Thread by @jholbo1

I've got to read this and think about it. But here's my first negative thought. To what degree is this bothsidesism valid? Not very, I think. 1/ tabletmag.com/sections/news/…

The comparison is between BLM protests - and riots - and Stop The Steal. But these aren't comparable. Why not? BLM was and is a reasonable civil rights protest movement, addressing actual existing problems of policing. Stop the Steal is an insane, delusional conspiracy theory. 2/

Now, normally you need to be even-handed about these things, in a formal way. 'Everyone has a right to their opinion'. 'Crazy people have the same free speech rights as everyone else'. 'You don't convince people by dismissing them as crazy.' All that's true. 3/

Nevertheless, it makes no sense, in analyzing what's actually going on, to bracket off what all reasonable people know, to humor crazy people. No, there are serious, real, valid concerns on one side and, on the other, crazy conspiracy theories with no basis in fact. 4/

I would say (armchair psychology mode): the fact that the right has confabulated up such craziness doesn't show they have their own, equal and opposite form of 'I'm right'. 5/

What this shows is that, on some level they know they're wrong. I really believe that. They have semi-repressed Trump guilt. They know Trump is bad. But who likes to think you are guilty of foisting a bad guy on half the country? Who likes to be the baddies? 6/

Now the Trump half of the country has legit grievances. Economic, social problems. Deaths of despair. @Chris_arnade 'Dignity'-type stuff. All that's real and important and needs to be addressed. But it has nothing to do with Joe Biden being a pedophile election-stealer. 7/

It is not HALF-true that Joe Biden stole the election. From the fact that there are 50 kooky kraken tales of stolen elections it does not follow that there is 1 good one, hiding its light. Where there is so much smoke like that, there is LESS likely to be any fire. 8/

If someone tells you 50 bullshit stories, that makes it LESS likely they have any non-bullshit story to spin. By contrast, BLM was/is a basically morally sane, serious, righteous civil rights protest movement that has gotten too violent around the edges. 9/

Now: citizens' rights to protest and speak and so forth are not to be gauged up or down depending on whether the citizens are sane and good or crazy and bad. You are allowed to protest the good on behalf of the bad. You are allowed to think crazy things and say them. 10/

So long as you are coloring within the lines of peaceful protest and lawful speech we treat all that as 'equal', rightly. In a formal, procedural sense. But I don't think we need to also treat all civil disobedience as equal. 11/

Being a social justice warrior is just better than being a pro-tyranny activist. Once you step outside 'the law is the law', it matters whether you are fighting 'for change' to make the law MORE just or LESS just. 12/

Obviously people will disagree about that. But my point is: you can't bracket it out. You can't judge the justifiability of civilly disobedient protest actions without judging the actual justice of its aims - not just whatever the protesters think. 13/

If you don't think you are in a position to judge that sort of thing - who am I to say Joe Biden isn't trafficking in mole children sex slaves? - then you disqualify yourself as competent to judge whether whatever happened yesterday is worse than BLM or somehow same-same. 14/

But if you CAN make that determination, I think you obvious shouldn't regard what happened yesterday as BLM same-same. Because there are serious, race-related policing abuses - systemic problems - but there are not Joe Biden election-stealing problems 15/

Analysis is not persuasion. It doesn't persuade anyone to say: the problem is you are completely nuts and, although you think you are saving the country, you are actually fighting to install an insane man as its authoritarian head, illegally, dangerously. 16/

Nevertheless, if that IS actually what's going on, that has to figure in your analysis. At which point any both-sides whataboutBLMism falls by the wayside. 17/

Having made your analysis, you approach the crazy people with care - and try to understand their issues and legit problems and respect their dignity as fellow citizens. Even crazy people are entitled to being treated with maximal dignity. I'm sure their lives are tough. 18/

But analysis of what to do about large numbers of severely delusional, badly-behaved-on-that-basis citizens does not undo the fact that what they believe - or say they believe - is bad & nuts. BLM supporters have core, legit grievances. Stop the Stealers do not. Period. 19/

You can disagree with that. But if you disagree, you first have to prove actual mole children or something. I'm sure Michael Lind actually doesn't believe in that. 20/

But what about BLM going too far? Riots and all that and attacking government buildings and elected officials tolerating that. This is tougher. So let it be so. Let it be that BLM went wrong, since too far. (Let's stipulate for the sake of argument.) 21/

But there is still a weighty moral difference between 'your cause is just, but you went way too far, in the wrong way, in pursuit of it' and 'your cause us unjust, and you pursued it in ways that are, additionally, unjust in other ways.' 22/

Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley were hoping to thread the needle, engaging in injustice activism for profit, but in a way that wouldn't be so obviously procedurally unjust. Their bad luck about #2. Thanks, the mob! 23/

But even if they had gotten lucky, no riots, just unctuous, lying 'concerns about the election' that still isn't morally equivalent to BLM on any reasonable analysis. The overall situation is so morally asymmetric analysis must reflect that. 24/

This seems like me substituting pro-BLM apologetics for analysis of the 'crisis', which calls for a cooler, more neutral eye. But that's a fallacy. The judgment that there IS a crisis is moral. You can't bracket out the moral basics. Don't feign even-handedness. 25/