I am pulling out what little hair I have left over these Obama comments. @Morning_Joe @JoeNBC
Obviously there are those who use twitter in the way that Obama describes. But twitter is vast and offers an extraordinary deliberative and organizing space. We should be careful not to over generalize. 1/
We can concede that the world is messy and that human beings are flawed, but even so, we can still have principles that guide our actions. 2/
Compromise isn’t always a good thing—even in politics. Obama would have to say a bit more about what he means here. Especially in a moment when the stakes are so high, what does it mean to invoke compromise now? 3/
One of the challenges we face in our politics is the difficulty of not drawing conclusions about people’s character based on their political positions. But let’s be clear: slaveholder’s loved their kids. So did Nazis.Nothing follows from that fact about how we should view them 4/
The politics positions people take reflect what they value. And if what they value devalues others or me, what does it mean to say that I must compromise with them?
The messiness and ambiguities of our politics will not be resolved by Obama’s version of a critique of political correctness. 6/
In fact, that criticism can have a policing and conservative function in a moment of storm and stress. The country is in crisis. A new America is trying to be born. We have to be better and more responsible “midwives” than this.
