Kevin Williamson’s firing is how you got Trump, as well as the alt-right’s near-mainstreaming. Here’s why. (/1)
The Left continues to radically narrow the Overton Window - the spectrum of acceptable discourse. (2/)
They separate discourse into two categories: the acceptable and the unacceptable. Then they shrink the acceptable down to the opinions located between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. (3/)
This necessarily places Kevin Williamson and @bariweiss and @SamHarrisOrg and me and everyone else the Left finds unpalatable into the “excluded” category. (4/)
But the unacceptable category is already populated by those who are actually unacceptable: alt-right trolls, for example. (5/)
This means that the population of opinion in the unacceptable category - let’s call them Deplorables, since the Left does - come to be a majority by way of exclusion. (6/)
Unless, that is, virtuous people who have been excluded by the Left draw distinctions among themselves. Which they should, of course - Kevin and @bariweiss and I and @SamHarrisOrg all get lumped in as Nazis by the Left, but we all fight the actual alt-right Nazis. (7/)
But counting on the virtue of people you’ve just deemed unacceptable not to band together against you is both stupid and unrealistic over time. (8/)
Which means the Left is doing something unethical here, and deeply dishonest - and something that is likely to foster polarization that results in the mainstreaming of truly gross opinions. (9/)
This is how you get a reactionary movement willing to countenance alt-right evil: you tell people they’re part of the alt-right when they’re not, and treat them as such no matter how much of a lie that is. (10/)
What just happened to Kevin Williamson leads conservatives to side with anyone the Left casts out, good or bad, merely as a form of protection. That shouldn’t happen. But it does. And the Left causes it with this bulls***. (END)
