justification for a one-party system, leftist totalitarianism.

Whatever the "conservative agenda" happens actually to be, can you people possibly go about it without involving other people in it? Please stop messing with whatever other people do or don't do and mind your own business? You people keep playing this obnoxious "stop the world, I have some to demand of you and I'll hold my breath until I turn blue!" It doesn't fly. You are marginalizing yourselves.

Hilarious, coming from the party of endless demands. "Dont speak at this campus... use the right pronouns... anything you say that i disagree with is hate speech, which isnt allowed anywhere... bake my gay cake or go to jail... dont wear your MAGA hat in public because its offensive and racist... believe all women... etc, etc, etc..."

Democrats are the party of demands.

 

[skews13]

Excellent op-ed that everyone who’s tired of whiny snowflake Republicans should read.


THE TIRESOME DEMAND TO CODDLE REPUBLICANS
The Tiresome Demand to Coddle Republicans | Dame Magazine

On Sunday evening, a stadium full of baseball fans banded together to boo Donald Trump, and chant of “Lock him up!” broke out. For a moment, for an evening, my Twitter timeline was joyous.

But in the morning came the scolds. The people who wanted to be sure to chastise the rest of us, saying that it was things like this that got Trump elected in the first place, and that he will be re-elected if they keep happening. These are the same types who, when Elizabeth Warren suggested, at the LGBTQ town hall, that those who “marriage is between one man and one woman” should just marry one person of the opposite sex, wrote plaintive op-eds reminding us that mocking people with traditional values like that will inevitably result in Trump being re-elected. You know, because there was definitely a chance in hell that anyone who feels that importantly about LGBTQ people not having rights was going to vote for a Democrat before then.

There is an element of absurdity in these pleas, considering the behavior of Trump and his followers. One can hardly imagine anyone writing a scolding op-ed to devoted Trump followers, urging them to stop sharing anti-Semitic frog memes or accusing people of running child sex rings run out of pizza parlors and be more “civil,” never mind one suggesting that Donald Trump’s lack of civility and respect for others could push people further Left. It just wouldn’t happen.

And yet, there is a strain of “wisdom” that if we are just nicer to conservatives, if we always take the high road, if we are civil, if we are more forgiving of bigotry (pardon me, “traditional beliefs”), if we are careful not to be “condescending,” if we don’t advocate for things they really don’t like or vote for people who “frighten them,” they will return the favor and be more moderate themselves. Or they won’t, and then all the nice white suburban Republican ladies will finally decide that the Republican Party has gone “too crazy” and rush into the waiting arms of the first moderate Democrat they see.


Conservatives themselves are often the first to push this sort of wisdom, and are frequently found on the internet claiming they’ve been “forced” to become racist because they were called racist by a liberal for saying a thing they did not think was racist. Like the prototypical abusive husband, they don’t want to hurt us, but we are just not good enough at walking on eggshells around them.

But here’s the problem: We’ve tried that before and it did not work. No one ever got a thank-you note and, if you will notice, John Kerry was never elected to the Oval Office. In fact, I would argue that coddling the Right for decades is what got us here.

For decades, the news media consisted of straight news, mostly centrist talk panels and right-wing talk radio/opinion shows. They would hear Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly talking about how evil and scary feminists and gay people and tree-huggers and peaceniks and immigrants and Black people were, and how they were going to ruin the country. They did not hear from any of those people. There certainly wasn’t a liberal equivalent to Rush Limbaugh, talking about how conservatives were bad people who were going to ruin the country.


Heck, in 2003, Phil Donahue was fired from “liberal” MSNBC, at the behest of “liberal” Chris Matthews, for opposing the invasion of Iraq. A memo that leaked after his firing read that network executives considered him a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” Yes. Phil Donahue—that Phil Donahue—was just “too radical” for MSNBC.

So if you were a conservative Republican in those days, you had every reason to believe that the vitriol only went one way. You hated all those sinners out there, but you didn’t ever hear directly from them, nor did you hear from them what they thought about you. They weren’t real people with thoughts and feelings like you had—they were boogeymen (and women).

One of the things I hear very often on the Right is that, from their perspective, racism was over, sexism was over, and everything was fine, everyone got along, but then all of a sudden, nothing was fine anymore. And it’s not that people weren’t discussing sexism and racism—we were—but they were not around or involved when they did. As far as they knew, from the end of the Rodney King trial to the dawn of the Black Lives Matter movement, there was no police brutality that particularly bothered anyone. After all, it wasn’t on the news.

Then social media happened, and all the conversations the Left had been having all along, in coffee shops, in college, at meetings of activist groups, at parties, in LiveJournals and blogs, were suddenly being had in full view of everyone. And it wasn’t just that people were still mad about bigotry, but that they were so much further along in their analysis and understanding of these issues than they were the last time the Right checked in. They were talking about privileges and microaggressions and intersectionality and ways people could discriminate without even knowing it. All of a sudden, as far as conservatives were concerned, people would think they were jerks if they made fun of a woman for being a “slut” or overweight. Women didn’t want to be catcalled. Trans people wanted to be treated like human beings instead of the shocking twist at the end of a Kinks song.

Liberals, they discovered, were even offended by all the things people on the Right had been saying about them all these years. That when we heard someone say something like, “Gay people cause hurricanes with their gay sex,” we did not think, “Oh, well, they just have traditional values and beliefs. Live and let live!,” and instead thought they were terrible, terrible people.

They found out that the vitriol did, indeed, go both ways. We didn’t like them any more than they liked us. We were not being tolerant of their intolerances. And that was a tough pill to swallow. And they got angry. So angry, supposedly, that they elected Trump in hopes that he would make it “OK” for them to be themselves again without any social repercussions.

More at the link.

There certainly wasn’t a liberal equivalent to Rush Limbaugh, talking about how conservatives were bad people who were going to ruin the country.

Which is what happened.

 

[Leo123]

There certainly wasn’t a liberal equivalent to Rush Limbaugh, talking about how conservatives were bad people who were going to ruin the country.

Which is what happened.

Before Rush Limbaugh, there was the MSM who constantly bashed anyone or anything conservative. Rush was a counterpoint to the left-biased media. That's why the tell you not to listen to him.

 

[Synthaholic]

Excellent op-ed that everyone who’s tired of whiny snowflake Republicans should read.


THE TIRESOME DEMAND TO CODDLE REPUBLICANS
The Tiresome Demand to Coddle Republicans | Dame Magazine

On Sunday evening, a stadium full of baseball fans banded together to boo Donald Trump, and chant of “Lock him up!” broke out. For a moment, for an evening, my Twitter timeline was joyous.

But in the morning came the scolds. The people who wanted to be sure to chastise the rest of us, saying that it was things like this that got Trump elected in the first place, and that he will be re-elected if they keep happening. These are the same types who, when Elizabeth Warren suggested, at the LGBTQ town hall, that those who “marriage is between one man and one woman” should just marry one person of the opposite sex, wrote plaintive op-eds reminding us that mocking people with traditional values like that will inevitably result in Trump being re-elected. You know, because there was definitely a chance in hell that anyone who feels that importantly about LGBTQ people not having rights was going to vote for a Democrat before then.

There is an element of absurdity in these pleas, considering the behavior of Trump and his followers. One can hardly imagine anyone writing a scolding op-ed to devoted Trump followers, urging them to stop sharing anti-Semitic frog memes or accusing people of running child sex rings run out of pizza parlors and be more “civil,” never mind one suggesting that Donald Trump’s lack of civility and respect for others could push people further Left. It just wouldn’t happen.

And yet, there is a strain of “wisdom” that if we are just nicer to conservatives, if we always take the high road, if we are civil, if we are more forgiving of bigotry (pardon me, “traditional beliefs”), if we are careful not to be “condescending,” if we don’t advocate for things they really don’t like or vote for people who “frighten them,” they will return the favor and be more moderate themselves. Or they won’t, and then all the nice white suburban Republican ladies will finally decide that the Republican Party has gone “too crazy” and rush into the waiting arms of the first moderate Democrat they see.


Conservatives themselves are often the first to push this sort of wisdom, and are frequently found on the internet claiming they’ve been “forced” to become racist because they were called racist by a liberal for saying a thing they did not think was racist. Like the prototypical abusive husband, they don’t want to hurt us, but we are just not good enough at walking on eggshells around them.

But here’s the problem: We’ve tried that before and it did not work. No one ever got a thank-you note and, if you will notice, John Kerry was never elected to the Oval Office. In fact, I would argue that coddling the Right for decades is what got us here.

For decades, the news media consisted of straight news, mostly centrist talk panels and right-wing talk radio/opinion shows. They would hear Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly talking about how evil and scary feminists and gay people and tree-huggers and peaceniks and immigrants and Black people were, and how they were going to ruin the country. They did not hear from any of those people. There certainly wasn’t a liberal equivalent to Rush Limbaugh, talking about how conservatives were bad people who were going to ruin the country.


Heck, in 2003, Phil Donahue was fired from “liberal” MSNBC, at the behest of “liberal” Chris Matthews, for opposing the invasion of Iraq. A memo that leaked after his firing read that network executives considered him a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” Yes. Phil Donahue—that Phil Donahue—was just “too radical” for MSNBC.

So if you were a conservative Republican in those days, you had every reason to believe that the vitriol only went one way. You hated all those sinners out there, but you didn’t ever hear directly from them, nor did you hear from them what they thought about you. They weren’t real people with thoughts and feelings like you had—they were boogeymen (and women).

One of the things I hear very often on the Right is that, from their perspective, racism was over, sexism was over, and everything was fine, everyone got along, but then all of a sudden, nothing was fine anymore. And it’s not that people weren’t discussing sexism and racism—we were—but they were not around or involved when they did. As far as they knew, from the end of the Rodney King trial to the dawn of the Black Lives Matter movement, there was no police brutality that particularly bothered anyone. After all, it wasn’t on the news.

Then social media happened, and all the conversations the Left had been having all along, in coffee shops, in college, at meetings of activist groups, at parties, in LiveJournals and blogs, were suddenly being had in full view of everyone. And it wasn’t just that people were still mad about bigotry, but that they were so much further along in their analysis and understanding of these issues than they were the last time the Right checked in. They were talking about privileges and microaggressions and intersectionality and ways people could discriminate without even knowing it. All of a sudden, as far as conservatives were concerned, people would think they were jerks if they made fun of a woman for being a “slut” or overweight. Women didn’t want to be catcalled. Trans people wanted to be treated like human beings instead of the shocking twist at the end of a Kinks song.

Liberals, they discovered, were even offended by all the things people on the Right had been saying about them all these years. That when we heard someone say something like, “Gay people cause hurricanes with their gay sex,” we did not think, “Oh, well, they just have traditional values and beliefs. Live and let live!,” and instead thought they were terrible, terrible people.

They found out that the vitriol did, indeed, go both ways. We didn’t like them any more than they liked us. We were not being tolerant of their intolerances. And that was a tough pill to swallow. And they got angry. So angry, supposedly, that they elected Trump in hopes that he would make it “OK” for them to be themselves again without any social repercussions.

More at the link.

Aww, do you need a safe space? Hilarious avatar by the way. I hope you arent using it unironicly because, that would be tremendously sad.

Name the House Republican who is smarter than she is. You have Louie Gohmert and Ted Yoho and Virginia Foxx, so STFU.

 

[Godboy]

Excellent op-ed that everyone who’s tired of whiny snowflake Republicans should read.


THE TIRESOME DEMAND TO CODDLE REPUBLICANS
The Tiresome Demand to Coddle Republicans | Dame Magazine

On Sunday evening, a stadium full of baseball fans banded together to boo Donald Trump, and chant of “Lock him up!” broke out. For a moment, for an evening, my Twitter timeline was joyous.

But in the morning came the scolds. The people who wanted to be sure to chastise the rest of us, saying that it was things like this that got Trump elected in the first place, and that he will be re-elected if they keep happening. These are the same types who, when Elizabeth Warren suggested, at the LGBTQ town hall, that those who “marriage is between one man and one woman” should just marry one person of the opposite sex, wrote plaintive op-eds reminding us that mocking people with traditional values like that will inevitably result in Trump being re-elected. You know, because there was definitely a chance in hell that anyone who feels that importantly about LGBTQ people not having rights was going to vote for a Democrat before then.

There is an element of absurdity in these pleas, considering the behavior of Trump and his followers. One can hardly imagine anyone writing a scolding op-ed to devoted Trump followers, urging them to stop sharing anti-Semitic frog memes or accusing people of running child sex rings run out of pizza parlors and be more “civil,” never mind one suggesting that Donald Trump’s lack of civility and respect for others could push people further Left. It just wouldn’t happen.

And yet, there is a strain of “wisdom” that if we are just nicer to conservatives, if we always take the high road, if we are civil, if we are more forgiving of bigotry (pardon me, “traditional beliefs”), if we are careful not to be “condescending,” if we don’t advocate for things they really don’t like or vote for people who “frighten them,” they will return the favor and be more moderate themselves. Or they won’t, and then all the nice white suburban Republican ladies will finally decide that the Republican Party has gone “too crazy” and rush into the waiting arms of the first moderate Democrat they see.


Conservatives themselves are often the first to push this sort of wisdom, and are frequently found on the internet claiming they’ve been “forced” to become racist because they were called racist by a liberal for saying a thing they did not think was racist. Like the prototypical abusive husband, they don’t want to hurt us, but we are just not good enough at walking on eggshells around them.

But here’s the problem: We’ve tried that before and it did not work. No one ever got a thank-you note and, if you will notice, John Kerry was never elected to the Oval Office. In fact, I would argue that coddling the Right for decades is what got us here.

For decades, the news media consisted of straight news, mostly centrist talk panels and right-wing talk radio/opinion shows. They would hear Rush Limbaugh or Bill O’Reilly talking about how evil and scary feminists and gay people and tree-huggers and peaceniks and immigrants and Black people were, and how they were going to ruin the country. They did not hear from any of those people. There certainly wasn’t a liberal equivalent to Rush Limbaugh, talking about how conservatives were bad people who were going to ruin the country.


Heck, in 2003, Phil Donahue was fired from “liberal” MSNBC, at the behest of “liberal” Chris Matthews, for opposing the invasion of Iraq. A memo that leaked after his firing read that network executives considered him a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” Yes. Phil Donahue—that Phil Donahue—was just “too radical” for MSNBC.

So if you were a conservative Republican in those days, you had every reason to believe that the vitriol only went one way. You hated all those sinners out there, but you didn’t ever hear directly from them, nor did you hear from them what they thought about you. They weren’t real people with thoughts and feelings like you had—they were boogeymen (and women).

One of the things I hear very often on the Right is that, from their perspective, racism was over, sexism was over, and everything was fine, everyone got along, but then all of a sudden, nothing was fine anymore. And it’s not that people weren’t discussing sexism and racism—we were—but they were not around or involved when they did. As far as they knew, from the end of the Rodney King trial to the dawn of the Black Lives Matter movement, there was no police brutality that particularly bothered anyone. After all, it wasn’t on the news.

Then social media happened, and all the conversations the Left had been having all along, in coffee shops, in college, at meetings of activist groups, at parties, in LiveJournals and blogs, were suddenly being had in full view of everyone. And it wasn’t just that people were still mad about bigotry, but that they were so much further along in their analysis and understanding of these issues than they were the last time the Right checked in. They were talking about privileges and microaggressions and intersectionality and ways people could discriminate without even knowing it. All of a sudden, as far as conservatives were concerned, people would think they were jerks if they made fun of a woman for being a “slut” or overweight. Women didn’t want to be catcalled. Trans people wanted to be treated like human beings instead of the shocking twist at the end of a Kinks song.

Liberals, they discovered, were even offended by all the things people on the Right had been saying about them all these years. That when we heard someone say something like, “Gay people cause hurricanes with their gay sex,” we did not think, “Oh, well, they just have traditional values and beliefs. Live and let live!,” and instead thought they were terrible, terrible people.

They found out that the vitriol did, indeed, go both ways. We didn’t like them any more than they liked us. We were not being tolerant of their intolerances. And that was a tough pill to swallow. And they got angry. So angry, supposedly, that they elected Trump in hopes that he would make it “OK” for them to be themselves again without any social repercussions.

More at the link.

Aww, do you need a safe space? Hilarious avatar by the way. I hope you arent using it unironicly because, that would be tremendously sad.

Name the House Republican who is smarter than she is. You have Louie Gohmert and Ted Yoho and Virginia Foxx, so STFU.

Um, literally everyone is smarter than her. Even your boy who thinks Guam is going to tip over, is smarter than her.

 

[Synthaholic]

 

[CarlinAnnArbor]

President Trump grows more powerful with each new phoney indictment You're too filled with rabid TDS to see