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My new post: Publishing the Tom Cotton op-ed revealed a pathology on the editorial side of the New York Times that the news side shares: an insistence on extending the presumption of good faith to the GOP, even in the face of its rising authoritarianism. vox.com/policy-and-pol…
"That there are doctrines that reject one or more democratic freedoms is itself a permanent fact of life, or seems so. This gives us the practical task of containing them – like war or disease – so that they do not overturn political justice." -- John Rawls
I was reminded by a reader of how Tom Cotton originally rose to fame on the right: a letter to the NYT arguing that the journalists who reported on a secret gov't anti-terrorism program should be jailed for treason. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Cotto…
This whole episode, start to finish, has been Christmas for Cotton. washingtonpost.com/politics/sen-c…
I joined On the Media to talk about the Cotton op-ed affair. (I would have been so much more articulate if I could have recorded this at midnight.) wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/e…
While I'm at it, a couple of other commentaries I didn't mention in my piece. This, from @michelleinbklyn, is characteristically excellent. nytimes.com/2020/06/04/opi…
And this from @brianbeutler is also characteristically excellent. Between us, Brian & I have something like 30 years of combined experience bitching & complaining about this exact subject, to no discernible effect. Wheee! crooked.com/articles/new-y…
Speaking of long-time co-complainers, see also @ThePlumLineGS, who shows that Trump & Cotton both acting in bad faith & losing the argument. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
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David Roberts
@drvox
In Whitefish, Montana, a young woman named Samantha Francine is confronted by a large white man with balled fists, shouting, "Black Lives Matter? Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!" She does not look away.

This is America, 2020.

(Photo by Grace Jensen) facebook.com/photo.php?fbid…
Just FYI, as several commenters have noted, the guy's name is Jay Snowden, 51 years old. He was arrested & charged with one count of disorderly conduct. There's video here, if you can stomach it. nbcmontana.com/news/local/whi…
Couple things to add to this. First, here's a CNN interview with the extraordinary Samantha Francine. Her father (dead 16 years) told her, "No matter the threat, always look them in the eye so they have to acknowledge you’re human."
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David Roberts
@drvox
@AntifaSupRSoldR @bilditup1 @AdamSerwer There's certainly no question that it existed w/in the liberal tradition & that it co-opted the language & concepts of liberalism (especially science) as its own, but that's different than saying it is consonant w/ liberalism.
@AntifaSupRSoldR @bilditup1 @AdamSerwer The intellectual developments of liberalism over the last half-century have served to discredit those faux-scientific arguments & driven them to the fringes. The racism still exists, of course, but the Enlightenment patina has mostly been destroyed.
@AntifaSupRSoldR @bilditup1 @AdamSerwer This is all way too complicated to hash out on Twitter so I'm gonna shut up about it & go back to mocking #babygate.
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David Roberts
@drvox
The thing about racist authoritarianism is that there *is no coherent ideological justification* for it. You can justify it with mysticism -- God chose this group, we are destined to rule, etc. -- but you can't justify it within the broad Western tradition of small-l liberalism.
It is from a much older & more common tradition: might makes right. We will dominate because we can. We will dominate because life & society are a zero-sum struggle among groups & our group has the power to win that struggle. It's not an argument, it's just the will to power.
So NYT editors, who take small-l liberalism for granted, keep making category mistakes, like the idea that Tom Cotton is "debating ideas." That's not how authoritarians use language. They use language as a tool for domination, like everything else.
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