Thread by @JuliusGoat

Then Your Objection to Trump Was Only Ever Superficial forward.com/opinion/402998…

This take is smarmy infuriating nonsense; making no distinction between someone being stabbed, the person stabbing and those calling for help—it cares only that all 3 appear to be shouting. And its only priority is self-exoneration for its own mountainous bystanding indifference.

No.

Civility can be a wonderful thing in the proper context.

Civility can also be a tool that covers up for terrible abuse.

Insisting on civility in all contexts is dangerous and inappropriate.

Sometimes what’s appropriate is letting things get uncomfortable and stay that way.

When my father and brother are yelling at each other about what toppings to order on pizza, I will be the voice of civility and compromise.

When my father is stabbing my brother to death, I will not.

You see?

Some situations need a scream.

We are not about inoffensiveness. We are about justice.

Choosing politeness is often a luxury the powerful afford themselves. For those who have control over a situation, politeness is easy.

Civility can be a way of signaling moral authority, even has one profits off grotesque abuse.

Worse, civility can be the way abusive people make their injustice polite.

The author of that bullshit piece’s issue with Trump was only that he hadn’t been civil.

Yes. Racists never stopped being racist, they just went into hiding because they were afraid of social opprobrium. They called it “political correctness.”

Trump was their signal that the social opprobrium might be gone.

Our civility will be the proof they were right. I say no.

Why do you think the people who have proved they care least about civility want it so badly from us?

They want what any abuser wants: reconciliation w/o reparation, forgiveness by way of an apology, from those they don’t intend to harm, on behalf of those they do intend to harm.

Every effective leader for justice has been in their time constantly criticized for rabble-rousing, the incivility of their followers, breaking the peace, and intractability. MLK and Gandhi fit very nicely into this paradigm and to think otherwise is to deny their struggle.

If you can be polite w/o compromising justice, then you should probably be polite. But the desire to fetishize politeness leads one to politely accept atrocity, little by little, bit by bit.

beware those who use one’s impoliteness as proof of the wrongness of ones cause.

For someone who prefers an unjust status quo, the demands of justice will always seem impolite, will always seem uncivil.

which explains why now, when we see in an open push to restore old injustices, we see extremist moderates spending their best energies policing civility.

1) Calling Sarah Huckabee Sanders a human goiter was both 100% uncivil and 100% accurate, and it was an expression of my soul that needed outlet

2) I have no expectation that I will change the minds of people unpersuaded by the reality of Trump, and little interest in trying.

If the reality of Trump hasn't persuaded a person of the moral calamity of supporting Trump, or if a rude statement is enough to tip the scales, I have to conclude that basic morality is not what persuades them. My energy is better spent elsewhere.

If you decide to accept the premise that your just cause won't be persuasive until you attain the correctly civil tone, you've put yourself on a treadmill you'll never get off.

Your tone will never be quiet right, you see. That was the point.

Reject the entire framework.

Bullies don't want to be persuaded. They also don't want a fair fight.

They should get one, though. It's what makes bullies back down.

Then there are people—a lot more numerous than bullies—who just don't care, who just want to get along, and the question they are asking themselves is "will I have to pay a social cost for doing this?"

They hope the answer is 'no.'

It shouldn't be.

The problem isn't that Robert De Niro said "Fuck Trump."

It's that more people don't say "Fuck Trump," all the time, all the time, all the time. And not apologize for it.

It's the correct sentiment. He's a white supremacist and a criminal and a wannabe dictator.

Fuck Trump.