by liberal japonicus
An open thread to allow you to talk about the current political mess(es). CNN posted this article “Kamala Harris has a five-word response to the Comey indictment“, but I’ll be damned if I can find the 5 words, though I suppose it is possible that it is the phrase that begins “are you…” I was kinda wishing she had said “I f**kin’ told you so”.
I haven’t commented much on Trump because I thought everyone here was pretty much in agreement that he is a self-absorbed, narcissistic, immoral, unethical boofun running roughshod over the law, the Constitution, and people’s lives.
I haven’t commented much on Trump because I thought everyone here was pretty much in agreement…
Pretty much sums it up. I appreciate your comments about what a sane immigration policy would look like as well.
Common ground, y’all!
And I appreciate your grace in receiving the occasional pile on. It ain’t always fun being the minority voice.
Leslie plucks a small bit out of Gay’s essay (the full essay (from a facebook friend) is at
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/opinion/civility-fantasy-power-kirk.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ok8.2ekW.yooo9wXkJKQX
but seems to have missed the first paragraph
After encouraging podcast listeners of the recently deceased Charlie Kirk to become online vigilantes in search of anyone “celebrating” Mr. Kirk’s death, Vice President JD Vance said last week: “We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility. And there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”
Vance was doing what conservatives often do — conjuring people up so his followers have someone specific to foment against. This brand of demagoguery is incredibly dangerous, because when informally deputized vigilantes realize that few real enemies exist, they accept any substitute. They direct their manufactured ire toward innocent people, marginalized groups and, eventually, one another.
I’m curious if Leslie thinks Vance (and others) are practicing ‘civility’ by making claims that a large portion of the left was somehow celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death. It seems to me that civility has to start with some sort of acceptance of reality, not creating a false one and then demanding that everyone kowtow to that.
Gay also gets a shot in at Klein when she writes; In the fantasy of civility, if we are polite about our disagreements, we are practicing politics the right way. If we are polite when we express bigotry, we are performing respectability for people whom we do not actually respect and who, in return, do not respect us. The performance is the only thing that matters. Ouch.
A couple more paragraphs
And the notion of two groups— civil and not — is predicated on the idea that we’re all playing by the same rules, and we’re standing on equal footing, untroubled by the inequities and bigotries of the world. As I said, civility is a fantasy, because our political discourse never happens in a vacuum. It happens in the beautiful mess of the real world. It is naïve, at best, to believe civility is more important than who we are, what we stand for and how.
and these two
Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control.
Civility is wielded as a cudgel to further clarify the differences between “us” and “them.” It is the demand of people with thin skin who don’t want their delicate egos and impoverished ideas challenged. And it is a tool of fearful leaders, clinging to power with desperate, sweaty hands, thrilled at the ways they are forcing people, corporations and even other nations to bend to their will but terrified at what will happen when it all slips away.
Good stuff, and I recommend her book ‘Bad Feminist’. Her TED talk is here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxt_MZKMdes
Thanks russell.
Charles, the thing that puzzles me at least, is that if that is what you think of Trump, how is it possible for you to lament the protests outside the ICE place in “war-ravaged” Portland without putting them in the context of what Trump has empowered ICE to do nationwide, which they are enthusiastically and in many cases illegally doing, in defiance of the states’ wishes? And, as a side note, how come you are just accepting the “evidence” of people like honeybadgermom? If Trump is what you say we all agree he is (I myself would add several adjectives, particularly “corrupt”), why are you prepared to so staunchly defend some of the consequences of his actions, even when they conflict with principles you have always said you support?
Following on russell’s comment, I’m going to talk Carl Schmitt again. I know I’ve written some of this before, but that’s all in the archive now, so here it is again for the new site.
I get why russell says that civility is no longer on offer. US conservatism has taken a hard turn into political theology (as described by Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political) since 9/11. Schmitt was very concerned with the concept of sovereignty and where the authority to govern resides. For him the sovereign is the person, or entity, that is authorized by the people to make the distinction between friend and enemy, and decide who is or is not a part of the people when conflicts become existential – the State of Exception. I see this political theology deeply reflected in pretty much everything that the Roberts court has given us. They are always thinking about executive sovereignty and crises.
Civility is not on offer because the base of the GOP has decided that Democrats, and Democratic voting states, are on the enemy side of the friend/enemy distinction. If you doubt this, just look at what Vance has said about the shutdown. He says that the Democrats are “holding the American people hostage.” That literally puts Democratic officials – and all the Americans who elected those officials – on the side of the enemy with which the GOP will not negotiate.
The GOP and their core voters do not see this as a political disagreement to be negotiated over. They see Democrats as the enemies of America, to be expelled or subdued in the name of The People.
WTF are we supposed to do with that?
Charles, as someone who has been (understandably) piled on, you certainly have my sympathy. But I pay you the compliment of hoping and believing you don’t mind an ongoing conversation, question and answer etc, and I hope you take it that way. I find your ongoing explanations and glosses valuable too.
lj, my reading of that Leslie piece was that he was in not implying that Vance is in any way at all “practising civility”. He seems to make this pretty clear when he says:
So – cancel culture is bad, but if you see someone posting a dumb tweet about Kirk, it’s your patriotic duty to get them fired. This is before we get to the absurdity of claiming to believe in civility while acting as head boy to a president who glories in insulting opponents and using the f-word. You might suspect Vance of self-parody if he weren’t so joyless.
Sorry if the formatting made any of it unclear, I’m finding the inability to proofread before posting, and uncertainty about the new rules etc, inhibiting when copying and pasting. Hopefully, some of that will get better.
By the way I was fascinated by your concept of people arguing a position which they do not have a stake in. Who would make the decision about what commenters’ stakes in their various arguments were, and therefore which were permissible? I was thinking for example of myself: a white, upper-middle class British woman from a reasonably privileged background. Someone who did not know my background (parents who left a successful and privileged life in South Africa in the 50s with very little money because of their opposition to apartheid) might wonder why I am so concerned with racial inequality, what my “stake” in it is. (In fact, in DC in the 70s, I was much more interested in racial discrimination than some of the black Republicans I met.) How on earth would one know unless told, and why would there need to be an background check? Surely people are allowed principles which do not have an easily explicable origin story?
nous, the “GOP and their core voters” and their base, and MAGAs, are clearly not available for civil discussion, and maybe they never will be. But some soi-disant conservatives, and not just outliers like wj, are, and maybe eventually the public discourse, Overton Window etc will shift back somewhat (when healthcare disappears from millions perhaps?), and the habits of civility will be useful among larger populations. One can hope, and try to keep the home fires burning….
Charles, the thing that puzzles me at least, is that if that is what you think of Trump, how is it possible for you to lament the protests outside the ICE place in “war-ravaged” Portland…
Two wrongs don’t make a right. The protesters are unlikely to have any positive influence on anyone who counts, especially the Trump administration. The protests are more likely to be counterproductive, especially with the locals who are sick of the months and years of chaos in their lives.
And, as a side note, how come you are just accepting the “evidence” of people like honeybadgermom?
I’ve seen videos from several sources showing protestors engaging in bad behavior. Assaulting individuals. Throwing objects and fireworks at ICE personnel. Damaging property. People have the right to protest. They don’t have the right to break the law.
…why are you prepared to so staunchly defend some of the consequences of his actions, even when they conflict with principles you have always said you support?
I’m at a loss as to which consequences I have staunchly defended.
russell 5:02 pm: First, “antifa” and the related term “radical left” have become so vague as to be almost meaningless. […]
Here’s another breakdown of the protestors.
“Members of the anti-ICE crowd in Portland can be divided into one of four main categories. There is some overlap – rioters fitting into more than one group – but these categories encompass nearly everyone there.”
Brandi Kruse
…the base of the GOP has decided that Democrats, and Democratic voting states, are on the enemy side of the friend/enemy distinction.
I’ve decided that Trump-enabling Republicans, which is most of them, are the enemy of humanity in general, and the United States in particular. So you could “both sides” that one.
But I see no reason to be uncivil.
__
I am anti-fascist.
Pro Bono – But I see no reason to be uncivil.
That’s because you are seeing Republicans as people who have a different worldview and position, and trying to understand them in order to live with them as a part of your community. That’s not the way that the core of the GOP thinks about Democrats. To them we are not Americans with a different point of view that must be negotiated. To them we are not really Americans, and their job is to protect America from us.
I’m not saying we should be uncivil to them. I’m saying that we fall outside of their view of what counts as civitas.
Sure, Leslie isn’t implying that. But since Gay starts her essay with Vance’s demand for civility, don’t you think it is a bit disingenuous to summarize Gay’s argument by not even noting that? Unfortunately, he starts off by taking issue with Gay in order to valorize civility when Gay places it in a particular context.
I found what is close to a transcript of Gay’s TED talk here
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/02/bad-feminist-roxane-gay-extract
About stakes, I think it is worthwhile to work from cases we might all agree with and then move out to edge cases where we have to tease out things. So, a case that might serve would be the weaponization of anti-antisemitism. While I’m thinking of the Trump administration going after universities because of a claimed failure in dealing with antiseminism. I think, if you look at this in hindsight, you can draw a line to the antisemitism accusations against Labour and Corbyn. It doesn’t absolve anyone from charges of anti-semitism, but recognizing that many of the people who are baying for blood have absolutely no stake in it, except as a way to undercut their political opposition is essentially a question of ‘stakes’. Going back to civility, if the accusations were being made by a person who actually acknowledged how much their stake is, I think we would have some foundation for civility. But when it is done by someone who has no ‘stake’ in the issue, it means that civility is a sham.
I won’t bring up recent events here, except to say that when someone drops in to specifically set people against each other, that is not linked to any definition of civility in my dictionary, and it would suggest that the person would argue the opposite side if they thought it would achieve their aims.
There is also the problem of fighting distant problems while turning a blind eye to problems closer to home. Chinese must feel this happens when they see people going on about Uyghur and Taiwan, or the usual suspects complaining about how women are treated in Islamic countries. These problems definitely exist, but looking at who has a ‘stake’ in it can be relevatory.
I’ve been reading the Memoranda of Conversations in the run up to Nixon going to China. Basically, Kissinger was throwing Taiwan under the bus in order to achieve a rapproachment with China
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v17/d139
Now, Nixon had to take all this back to Congress and the China Lobby basically took out a lot of these things. Understanding US history and politics can make this understandable, but when viewed from the Chinese side, it seems like Taiwan is not something that the US is interested in unless it is a way to undercut China. I don’t suggest that we cede Taiwan to China, though I’m not sure how far the US should go in defending it (cf Ukraine), but it reveals, at least to me, that people who make Taiwan their key point in opposing China are perhaps responding to prejudices they have about China rather than considering the actual history and circumstances.
If I were to speak to your particular situation, I’d need to have a pan-opticon view of your exchanges and ideas and the context of those, so yes, in the absence of having complete knowledge of that, one has to grant people principles that they feel they hold deeply. To transpose your example, Australians have been at the forefront of anti-racism efforts and the efforts by individual Australians, such as Peter Norman. But when politicians argue that somehow they, by being members of an Australian polity, are somehow anti racist, that seems a bit strained, not only given Australia’s problems of race relations, but also in regard to specific policies and programs. Those principles can and should be examined to reveal places where they might not match up with other principles brought forward. And if those become the topic of conversation among individuals, folks should give the respondent the time and space to make their case, something that is not always easy or even possible. But rather than pretend that we will reach agreement, I think civility demands that we accept that there are going to be points that we just disagree on. Fortunately, we are all works in progress and we do have the possibility of change so ideally, in an environment that has civility, people will be able to change. However, if civility carries the demand that we have to reach agreement, it is, as Gay points out, performative.
Not quite Russell-esque in length and certainly not in content, but we do our best.
But since Gay starts her essay with Vance’s demand for civility, don’t you think it is a bit disingenuous to summarize Gay’s argument by not even noting that?
Oh, it seemed clear to me that after starting with a denunciation of Vance’s hypocrisy and cosplay of civility, when Leslie goes on to talk about Gay and says Last week the academic and essayist Roxane Gay denounced Vance’s words in a column for the New York Times. She didn’t just criticise his double standards; she denounced the idea of civility itself, calling it “a fantasy”. (my bold) that he is absolutely noting that.
But anyway, textual analysis aside, your points about stakes seem worrying to me. People’s biases seem relevant, and if one has no history with someone one can tease them out in argument and discussion, but “stake” seems to imply a personal involvement versus a principled position. Actually, that makes me realise I’m not sure what you mean by stake. Do you mean personal involvement or history with the issue? For example, when you mention “the usual suspects complaining about how women are treated in Islamic countries”, (I’m assuming e.g. Afghanistan for the purpose of this conversation) who do you think needs a “stake” (and if so, what sort) to complain about it? If you mean that some people are complaining about it who are perfectly OK with women being treated poorly in countries they support, that hypocrisy is easy enough to bring up in the argument, isn’t it?
i>But rather than pretend that we will reach agreement, I think civility demands that we accept that there are going to be points that we just disagree on
I completely agree with you on this. In fact, the possibility that “civility carries the demand that we have to reach agreement” seems to me absurd; I have certainly never heard of it, or meant it.
But rather than pretend that we will reach agreement, I think civility demands that we accept that there are going to be points that we just disagree on
Sorry, the penultimate paragraph was supposed to be a clear quotation!
About stakes, we all have our individual ones. A lot of people seem to have a stake in the I/P conflict that demands they support Israel, but if examined closely, that crumbles. And if one has discussions about this, it’s a point to consider.
But I also think of the phrase ‘it’s not always about you’. People are influenced by not only their past, but also to lots of other things that are happening in their life. People also hold positions on lots of things that they don’t directly affect them. My feeling is that if that is the case, they need to be careful to make sure that their arguments can be checked for their logic and their facts can be verified. Charles posting about the Portland ICE facility reveals that the damage happened in June, before Operation Overpriced Kombucha was even an unformed notion in the Dear Leader’s mind seems like one of those things that people can be doubtful as to what it represents. It could be said that I am being uncivil in pointing this out, but I think Charles has enough of a record lauding libertarian ideals of taking the government out of everything that one has to wonder when he applauds unrequested military intervention to protect 4 month old broken doors.
In the example of Afghanistan (and other Islamic countries), a lot of justification of confronting those countries is based on their approach to the rights of women. And if one has that as a main focus or even an important focus, that’s fine. But when you have people using that as a justification for intervention, if they don’t examine their motivations, they can’t be surprised if someone else does it for them, perhaps unfairly. The answer to me is [the generic] you need to examine your motivations and set them out or have it done for you.
In Afghanistan, for example, consider how Trump signed the withdrawal in May 2020 and ordered a RIF down to 2,500 5 days before Biden’s inauguration. Biden carried it out and was accused of neglecting the rights of women, like in this Heritage Foundation piece by Anthony Kim
https://www.heritage.org/middle-east/commentary/the-tragic-betrayal-afghan-women-year-after-bidens-botched-troop-withdrawal
There were some on the left who complained about this, and I’d take what they said seriously. But when conservatives who supported Trump come up with that, really?
Now, Anthony is not here, but if he were, couldn’t we wonder about his other positions and how they mesh? And do we serve civility by pretending to take all his comments at face value?
This is one reason I’m so noisy about providing links rather than ‘I read this on X and [opining]’ I realize that not everyone has time to do this, and information has gotten a lot more diffuse so it can sometimes be impossible to reference something seen in passing, but that should demand a lighter touch in presenting it as evidence, imho.
Are we there yet?
https://outsidethebeltway.com/has-the-constitution-failed/
Are we really to get our panties in a bunch based on the (cherry picked) actions of a small number of anti-fascist demonstrators? THEY ARE NOT THE ONES STEALING OUR LIBERTY!!!!
jfc
In the example of Afghanistan (and other Islamic countries), a lot of justification of confronting those countries is based on their approach to the rights of women.
And yet somehow that kind of confrontation never seems to get applied to Saudi Arabia. Which, be it noted, has a worse recond on the subject than any other Islamic country (with the possible exception of Afghanistan).
Making Iran under the mullahs, for example, look like a bastion of liberalism is no mean feat. But the Saudis manage it. With impunity.
Here’s another breakdown of the protestors.
Seems sort of accurate.
I was glad to see the “outcasts” included because they are almost always part of the mix. A lot of them have serious mental and psychological issues. They include folks like the guy that Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed for the crime of throwing a bag at him.
Geriatrics are much easier (and less negatively) to explain than Kruse’s characterization – they (i.e., we) show up because we’re retired and don’t have jobs and kids to deal with. Which is to say, we have the time.
Kruse describes folks affected by ICE activity as “out for retribution”, which strikes me as wrong. I wonder if she actually knows anyone, or has talked with anyone, who has actually been affected – had friends or family members incarcerated or deported. In my experience they just want to bear witness to their own experience, they aren’t out to “get” anybody.
Kruse’s characterization of antifa seems extreme, even a bit cartoonish. “They all dress in black and will kill to suppress dissenting views” – again, I have to ask if she has ever actually been around real live antifa or antifa-adjacent people. Some fit the strict definition of domestic terrorism as defined in US law, some don’t. And “domestic terrorism” is a very dangerous label to toss around in the current climate.
To the degree that I understand it, at its heart antifa are people who believe many hard core right wingers are fascists and are violent and unreasoning people, who will not respect the law and institutions of governance and so must be met with force. It’s not an approach I agree with or support – I think they are basically poking the bear and giving Trump et al an excuse to double down. But neither are they completely wrong about their opponents.
Stakes:
I attend two churches pretty regularly. One is an Episcopal church whose congregation is about 60% Latino. They hold two services a week, one in English, one in Spanish, with a bilingual service once a month. The other is a UU church that has a significant population of gays as well as some trans people. We just hired a minister who is a lesbian.
I live in a very white bread town that is adjacent to towns with sizeable immigrant populations. Dominecan Republic, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Haiti, Russia and Eastern Europe, Ireland. When I say “adjacent” I mean these towns are within 2 or 3 miles of my home. The city of Salem is literally around the corner from me. Most of my daily is in and around Salem, which is about 15% Dominican. I contribute to and have volunteered at a local food bank whose clientele is primarily immigrants.
I make a somewhat haphazard but continual effort to follow a spiritual path that is very much centered on concern for less privileged people – the poor, immigrants, outcasts of any type. By “haphazard” I mean I’m not great at it, mostly because I am temperentally irascible, judgemental, impatient, and have a kind of restless and unruly mind. Nonetheless, I cannot escape the overwhelming and consistent message that god, whoever and whatever that personage is, loves everyone but really really really cherishes and champions less fortunate people.
I often wonder what judgement this country is storing up for itself. Not in the sense of some kind of supreme being throwing bolts of lightning at us, but just in the sense of karma. I really do believe we will pay a price for the crap that is going on here right now.
Ultimately, for me it comes down to a really simple thing – we are obliged to treat other people as fellow human beings, deserving of respect and consideration. “Obliged” not necessarily for some religious or spiritual motivation, but just freaking because. Because there they are, a person like yourself. Treat them as you would be treated, at minimum.
So that’s where I’m at with all of this. I spend a lot of time spinning my mental and emotional wheels trying to understand how to live in this moment. I really don’t know where it’s all gonna lead.
I appreciate having ObWi as a place to vent and work through my own thoughts about all of it. And I appreciate all of your forbearance while I think out loud, at length. Mental flailing, but I’m grateful to have a venue for it.
About a decade and a half ago, I used to pursue and comment on a form similar to this one. One of the regular participants would occasionally cross the line with ad hominem attacks, insults, and general nastiness. When called to task, he would complain bitterly about the Civility Brigade.
bobbyp – I read your link and I will admit that I have thought the same thing about our situation more than once.
I think that the constitution could be saved, but it would take another Lincoln or FDR to do it, and a lot of pushing through structural changes to shore up the weakest parts that are making it so hard to prevent the willful vandalism and disregard of the rule of law. I don’t think that their critics are wrong to say that they used extra-constitutional means to achieve their ends, but part of their end in both cases was not just to preserve the union, but to preserve the constitution and keep continuity of government.
Of course both ended up having their work undone, and here we are again.
My fear is that this time the current GOP will force a suspension of the constitution and turn tyrant with the intent of undoing the constitution and replacing it with a Christian Nationalist authoritarian government. If so, then I don’t know how the union is going to hold.
The Nazis never officially abolished or even changed the Weimar constitution. Elections still took place (with of course only one party on the ballot) etc.
Hitler ruled through the Enabling Act of 1933. Although this law was in violation of the constitution, it was passed (like its lesser known pre-Hitler predecessors) with majorities that would have been sufficient to change the constitution itself, so legal theory at the time considered such laws as legitimate.
In the US SCOTUS has in essence declared that Nixon’s ‘if the president does it, it means it is not illegal’ is the law of the land (of course with the stated caveat that SCOTUS can and will revoke the doctrine the moment POTUS is not of the ‘movement’*) and also made clear that it sees itself as the Vaticanum I pope free to ignore any tradition or holy scripture based on ‘because I say so’**. No need to change the quaint piece of paper. Btw the Bible His Orangeness promotes and that Oklahoma has just made a mandatory school textbook leaves out most of the amendments with the given reason that those were not approved by the founders themselves and are thus of no interest.
*when I hear that, it automatically triggers original Nazi soundbytes about the “Bewegung”
**this included an official interpretation that the pope could order people to commit sins because obedience to the pope was more important than abstaining from sinning.
Oh, I forgot the ‘clear and present danger’ doctrine that Hitler invoked after the ‘Night of the long Knives’ and that has also been a tool of abuse by US governments.
That’s because you are seeing Republicans as people who have a different worldview and position, and trying to understand them in order to live with them as a part of your community. That’s not the way that the core of the GOP thinks about Democrats. To them we are not Americans with a different point of view that must be negotiated. To them we are not really Americans, and their job is to protect America from us.
Trump is evil, and Republicans who enable his malevolence are evil-doers. There is no room for compromise on this.
When I speak of civility, I do not mean that we should not speak frankly about what is wrong. I mean that people who do wrong are people nonetheless.
I disagree profoundly with Anthony Kennedy when he says that the Supreme Court minority should be more respectful in dissenting against the fascist-enabling majority’s patently wrong rulings. I think the minority has shown remarkable restraint, which I would wish to emulate, while stating plainly what is right.
I’ve read a good bit of Gay, (my daughter recommended her book Bad Feminist which led me to her other books) but Ian Leslie wasn’t a name that I was familiar with. However, it was niggling at the back of my mind about their backgrounds. I see that Leslie is a British author who was originally “communication strategist for some of the world’s biggest brands, at ad agencies in London and New York; he still advises companies on workplace culture and strategic communication” https://ian-leslie.com/about/
He also has just come out with a book titled Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together. I haven’t read that, but his wikipedia bio says “The second half of the book is devoted to ten “rules of productive argument”, which Leslie deduces from encounters with specialists in interrogation and hostage negotiation,” which has me wonder if he considers civility a useful ruse in order to get to an outcome you want. Which is obviously something you want to do if you are negotiating with a hostage taker, (and that might be a good description of a lot of the right), but it’s not really a ringing endorsement for civility.
On the other hand Gay is a second generation Haitian-American, so I’m marvelling a bit at a white British writer who was a corporate communication strategist telling a Haitian American, in Oct 2025 after an election where Haitians in the US legally were accused of eating pets, that she’s wrong about civility. Perhaps Leslie is blissfully unaware of Gay’s ancestry, but I am not, and I think it should be noted.
I get the same vibe from the earlier Klein-Coates interview. Klein is wondering how it can be possible that these ideals of respect for others humanity can be so debased and Coates says well, welcome to Black America. Maybe I’m being too hard on both Leslie and Klein, but that’s where I’m sitting now.
Nous and Pro Bono are having a much more interesting conversation about what shape post Trump America could take if it were to avoid running off the cliff and with that in mind, these two LGM posts from Dan Nexon and Paul Campos are worth your time.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/10/is-our-constitution-learning
and
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/10/notes-for-next-time-2
I especially appreciate the gallows humor in the title of Campos’ post.
…thought I’d pass this on to those of you who like to assess our current political travails in light of wider themes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/opinion/west-europe-america-lost.html?unlocked_article_code=1.rE8.064G._2GkKn5zEX4W&smid=url-share
Resillience is not a catchy tune, but is might be the way to go.
I think that the constitution could be saved, but it would take another Lincoln or FDR to do it,
….
Of course both ended up having their work undone, and here we are again.
What you’re actually saying is that the necessary changes won’t be permanent fixes. Which is not that surprising — the authoritarians, given enough time, will find new weak points.
Still, looking at where we were in, say, the early 1800s, I’d say that we’ve made significant progress over the last two centuries. The reactionaries are trying to roll all those back. But I expect that, the closer they get to realizing their dream, the more massive will be the resistance.
In the end, they will once again fail. We will, temporarily, lose some ground. But only some. And a lot of people will get hurt along the way.
Still, 20-30 years from now (yeah, totally just spit balling on the time frame) we will look back on today rather like most of us look back on other periods in our history where the reactionaries made gains. Asking, “What were they thinking???”. But naively confident that we won’t go there again. Until the generations that live thru it have passed from the scene.
Ah, I think I’m finally getting what you mean by “a stake” in this context, lj. If I understand correctly, you mean that people who have constructed (or subscribe to) an intellectual or ideological framework with many intersecting parts, can be so personally invested in it that they feel called to dispute any questioning of any element of it. In which kind of case, of course their arguments should be examined (like everybody’s) for logic and evidence. But my view is that often people’s views are complex, and that sometimes one can object to (and find logical or moral fault with) some of the elements, but not all, and that occasionally discussion along these lines can throw up interesting or productive ideas as well as being an example of treating other people with respect (i.e. civility).
It is much the same with the tendency to dismiss someone’s opinions or arguments based on e.g. their profession or their past work, rather than engaging with their actual ideas or arguments. Very tempting, sometimes, but surely extremely reductive. I know almost nothing of Ian Leslie (have no idea why I get his newsletter – I think someone else subscribed me), but I think this quotation from his Wikipedia entry has a lot to recommend it:
“Open, passionate disagreement blows away the cobwebs that gather over even the most enduring relationships . . . It flushes out crucial information and insights that will otherwise lie inaccessible or dormant inside our brains. It fulfils the creative potential of diversity”.
On the whole question of civility, I have been marvelling at the idea that it could mean a necessity to agree with one another. Is this a widespread idea, I wonder? If so, it could certainly explain why there is so much neglect of and resistance to it. But when Charles talks upthread about a site he used to frequent:
One of the regular participants would occasionally cross the line with ad hominem attacks, insults, and general nastiness. When called to task, he would complain bitterly about the Civility Brigade.
I think the opposite of this is the real definition of civility (and I would have thought the normal one): treating other people (even those with whom one vehemently disagrees) with politeness and respect. After all, if you hate their views in their entirety, and find them completely morally repugnant in every respect, nobody forces you to interact with them. Choosing to insult them, attack them and ascribe views to them which they have not stated or have even denied surely says more about the person doing it than the person on the receiving end.
ps By the way, I completely agree with what Pro Bono says @11.44. And, about Ian Leslie, on reading more of his Wikipedia entry I see it says he is a “writer on human behaviour”, and that “Leslie also writes about psychology, culture, technology and business for the New Statesman, The Economist, The Guardian and the Financial Times.” which to me at least gives slightly more context than the extract from his website “communication strategist for some of the world’s biggest brands, at ad agencies in London and New York; he still advises companies on workplace culture and strategic communication”.
wj, I don’t know about you, but “20-30 years from now” there’s a good chance I will not be around to “look back”. One might say I don’t really have a “stake” in what 2055 America will look like. For many of “we” here, the long run is becoming less relevant every day.
GftNC, sometimes it’s not true that “nobody forces you to interact with” people whose views are “morally repugnant”. And I’m not talking about the obvious case of fascist ICE “agents” vis a vis anti-fascist protesters. I’m talking about ordinary social situations in which you’d be called uncivil if you argue with the MAGAts present, and uncivil if you decline to attend. The shameless can always take advantage of “civility”.
CharlesWT, if “two wrongs don’t make a right” does that mean that 3 wrongs do? In the Portland context, I ask you again: what would you want the Guard or the Army to actually do? And, not incidentally, what do you imagine Herr Trump wants them to do? (P.S. the “forum similar to this one” 10-15 years ago wasn’t the old ObWi, was it?)
–TP