The Right's Demands For Civility Are A Sign Of Fear
This is what happens when you know you are going to lose.
by Justin Rosario
Back in June of 2018, the strangest thing happened. The left started to be scolded by the press for using foul language directed at Trump and his regime of white nationalist fascists. Samantha Bee was denounced for calling Ivanka a cunt. Robert De Niro made the media gasp in horror when he said "Fuck Trump" at the Tony awards. And all of a sudden, buffoons like Chris Cillizza and Chuck Todd were demanding "civility." But only from the left, of course.
Forgotten were the previous two decades during which the right had called the left "traitors," and "baby killers," and "pedophiles." The press completely elided this little gem from their memory from just a few years ago:
This wasn't the problem. Not at all! The problem, you see, is that the left was not being polite enough! We'll get back to the right's history of incivility in a bit. First, let's take a look at the more recent calls for civility.
"Please Be Nice While We Stab You In The Face"
Lately, the right has been very concerned about how "civil" the left should be. They would really prefer Democrats not pursue impeachment. They would love it if we could all just take it down a notch. Right after Democrats trounced the GOP in the 2018 midterms, Mitch McConnell wrote the most hypocritical op-ed all of time, telling Nancy Pelosi and her party to play nice.
Come on, libs! Can't we all just get along?!
This is how you know the next collapse of the Republican Party and the right wing mob is nigh.
The latest sign of the right's newfound desire to be best friends with the left is Dilbert creator and Trump supporter Scott Adam's book in which he insists we all just need to give people mulligans for terrible behavior:
His first proposal, which he calls the “48-hour rule,” states that everyone should be given a grace period of a couple of days to retract any controversial statement they’ve made, no questions asked. “We live in a better world if we accept people’s clarifications and we accept their apologies, no matter whether we think—internally—it’s insincere,” he says.
His other idea is the “20-year rule,” which states that everyone should be automatically forgiven for any mistakes they made more than two decades ago—with the exception of certain serious crimes. It used to be the case that people’s thoughtless remarks and embarrassing gaffes would naturally fade into obscurity, but social media has created a situation where it’s easy to endlessly dredge up a person’s worst moments.
Let’s pull back the curtain a bit and look behind the right's growing need for the left to behave themselves.
If the title of the article didn't already give it away, it should be clear that while fear is the prime motivating force of everything the right does, that fear expresses in different ways.
When the right is in power, that fear is almost always expressed as vicious hate and cruelty. After the Civil War, white conservatives fought hard to maintain control of local politics and law enforcement. They were so afraid of blacks being treated as equal that they rampaged across the South for decades, terrorizing millions. Their fear required the federal government to send in troops to pacify their violence. Civility was imposed at the end of a gun.
In the 1920s, conservative whites rampaged again, sending million of blacks fleeing to the North to escape their violence. They lynched over 4000 people. They burned people alive in the middle of the street and made a festival of it. They even took smiling pictures with the bodies. No one cared about civility. Although the 50s and 60’s saw the end of widespread lynching, it was not the end of racialized terrorism. Each time, white conservative fear and the ascendance of the right (at least regionally) allowed them enact widespread violence with little push back.
White Fear in the Modern Era
After the election of George W. Bush, 9/11, and the right's wholesale embrace of Islamophobia, hate crimes increased dramatically in America, and hate speech became a minimum requirement for Republican politics. Those calling for civility, even family members of 9/11 victims, were treated by the right as traitors.
From Reconstruction to now, when black people or other minorities protested, they were told that they were not being civil enough.
And after the election of Trump? Literal Nazis began marching in the streets, starting riots and indiscriminately killing people. At no point on the right was there any kind of widespread meltdown over the lack of civility. Instead, the press raced to humanize the most noxious elements of the GOP's base with an endless series of "Trump voters aren't really racist" think pieces. No one cared about civility. That only came when liberals pushed back.
Now that the last three elections, 2017, 2018, and 2019, have seen the GOP absolutely crushed in even deep deep red states and counties, it's become very clear that, barring massive election fraud, Trump is likely to lose the White House, Republicans may lose the Senate, and Democrats are going to take back even more of the House and more state legislatures and Governor's Mansions.
Before, the right used its power to inflict pain and suffering on everyone it hated because that's what it does. Now that that power is waning, they are terrified of what the left will do to them. "Fuck your feelings" is rapidly becoming "Time for bipartisanship!"
I think, however, no.
One of the silver linings of the Trump era is that white Republican voters have fully embraced fascism and dropped any pretense of believing in democracy. It's true that during the Bush regime, they spoke of "permanent Republican majorities," but that was because some of them really thought the country would embrace their style of corrupt warmongering forever (and because most of them thought they had enough time to rig elections).
But the GOP of the Bush regime was far more circumspect than today. Decades of right wing inbreeding have delivered us geniuses like Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, and Devin Nunes. The average Republican seems incapable of hiding their seething contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law.
Meanwhile, Fox openly spews white nationalism every single day. They haven't quite started screaming "Heil Trump!" yet, but give Laura Ingraham some time. In this climate, there is literally no reason for Democrats to even contemplate bipartisanship.
Republicans have abused their power for years in mad power grab after mad power grab. Their ultimate goal is to render America a one-party state. In order to fix the damage Republicans have done, Democrats will have to use their power to its fullest extent and ignore the bad faith howls of partisanship coming from both the GOP and the press.
They will have to do away with the filibuster and reinstate the Voting Rights Act. They will have to do away with Voter ID laws that prevent millions of legal voters from exercising their franchise. They will have to make it illegal for the same person controlling a state election to do so while running for office. The potential for abuse is too great and Republicans cannot be trusted.
At the same time, Democrats will need to add 2-4 seats to the Supreme Court to negate the Federalist cancer on the bench. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are not there to rule impartially. They are there to further a specific right wing agenda. And their seats were stolen anyway.
The same goes for the dozens of unqualified judges illegitimately placed in lifetime appointments. Democrats will need to find a way to either remove them or negate their corrupt influence. Republicans and the press will scream bloody murder about politicizing the judiciary, but the Republican plan to run the country by fiat requires them to block everything passed by Democrats, and for that they need judges who will rule according to their politics, not the law.
Increased taxes on the rich and corporations will close the enormous hole in the budget Republicans have created. Cutting back, even 5%, on military spending will be a tremendous help. Increasing the social safety net will improve the lives of millions (including white Republican voters) and do more to stimulate the economy than anything Republicans have done on the last 70 years.
Increasing the minimum wage to at least $15 (if not more) will change lives and force companies like McDonald's and Walmart to stop draining billions from taxpayers in the form of public assistance for their workers.
Cruelty is not the point
The only difference is that when a white Republican voter screams "Fuck you feelings!", they want to make the lives of the people they hate worse. The cruelty is the point. The more the other side suffers, the happier they are, even if they're hurting themselves in the process.
When the Left finally has enough of placating the feelings of white Republican voters and run roughshod over their objections, they'll feel like the left is making them suffer, but they won't lose their homes. They won't find less food on their table. Their jobs won't disappear. Their air, food, and water will become cleaner.
Yes, they'll have to live with the horror of watching two men kiss in public, but they won't have to worry about the economy collapsing because Wall Street got greedy again. And their kids won't have to worry about taking out massive loans for college if they decide to go. They may not love the trade-off but most of them will learn to live with it.
Republicans have broken America and if we're going to fix it, or build something better, we have to be willing to go all the way. Republicans are completely lawless and have been for years. They cannot be part of any solution to our problems because, in every way that matters, they are the problem.
Republicans are only demanding civility and bipartisanship now because they're terrified of what Democrats will do once they're back in control. They represent a shrinking minority of hateful voters and they still haven't had enough time to completely end democracy. They're going to beg Democrats to play nice so they can stab them in the face again the first chance they get.
The only answer Democrats should have for Republicans is, "Fuck your feelings."
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A Trump Win In 2020 Would Be Catastrophic For Republicans - by Ben Cohen
"...it's become very clear that, barring massive election fraud..."
AND the Liberally Biased Mainstream Media™ desperately attempting to put their thumbs on the scales to make Drumpf look somewhat good and the Democratic candidate look real bad so that they can have their precious horserace they feel entitled to have in order to justify their advertisers as many eyeballs as insanely possible.
AND the sniveling crybaby BernieBums don't try and throw a temper tantrum, because their lord and savior wasn't chosen the Dems candidate, by voting third party, writing in Bernie's name on the ballot, or staying home election night, and blaming it all on the Democrats and their voters for not choosing their person for the nomination.
AND if Mark Zuckerberg goes beggar blind and doesn't acknowledge the massive amounts of fake ads that pollute Facebook because he's too busy counting the Russian rubles those ads generate for him.
“ , it's become very clear that, barring massive election fraud, Trump is likely to lose the White House, Republicans may lose the Senate, and Democrats are going to take back even more of the House and more state legislatures and Governor's Mansions.”
It has become by no means clear. Despite all the evidence clearly presented, nearly half the country doesn’t want Trump impeached. Despite the steady flow of obvious incompetencies, attacks in national security AND POLICIES THAT WORSEN THEIR OWN LIVES something around 30% still view him as a patriotic godsend.