And this is a good place to start this rant - buckle up, everyone. This entire you are not the opposition you are the enemy mindset, which has been around for decades but Trump and COVID ripped the tattered remnants of the mask away, is what is going to tear this country apart.
https://twitter.com/NickRiccardi/status/1587103418098667520
A reminder: I start my analysis late 80's not due to Saint Reagan but due to my age. I'm upper end Gen X, that happens to be the time period in which I grew up. My undergrad degree is, in effect, a political philosophy degree. I've paid attention to politics for a long time.
The Paranoid Style In American Politics is now approaching 60 years old. I've heard Dems aren't wrong, they are mentally ill for as long as I can remember. Republicans are evil has been said as long as that. There has always been a nasty strain of Othering to politics.
Some of that is simple tribalism. My tribe good, Others bad kept human beings alive for a long, long time. It very well may be encoded in the human brain, at least to some extent. The whole high trust/low trust society theory depends, ultimately, on tribalism. It's how it is.
The difference is that it used to be those who wanted to be taken seriously at least tried to move past that. Why? Because someone with different beliefs than you is not per se the enemy and it is intellectually, psychologically, and spiritually immature to think so.
An opponent is someone you want to defeat, yes, but it implies at least some measure of equality. An enemy is out to destroy you so you'd better destroy that person first. An opponent can be reasoned with. An enemy cannot. An enemy is Other and different and to be annihilated.
The ramp up to treating those with differing political views as the Other, as not equal citizens, as something not quite as human has been going on for a long time. As an example, good luck trying to get a social worker license if you have traditional religious beliefs.
I graduated from law school nearly 30 years ago. I was in the Federalist Society. Even then, there were people at my school who were agitating, in all seriousness, that anyone in the Federalist Society was not fit to practice law and should be denied taking the bar exam.
All of this has been roiling under the surface for years. And then in the Era of the Golden Scalp Weasel came the Great Unmasking. For reasons which remain beyond me, Donald Trump made people lose their minds and rip away the mask and the seething hatred was revealed.
You don't think Kevin Williamson's absolute and utter hatred for small town people is about Trump do you? His expressed desire that whole towns die off has not one solitary thing to do with Trump. It's just for some reason he thought making it about Trump made it acceptable.
The Bulwark/Dispatch/Lincoln Project are using Trump as an excuse to spew out their actual hatred of much of conservative belief. It's laughable how obvious it is. For the Left? It's now not only acceptable to state openly their hatred for anyone not Of The Body. It's required.
The mask got ripped away. The polite fictions were tossed aside. And the truth of it, that people view their fellow Americans as the enemy and enemies are to be destroyed, was revealed. Then came COVID. Any possible restraints got swept away by hysteria.
Now it was literally if you don't agree with me, you want grandma to die. If you don't agree with me, you are not really pro-life. If you don't agree with me, you should have money, food, shelter, and medical care withheld from you. If you don't agree with me, you should die.
That was not hyperbole. Those were statements made by various and sundry people who meant them. I believe quite firmly that it is what is said in anger and rage that reveals what someone truly thinks. Oh baby, I didn't mean it. Oh no, you absolutely did. You did. You do.
I see no possible way for there to be a way to move forward when the sides view each other as the enemy. What middle ground do I have with people who think I should be thrown from a building and who mean it. I get it, you were poked with a stick and you are lashing out. I get it.
I also get that, deep down, you think I should die. It's hyperbole! You are hyperbolic constantly! You know that's not really what's meant! As someone hyperbolic, I know when people are using that claim as an excuse. I also know where the limits are. Wishing death? Hard limit.
To loop back to the top, since I do have a point with this, note the inversion there. How dare people who were vilified, who were told they needed to be cast from society, who, in that article itself, had lies told about them, how dare they view someone as the enemy! How dare!
How dare? Because when someone decrees you are their enemy, it is basic self preservation to view them as the enemy back. And do you know when grace is extended to the enemy? After total defeat. That article isn't even an extension of a cease fire, let alone surrender.
That article is demanding that people ignore that they were deemed the enemy, that there were deemed unclean and unfit for society, that their livelihoods were taken away, that their family members died alone, that they were thrown aside as nothing, as meaningless, as worthless.
In what possible Universe do people believe that will be forgotten? In what possible Universe do people believe that should be forgiven without utter and abject groveling and begging for forgiveness? In what possible Universe will hostilities cease without someone being defeated?
She is being treated as the enemy because, frankly, she is. I read the article. The disdain for those from whom she claims to be seeking amnesty comes through every pixel. And she's supposedly the Good One. That she well may be is horrifying in its implications.
To sum up, COVID was the final crossing of the Rubicon. We are in a world now where each side openly views the other as the enemy. I know my history. I know how this story ends. God will not have mercy on us all. I despair, I despair. /fin
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