This report in WaPo seems, in some ways, depressingly familiar and repetitive, at least in what it says about segments of the Democratic Party:
From the moment Sen. Joe Manchin III started raising concerns about President Biden’s social spending bill, the outrage hurled at him from some fellow Democrats was pointed and personal.
Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri said Manchin’s position was “anti-Black, anti-child, anti-woman and anti-immigrant.” Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota dismissed his reasoning as “bulls–t,” and Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York called Manchin “Exhibit A” of the Democratic Party’s “true problems.”
Manchin, for his part, has publicly questioned whether there is still room for his “fiscally responsible and socially compassionate” views in today’s Democratic Party, where the far-left Congressional Progressive Caucus has emerged as a dominant force in the House and the senator from West Virginia is often the party’s lone conservative voice on Capitol Hill.
The striking part is the Bush response accusing Manchin of, well, bigotry, while Omar and Bowman find ways to echo it from the posture of moral superiority.
The “you fuckin’ bigot” response continues to raise larger and larger red flags for me, if you’ll forgive my decades-old interest in semantic analysis of communications. We see it in response to any opposition to proposals from the Left, don’t we? Accept my position or you’re a racist and a bigot! But it’s interesting to delve into the intellectual & emotional mechanisms behind this approach to communications.
By using the words and phrases of bigotry, racists, etc, and then reinforcing these moral judgments through morally superior dismissals of objections, the Left is attempting to meld its proposals to a moral position which cannot be successfully disputed. We’ve seen this strategy before in the transgenderism issue, haven’t we? To recap and update the link, rather than subject the issue to debate, as was done with gay marriage, the advocates for transgenderism managed to get it into federal regulations, and then defended it afterwards not through some sort of belated debate, but by screaming BIGOT! at the top of their lungs at anyone who dared to question their position, even to the extent of offers of debate[1].
This strategy of assuming moral superiority, and then proving it by using that assumption, is nothing more than the classic intellectual failure of circular reasoning. While much of the unease I feel when reading about these incidents no doubt relate to the raw emotions invoked by the use of racism, bigot, etc, especially when the people & positions to which they are applied seem unoffending, I think a substantial portion of that unease is also an semi-conscious awareness that there’s a disconnect: a lack of appropriate debate, which makes the grasping after moral superiority deeply questionable and even inappropriate.
Or, in other words, running around screaming bigot whenever someone asks a pointed question, legitimate or not, marks the screamer as the BIGOT, not the target, at least for me.
When it comes to Senator Manchin, I do understand some of the frustration. The deadly, toxic charms of team politics have destroyed the old Republican Party, transforming it into a group of leering fourth raters who live on single-issue voters, ignoramuses, and fringers, while desperately avoiding questions of competency, or even legitimacy, issuing lies and half-truths whenever that advantages them. Now this ghoulish Siren beckons to a Democratic Party frustrated that it cannot lure a single Republican Senator, not even Senator Murkowski (R-AK), into voting for most of its important bills; the House GOP members are similarly recalcitrant, outside of a couple of heroic members in the persons of Kinzinger of Illinois and Cheney of Wyoming. Manchin, by refusing to automatically cast his ballot for the Democratic version of reality, is ruining their swig of team politics, a topic on which I’ve written far too much over the years. This policy, originating with the sinister former Speaker of the House Gingrich (R-GA) and carried on by Senator and Minority Leader Mitch “Dr. No” McConnell has exacerbated the pain.
And Manchin and Senator Sinema’s (D-AZ) refusal to reform or abolish the filibuster, an artifact of another age, is infuriating to one and all.
But I fear the lack of tolerance appearing on the left in the form of pronouncements of an assumed, but undebated, moral superiority will drive away independent voters. There’s a streak of moral arrogance on the Left that’s being noted by independents like me, moderate conservatives like Andrew Sullivan, and flying nutcases like Erick Erickson. There is a danger when even the nutcases are getting a cultural issue such as the hubris of the Left correct for a change. It doesn’t make him right about anything else, but it attracts independent voters who see him getting that right, and wonder what else he may be getting right.
But the upshot? I’ve often wondered, and written once or twice, about the potential breakup of the Republican Party. I know party faithful would poo-poo the notion, without realizing that, in a sense, it’s already happened. Every former member who has left, or been driven out by some power-hungry new member wielding the RINO spear, contains the potential to start a new party, and the former members are beginning to form quite a group, full of Bush Administration members disenchanted Trump Administration members and perfectly conventional and acceptable Americans who want their voices heard – and find that impossible in the Party devoted to Trump.
Now I’m wondering if the Democrats are in somewhat similar straits, if officials such as Bush and Omar, rather than dragging the Party to the left, find themselves more and more alone as they take positions and postures unsupported by the traditions of liberal democracies – that is, they expect immediate shame and supplication by their opponents, rather than the healthy debate which improves the body politic. Could they find themselves expelled from the Party? Would the Democrats dare such a maneuver?
Or are they too committed to team politics?
I refuse to predict the results of the next election, 10 months and some weeks from now, though. Will the Left continue to screw up? (Yes.) Will the Republicans continue to act like fourth raters? (Yes.) Will the economy continue its unexpectedly strong recovery and will the Democrats figure out how to message properly about it? (Yes, No.) What about Covid? (Shit, I don’t know.)
Yeah, too many questions.
Notable victims of this childish approach to the issue include famed author J. K. Rowling (of the Harry Potter fantasy series) and famed atheist icon Richard Dawkins, whose award from the American Humanist Association was retracted after he said something that, in my opinion, was the sort of honest question really smart people ask. That is, it referenced an apparent inconsistency in the transgenderism position, and asked for clarification in an intellectually rigorous manner. Other victims include Dave Chapelle, who is apparently no longer funny, and Andrew Sullivan, a leader of the debate on gay marriage, who has been critical of the entire transgender issue, but hasn’t managed to connect it strongly to violations of the liberal democracy model of government, which is a bit shocking as he holds a PhD in PoliSci.
