State of the Discussion

I cannot resist replying to you russell. I agree with every single word you say about Stephen Miller. I do not think it is demonisation to describe him as a bad person.

<i>A civility that just means “we don’t talk about that” is going to choke us.</i>

Agreed with every fibre of my being. I think my participation on ObWi shows very clearly that "not talking about that", and practising a civility that implies agreement, is not my way!

As a note, in Kamala Harris’ recent book, she said that she wanted Buttgieg, but thought that it was ‘asking too much of America’ (if I remember the quote correctly). I’m not second guessing that, I’m just imagining an America where it wouldn’t be asking too much.

I agree with her. I, too, would have liked Buttigieg. (Nothing against Walz, who I thought did a great job.). But I also thought that, for too many voters, it would have been too much. Actually, too much even with an old white guy at the top of the ticket.

But good on her for thinking Buttigieg would be a good choice. And for standing up and saying so.

Like lj, I can imagine an America where it wouldn't be. But even before the results came in I was pretty clear that we ain't there yet. Someday. Someday.

Yup, I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree. In my case because it looks to me like at the moment it is the "right" (if these categories are even useful any more) that is clearly being far more uncivil than most of the "left" (again IMO the "left" seems to specialise more in implied guilt, or at least invalidation, by association or history). And one thing is for sure, I'm definitely not in favour of "performative civility" which can definitely be used for "bad aims". I don't think calling for civility (as I understand civility) is about exerting power. I think it is about an attempt to avoid demonisation, and the inevitable descent into intractable silos, from which (as far as I can see) no good (or repair, in Gay's word) ever comes. And it is an attempt to remember, in Pro Bono's formulation, that one's ideological opposites are human. So be it. In russell's inimitable words, peace out.

lj: I certainly don't think one should ignore someone's history if, like Kirk, they have a consistent record of saying the same kind of thing. But if they make good or interesting arguments, while being not particularly offensive, I consider it an irrelevant distraction to use their nationality, their previous professional experience or their ideological difference from oneself to discredit them or make their argument suspect, rather than something actually in the argument itself. It seems to me the very recipe for constructing a bubble around oneself.

On the other hand, I certainly consider it relevant in certain circumstances to consider someone's background to explain why they might make an argument with which one disagrees, because emotional past experiences certainly affect one's opinions, even if not in logically justifiable ways. So, in e.g. the case of Gay, the fact that she is a second generation Haitian immigrant could certainly make one understand why in the wake of a lifetime of discrimination and recent accusations that Haitians have been eating Americans' dogs and cats, she might be enraged enough to make an argument that civility is unnecessary, or a mistake. But it doesn't make the argument right.

I often think this when bereaved relatives make understandably heart-rending arguments against their family member's murderer receiving parole, or life imprisonment rather than the death penalty. Their suffering is real, and a life sentence. But, IMO, that does not and should not triumph over a rational attempt to do the right thing. And, again IMO, civility (respect and politeness not agreement or capitulation) is an essential ingredient for the possibility of continuing meaningful debate and even sometimes change.

The first issue I notice (and it's as much because it's something different) , I supposeis that new comments are entered at the beginning. Rather than at the end.

I think I prefer to write responses, especially in long threads, at the end. If only so I can flip back and forth to check the comment I am responding to.

And just found another. Apparently wj as a name doesn't fit the (not specified) format. Trying variations until I find one that works

In an ideal world, people wouldn’t be looking to him or people like him for leadership, but it may be all we have.

I'd vastly rather look to someone else. But that requires there be someone else who a) is willing to stand up, and b) has the media expertise available to get the message out effectively.

And I suppose I quote this to show why I think it worth zeroing in on the arguments people actually make, rather than those people’s origins, past statements etc.

This is interesting in light of a lot of the conversation, both here and out in the world. A lot of the martydom of Kirk requires overlooking his origins and past statements. The discussion between Klein and Coates features Coates pointing out the history behind a lot of this and Klein basically wanting a clean slate, which has him suggest that that if the Democrats would just run pro-life candidates in Nebraska, everything would be fine.

Newsom is an interesting case, he's setting himself up as anti-Trump, but his whole history is one of virtually limitless ambition and very much wanting to be President. In an ideal world, people wouldn't be looking to him or people like him for leadership, but it may be all we have.

Still, I don't have to post his memes or start fighting with people who do (at least I don't think I need to) From the Marshall quote, a distinction I'd make is that when Marshall is talking about commentators, he means people with a mass audience, like Klein, who have a tightrope to walk because their livelihood depends people following and agreeing with their arguments.

For us everyday folks, I realize it might be tiring to have to keep up with this, and we all dream of being able to set aside the history. It's an alluring fantasy to think that we can separate ourselves from history and rely on our expressed good intentions. Part of the fury at 'woke' is that it may seem like good intentions mean nothing, and it just becomes history all the way down and for some people, there is a glee in pointing out these things. But it seems like an important part of the puzzle that Gay is Haitian-American and Leslie is British and it illuminates (at least for me) a good bit of why, though the UK has not gotten as bad as the US, Starmer is flailing so badly in regards to Reform.

Josh Marshall has an interesting post today about fighting this/getting back from this. This should be a gift link:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/power-is-the-order-of-the-day-and-other-beds-trump-has-made

But weirdly the bit that made me sit up related to some of the difficulties I have had here posting things by people who then get dissed by virtue of some of their past policies, jobs etc:

There’s a sort of dance I see among commentators reacting to Newsom’s various engagements with Donald Trump. Praise his fight but don’t praise it too much because then one gets looped into whatever list of things this or that group doesn’t like that Newsom has done in the past, gets branded as a Newsom advocate, gets involuntarily associated what what I guess is best labeled as Newsom’s politician’s “slickness.” I realized I was giving too much weight to these things, even as I told myself I wasn’t.

And I suppose I quote this to show why I think it worth zeroing in on the arguments people actually make, rather than those people’s origins, past statements etc. Not that those things are irrelevant, and context is always valuable, but I do believe that an argument should mainly be evaluated on the strength of its actual argument, rather than the history, character or other attitudes of the person making it. I wonder if this was what Donald was getting at when he talked about (using Chomsky as an example) having to cast about and find alternative sources to quote for an argument, that would not generate distracting conversation about their other views.

Always great to see people standing up.

Of course, as soon as the MAGAts notice that people (who are not white people!) are undercutting their precious tariffs, the Native Americans will become targets as well. The treaties that the US government has with the various tribes notwithstanding -- abrogating treaties is a standard MO with these people.

Still, good on them for taking the initiative. I hope it makes them all filthy rich.

Historically, these sort of efforts (denazification, debaathfication) haven't gone so well. Lustration (the process of decommunization) was a mixed bag (Czechoslovakia good, Poland and Hungary, so/so, Romania pretty bad) but when you think that Czechoslovakia split and you see what has happened in Hungary and nearly failed in Poland, (and Romania is still a basket case) rooting out the Trumpist elements will probably not work. Spain offers another model (the "Pact of Forgetting" or Pacto del Olvido, but that would probably have folks here (including me) rip out our hair with the level of collective false memories that would be generated.

to get back to anything like a pre-Trump normal, we’re going to need some kind of national de-MAGA-fication. We will need to root the bastards out, along with their sick ideologies.

Do you see that happening? Do you think we can muster the political will to do it? Do you think a sufficient sector of the population even want it?

Agreed, it will be necessary to root them out. Fortunately, the ones in the Executive Branch are pretty much self-identified by their willingness to accept Presidential appointments from Trump. And, if one President can appoint them, another can fire them. That won't find all of them, but I would guess enough to start turning things around. The bigger challenge will be the massive loss of expertise the various agencies are experiencing.

Rooting them out of the Judiciary will be a lot harder. Easy enough to identify the Federalist Society members; that being, IMHO, a huge red flag. But establishing grounds to impeach and remove them would be an enormous challenge. I'm not sure how we go about neutralizing them otherwise. Beyond making sure none of them are in single judge areas, which makes venue shopping so easy at the moment.

Can we muster the political will? I think so. I think enough of the population will want it. The bigger challenge will be finding the leadership among politicians to step up. A bunch of officeholders are going to need to be primaried, I suspect. On top of those voted out in the General Elections. But I think it can be done.

Will that get us back to the status quo ante? No. That's going to take years of rebuilding the nation's soul. But I expect we will get there. Dispite the best efforts of the Daughters of the neo-Confederacy.

And the final target audience is the military.

The military at this point is the last guardrail. If they flip, it's game over.

And as far as domestic politics go, I generally (and gladly) agree that the level of basic integrity there is high. The oath to the Constitution is pretty deeply ingrained in that culture, especially the higher up you go.

I'd say the target of the "excuse" is, first, all those people who generally don't pay attention. The military going into an American city is a big enough deal to break thru to a lot of them. And their reaction will be along the lines of "Wait! What??? Why???" The excuse won't satisfy all of them, but he can hope that it satisfies enough.

Another target audience is the portion of the Republican Party that is not MAGA cultists. They have enough contact with reality to know that things can blow up in their faces. And that the necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) defense against that is a justification/excuse which sounds half-way plausible. They'll want to believe it; but they won't be on-board without it.

And the final target audience is the military. Most of them, even the very conservative ones, are clear that their oath includes supporting the Constitution. And, absent some kind of justification, military action inside the country are strictly forbidden there.

No doubt there are some who wouldn't care, even some who are devout MAGA cultists. You would have to put a lot of effort into selecting out those individuals. But if you just send in an existing unit, you need that justification.

Russell is a bit more familiar with Leslie than I am, but I have to ask, is his taking issue with Gay on civility related to a book that he is flogging about how much we need civility?

LOL

Full disclosure - my exposure to both Gay and Leslie is 100% the excerpt GFTNC cited. And knowing that Gay is second-generation adds context that clarifies her position on civility.

As Coates says, "welcome to black America".

So thank you for adding that.

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.

I agree with this.

That said, IMO Trump has exposed seious flaws in our Constitutional order. The guardrails - the courts, Congress, the mostly non-political administrative state - have failed or at least been undermined to the point where I'm not sure what things are gonna look like post Trump.

I don't know if there is a "there" to go back to. I don't think it's going to be the same country.

We've achieved Popper's paradox of tolerance. The intolerant have taken the reins. They will not surrender them willingly or gracefully, and are not interested at all in sharing power with anyone else. Maybe we will squeak out another legitimate election or two, and maybe that will be sufficient to allow a meaningful change of regime. That is far from guaranteed, but it's possible.

But even under that circumstance, some significant changes are going to be needed to make sure the same or similar thing doesn't happen again. And I don't know if the vision and the political will is there to make that happen.

I don't know where all of this goes, but I don't really have any confidence that we are going to return to any kind of pre-Trump normal, once he is somehow off the scene.

Plus, while we in the US are losing our minds and acting out the very worst in our national character, the rest of the world is moving on. So wherever we end up domestically, it's going to have to deal with a very different international context. At a minimum, we're shredding generations of good will. We're proving ourselves to be fickle, unreliable partners, prone to enormous changes in national policy and direction every four years.

I really don't know what comes next, but I don't think it's going to be as simple as regaining and restoring all the stuff that is being rolled back now.

I'm at a loss, to be honest.

Well, we are probably at the end of the line for talking about this, but I do subscribe to Descartes line that "the heart has reasons the mind will never know" so that may be what you are relating 'stakes' to. However, just because they are in the heart rather than the mind does not exempt those reasons from scrutiny, it should encourage us to investigate those as well. I'm not suggesting that people without visible stakes cannot participate, here's an example of people with no apparent stakes entering an issue and affecting a change
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/O5yK7XiYQvU

https://secretireland.ie/grapefruit-ladies-ireland-the-tart-taste-of-triumph-how-dublins-fruit-rebels-cracked-apartheids-shell/

But that seems to me to be different from a Heritage Foundation flunky complaining about Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan or Vance and others complaining about the lack of civility. And in a blog, where people don't have to be forthcoming about how they are getting to their position, it can be a problem, so "stake" provides a useful rule of thumb. Like all rules of thumb, it's not perfect, but it works on the whole. For example, Russell is a bit more familiar with Leslie than I am, but I have to ask, is his taking issue with Gay on civility related to a book that he is flogging about how much we need civility?

what would you want the Guard or the Army to actually do?

I don't want them to do anything. Trump shouldn't be mobilizing the National Guard against the wishes of the state. But the failures of the local authorities to enforce the law and ordinances certainly give him an excuse.

P.S. the “forum similar to this one” 10-15 years ago wasn’t the old ObWi, was it?

No, the forum was one of several over the years used by a small group of people I first encountered in 1998.

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

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”.

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.

...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'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.

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.