Thread by @JuliusGoat

The hat guy decided to win by appealing directly to bigots.
So he ran a bigoted campaign.
And it worked.

All the bigots came out and cheered for the hat guy's bigotry.
And they wore the hats
And they still cheer
And they still wear

And that's what the hats mean now.
That's all.

Trump ran a white supremacist misogynist campaign, which by simply existing served as a catalyst to electrify and legitimize white supremacists and misogynists, and by winning, served to make them feel justified and bold.

Not incorporating that fact into stories is a choice.

Anyone reporting on a story involving those hats without incorporating the *fact* that the hats are being used among supremacists as a shibboleth of legitimized supremacy and self-justified emboldened cultural dominance is making a deliberate choice not to do so.

Comparing the MAGA hats to Klan hoods is apt, but only if you mean from a time when the Klan enjoyed wide support and cultural acceptance, when its robust membership felt comfortable wearing the hoods in public without police escort, and with the face flap up.

Again, not incorporating these facts—into your worldview, into your stories—is a choice.

I think there are plenty of reasons to make that choice.

The simplest is ease.

If I don't think about that, then I don't have to think about what that means.

About my friends. Family. Co-workers.

My country.

Myself.

The reason the news makes the choice to ignore these facts, or to treat them as unsettled opinion despite the clear facts, is economic.

There's a market for comfort.

And there's a market for hate.

There's even a market for truth.

How to satisfy them all?

Middle ground.

It's worth asking when we'd stop seeking middle ground. What would be the line that would make us choose a side?

For many, history teaches us, it's nothing and never.

Those who survived previous such experiments have returned with a message.

The message is this: Choose sides.

So let's move the line out a bit further.

Just to see.

The line's further out now.

See? That's how it works.

That's why you have to choose sides.

Move the line a bit further out?

As a thought experiment?

OK.

If people came into the capital to attend a rally to (say) prevent women's votes, wearing swastikas, would we still parse the footage of the confrontation as if it were the Zapruder footage, to see if we could devine the intentions of their hearts?

Answer: Yes.

Many would.

If we've learned anything these past years, we've learned that.

It's not about a handful of kids, you know.

It's about us. About who we are as a society. A nation of abuse and enablement.

An uncomfortable story—that's why we don't tell it.

Time to tell our story true.

Actually I said it was equivalent to a Klan hood at a time when the Klan was socially acceptable.

I said that swastika would be moving the line of the analogy out further for purposes of thought experiment.

It’s good to read all the words.

https://twitter.com/torquilmacneil/status/1087663695293952006?s=21

Picking a side has nothing to do with hating and fearing. It has nothing to do with becoming the mirror of Trump.

It’s about standing against bigotry and for the marginalized. And refusing the easy path of confusing the two, which allows one to comfortably avoid that hard work.

And like I said, the hat man ran on what he ran on, and the people cheered for what they cheered for, and now the hat means what it means.

And we’ve seen the like before.

Accurate perspective requires cultural context and historical understanding.

https://twitter.com/torquilmacneil/status/1087679196309147649?s=21

I have no desire to see people destroyed. I think every human is a unique irreplaceable work of art. I want to world that reflects that.

Which means recognizing ideas contrary to that, and facing them plain, and telling it true.

It’s real. It’s wrong. I oppose.

I do think it’s perfect that even in the midst of lecturing against my desire for hate and destruction, which I haven’t called for, he expresses a desire for my distruction.

When it’s only virtue signaling, it shows.

But I think the comment leads to a couple really important points:

1) If someone point out bigotry, they may be drawing attention to an ideological division.

The division was already there. Pointing it out didn't create it.

Mapping the territory doesn't create the territory.

2) The logic of bigotry will assume that when we point out a division and then choosing a side, it presupposes a desire to destroy the other side.

Instead we should want to destroy the bad assumptions that create these divisions.

Example: Our world involves Medicare for ALL.