"What Trump voters think" should be reported, but it shouldn't matter.
Their beliefs and opinions should be covered like those of the members of any suicide cult. We should be told what the beliefs are. They shouldn't be lent credence or framed as valid drivers of policy.
The New York Times is making me tap pretty hard on the sign this weekend.
And: it's no longer necessary to report on what Trump voters think. We KNOW what they think. We know we know we know we know, we never stop getting told what these people think.
When exactly do we insist they engage with what everybody else thinks?
The other thing that makes Republicans bad is that increasingly they don't *win* elections, they just damage the mechanism of election until the election no longer reflects the will of the people ... which is the quality of elections that makes the permission they bestow valid.
When Democrats are in power, increasingly it means an *overwhelming* victory, so much that it overcomes the anti-democracy mechanisms Republicans have put into place.
When Republicans achieve power, increasingly they do so despite, not because of, the will of the people.
Don’t scale it back to placate. Double it to show them you mean business and ram it the fuck through, and then send through another one that’s THREE times bigger to teach them not to fuck with you. People want a real solution, nobody cares that Lisa Murkowski didn’t vote for it.
Name the bill the “Republicans are insurrectionist traitors act” and then make unblinking eye contact with them as you vote for it.
To be clear: a rapist of young girls is a selling point for mainstream Republicanism this point. That’s not hyperbole. That’s simply a clearly observable pattern. It’s an Abuse Party.
White conservative Christians have weaponized the concept of “forgiveness” to mean “a transactional status restoration between unrepentant abusers on one hand, and on the other unharmed third parties who have without consent appointed themselves proxies for victims.”
Like Andrew Sullivan, I don't want to see some voices elevated while I do want to see other voices elevated.
Unlike Andrew Sullivan, the voices I want elevated are diverse, vital, and challenging to existing hegemony, while the voices I don't want elevated are toxic and bigoted.
Also unlike Andrew Sullivan and the rest of these "anti-woke" "cancel culture" substack social injustice warriors, I'm honest about my position.