Democrats losing all credibility in denial of overwhelming evidence..

[Dill]

(04-02-2024, 08:10 AM)hollodero Wrote: Dill Wrote:I wasn't heroicizing Dems. So not ill-advised since that is not what is "advised."  I just don't see why criticism of Trump, without accompanying patter of how Biden and Dems suck too, should be cast as "imbalance" or an implicit "mythologizing" of Dems. Not sure how great my memory is about the Watergate era, but I don't recall people who criticized Nixon regularly adding that Dems, "of course," have their problems too, to avoid "concealing truths." Consider me curious about, and investigating, what has changed in our media environment to make kind of balance seem necessary.     

OK. I get it, I just think this approach runs into problems as soon as you take the step of rather not addressing actual problems on the left side to begin with. Real, existing, non-hyperbolic, non-overblown, non-Trump-relativizing actual bad stuff. That is where the mystification begins, when Trump is deemed so awful that nothing else matters and nothing else should even be brought up, to not enable false equivaliencies or whatever. That might be where you are, and to an extent even me, but it's not where the so-called middle is. When they see Pelosi rip up a Trump speech, they think of something the Trump side would do, except MTG did not even do that. And yeah, when they then talk about the sanctity of norms and institutions and the like after this kind of irreverent actionism, it sounds hollow, and saying that is not akin to being apologetic about Trump. 

Sorry I'm so late responding. I still see the issue we are discussing here as a priority. I just get distracted by other stuff.

No one is advocating "not addressing actual problems on the left side to begin with" NOT bringing up bad Dem behavior/policies will not prevent false equivalencies.

I don't think Pelosi tearing up a speech was a good idea. But here is what I am talking about: Pelosi's actions are not accurately framed by phrasing like "MTG did not even do that," as if somehow MTG braying "liar" during a SOTU speech were a lesser threat to those norms and institutions, plus her other behavior in the House, including serving an unelected master. Dems adopting MAGA tactics, however slightly, certainly invites equivalence though. It DOES undermine "talk about the sanctity of norms." One doesn't combat false equivalence by NOT saying that. One combats it by eschewing false equivalence.

(04-02-2024, 08:10 AM)hollodero Wrote: If Trump is a danger--and you agree he is--and justifying/minimizing/relativizing his behavior is a 24/7 requirement to maintain the danger (my claim; you haven't said you agree), then countering Trump-danger is about addressing that 24/7 justifying/minimizing/relativizing, whose primary tactic is "both sides do it," especially via false equivalence/whattaboutism. (Think of all the "independents" who, when asked to choose between someone who attempted to void democracy and someone who supports it, have trouble figuring out whether that is even the choice.) Making people more conscious of this pattern, of how it is systematic, is what creates my angle of critique and target here.

Case in point, I also see several problems with how the democrats and the left-leaning media handled the BLM protests, the violence, the extremes that mixed themselves into the initial objectives and just got talked out of existence. Can I still say that, or do I employ a false sense of balance that only aids Trump and hence rather shut up about it because the Capitol storm was more dangerous to democracy? These are the things where I see problems, with employing counter-doublestandards and pointing to FOX et al. to justify them for example, giving people good examples for calling BS. Not to mention actual policies, not to mention how the left imho played its part in the rise of Trump to begin with, eg. by thinly veiled accusations of racism towards anyone who didn't like Obama and then some. Which not everyone did, but is merely one example of a "smarter, better, more humane and holier than thou" approach that happened constantly and without any blowback from the own side. By behaviour like this, this party gets more and more repellent to more and more people and it's not Trump's fault. Neglecting it won't help.

Again, I don't have a problem with noting how Dems did not respond in the best possible way to BLM protests. But I do resist framing the protests/riots as all or mostly about violence.  And I especially resist efforts to frame them as equivalents to the Capitol riots. That hardly means not discussing the BLM protests, yet it's the critique of the framing that you appear to be recasting as an order to "shut up." 

The point of the first bolded above is not clear to me. I don't know what you mean by "counter-double standards."  My critique of Fox and right wing media, in a nutshell, is that they constitute a separate media ecosphere which operates on qualitatively different standards than the MSM, most clearly where they function as an organ to legitimate, successfully for tens of millions, Trump's own twisted framing of his legal problems. They are not the MSM with just a little more bias.

I don't see how "the left" played into the rise of Trump with "thinly veiled accusations" about Obama and such. There is evidence that some are attracted to Trump because he hints and implies that he will protect white identity. And nothing "thinly veiled" about it; it's a subject of journalistic and social scientific inquiry.  And that is enough to trigger perception of attack among Trump supporters. You began your post asserting that bad political behavior should not be ignored or off limits to critique, and I assume you meant for both sides. If there is no way to critique Trump for his racial politics without some or many of his followers feeling or at least claiming that they are being attacked as racist, then the only alternative would be to remain silent about those politics for fear of "playing a part" in his rise. That silence seems more Trump-enabling to me. I'd be interested to hear how you'd frame the alternatives, if you think I've got it wrong here.

And I just don't see this "smarter, better, more humane and holier than thou" phenomenon you refer to, or at least not from your angle. Since the 19th century the US right, especially the Evangelical elements, have felt dissed and looked down on by smarty pants journalists and scientists and college educated professionals. One special moment in this battle was the 1925 Scopes trial, with the Evangelicals won, making it illegal to teach Darwin's theory in Tennessee High schools, but that also made them the laughing stock of the "educated classes" at the time. Their feelings remained a fringe right concern, and jelled into critique of the "liberal media" after WWII, from lonely voices in the wilderness like the magazine Human Interest.  But it began going mainstream again with Nixon and Agnew, and became mainstream with Limbaugh and Fox--who targeted a class of elite deceivers who were not really American and looked down on everyone. Can you think of a time when Stephen Miller spoke to the press when he did not refer to liberal elites who look down on everyone else? That's pretty much a conscious tactic for many on the right.  

For all of my life I have been around people who know what God wants for the country and will impose that on the rest of us if they can, while also complaining they are persecuted and laughed at for their religion. They argue from a position of very evidence-resistant faith, which makes for a very bad understanding of Evolution, Climate change, accurate secular history, and the like, and when their arguments against science and history undergo public critique, they cast that critique as more persecution from people who cannot be argued with, but only defeated in elections so the real Christian Americans can pass the right laws. I.E., people who claim they are LITERALLY holier than the rest of us complain they are looked down on. They are not articulating anti-elitism; they're complaining he wrong elites are in charge. 

So yes, there are definitely people feeling and claiming they are looked down out there, and they are not imagining it when they read editorial opinions claiming they don't know science and history. That's just a part of a 400-year old beef with modernity. And there are people who know how to weaponize that feeling, direct it to the proper targets and the like. I don't see any evidence that what you describe as liberal holier-than-thouness is any more than the usual pushback against counter-modernity. Again it appears, as you have framed the problem, there can be no alternative but silence, as it is simply articulating scientifically and historically informed arguments and policy positions that call forth the "elitist" accusation. I don't see some group of liberals out there who drove voters to Trump by being holier-than-thou, such that if they'd just shut up he'd have had fewer votes.