I was going to respond to this in another thread but I realize it would be a hijack so instead I’m creating its own thread. My criticisms later in this post aren’t targeted at Iggy specifically - he was just trying to follow the tone of the thread - but that tone, everyone going out of their way to pretend that these things just happened and everyone is equally responsible reminded me of a topic I’ve been wanting to post for a while.
Everyone is so careful to pretend that this is something that just happened, and that it happened from both sides. People are so afraid of appearing partisan that they’re unwilling to call it like it is.
Newt Gingrich (and friends) and the conservative media that began in the 90s is responsible for this radicalization. This is when you see a deliberate effort to demonize the opposition and say that they aren’t people with whom we disagree and with whom we will try to reach a compromise position, this is when they said “our opposition is purely evil and we cannot compromise with them lest we destroy everything great about America”
There’s enough conservative news that people have lived decades in a bubble telling them that democrats and liberals are behind every wrong in this world. You all know it, and there’s no point in denying it. You all know someone who has been in this bubble - some uncle or grandpa that watches fox news every day and is extremely radicalized and motivated to fight the libruls that want to destroy America.
But here’s the part that bugs me most: in response to this radicalization, the people that Republicans elect have become more extreme, and their agenda much more at odds with the success and prosperity of the average American. The tone of the conversation set by that right wing media bubble has actually changed who people will vote for, and who gets elected. The deliberate, expressed strategy of the GOP during Obama’s presidency was not the improvement of the country or good governance or anything like that - the absolute top goal above all else was to ensure Obama’s failure no matter the costs.
So then the democrats and liberals start saying some of the stuff that the republicans had been saying for decades - that the other side isn’t interested in doing what’s best for the country, that their candidates are extremists who hold anti-American ideals, etc.
And then people who think that sounding non-partisan and declaring everything equal makes them smart rush in people to say “oh ho, wait a minute! That’s what Republicans have been saying about you guys! See, you’re all the same, you just can’t see it because you’re all so partisan!”
But this is not actually what happened. Because of this radicalization, the candidates and agendas of the Republican party actually did become way outside the norm. But the most frustrating thing is that their false accusations that the democrats were the ones who were extreme and outside the norm when it wasn’t true then protects them from being held accountable for their own extremes.
To give a more concrete example, Republicans threw ridiculous conspiracy theories and cast aspersions on Obama, well beyond the norm. He’s a secret muslim who one day is going to ban christianity. He’s planning a military coup. He’ll get rid of elections and declare himself king. He’s secretly working to destroy everything you love. He’s not a real American. All sorts of shit worse than that.
But anyone with any sort of objectivity can see that Obama was a decent man who intended to do what was best for the country and gave us sane, intelligent leadership in a troubling time despite unprecedented political opposition that only wanted to see him fail no matter the cost. Not everyone agreed with the way that he decided that, and he wasn’t perfect, but the hysterical aspersions cast upon him and his motives were clearly wrong and strictly the result of the radicalization of that right wing media echo chamber.
But this decades-long brewing of radicalization on the right gives us Donald Trump to succeed him. Someone who actually IS way outside the norm, the way they’d been yelling about Obama. Someone who thinks he’s a ruler like an African dictatorship, who wants to run military parades through DC like North Korea does. Who asks “why can’t we use nukes?” on every issue of military policy. Who appoints people to lead agencies that they want to destroy. Who may fucking twitter us into a nuclear war.
So all of these people who think they’re above it all get to rush in and say “oh see, when they said all this stuff about how Obama was outside the norm and dangerous, you dismissed it. But now you’re just saying the same things about Trump! Clearly both sides are both the same, and you’re all just too partisan to see it”
Except anyone with a remotely functioning brain can see that Obama and Trump are in no way equivelant. When the right chanted crazy things about Obama, they were maligning a good man with absolute bullshit. When people say negative things about Trump, they’re mostly right right. Obama and Trump are not equivelant men or equivelant presidents. “He’s a secret muslim!” is not the same thing as “He won’t release his tax returns because there’s obviously something suspicious there that may compromise him”
And yet you have an endless supply of people who think they’re smarter than you because they’re above that partisanship declaring that both sides are the same. And the right wing is actually rewarded for coming up with absolutely crazy shit to say about Obama, because then when they elect someone who actually does have radical, well outside the norm flaws, they can actually use all of those made up criticisms to deflect the real criticisms. “So they thought Obama was a secret Muslim. You think Trump is secretly compromised by the Russians. See, we can safely discard everyone’s criticisms as being the same partisan shit”
“Both sides are the same” is a dogmatic view. It doesn’t require you to actually look at the specifics of what’s going on in that political climate and make value judgements. You can simply say “Both sides are the same, you’re too blind to see it, but I’m not, I’m smart and cynical and cool” while patting yourself on the back regardless of what’s actually going on. To be fair, this is not the motivation of everyone who tries to appear non-partisan - others actually feel like they’re being more careful or more nuanced, rather than patting themselves on the back while consdecending to you - but they still serve the same purpose to normalize and excuse the behavior of the worse side.
And to these people, it doesn’t matter if one side has become far more radicalized over the decades, or that they serve the interest of the average American less and less. “Both sides are the same” is always going to be the position no matter how both sides act.
Which means they are essentially acting on behalf of the side who has the worse behavior. Normalizing and accepting it. Deflecting criticism from the other side. When one side proposes a “feed all puppies and give them toys” act, and the other proposes a “stomp all puppies to death” act, we will have people bending over backwards to tell us that everyone is the same and it’s just equal amounts of partisanship on either side blinding them to it.
The Republican party started a deliberate campaign to create echo chambers to excite their base. Nothing gets people out and voting like constant outrage, and so they’ve fed their base outrage for decades. But the cries of DOOM! DOOM! for all this time has radicalized their base, even to the point where they’re starting to lose control of it. Their base now believes that they’re in a holy war with the evil liberals who want to destroy everything they love, and the only way to fight it is blind allegiance to a radicalized, purified Republican party. That’s how we’ve created an environment in which Obama is thought to be the antichrist but that Donald fucking Trump is a good Christian man who has always advocated for the middle class and loves and respects women. They created this monster, and now the monster risks tearing us apart.
At the very fucking least, stop denying this monster exists, or pretending that the democrats have an exactly equal monster on their side. If you’ve somehow managed to come to the conclusion that Obama and Trump have equal amounts of good intentions and equal amounts of flaws, something is severely askew with your world view. If such an extreme contrast cannot alter your view, then your view is unalterable dogma. If your position will always be “both sides are the same!” then you’re doing the work of whichever side is worse to excuse and justify their behavior.