Jeb Lund gets it. If his observations aren’t already obvious to you then please wake the fuck up take note. (Hat tip to driftglass for linking to Lund’s post.) Stop Waiting for Trump to Start Making Sense:
Let’s say you were suddenly whisked back to the sixth grade, and you found yourself face-to-face with a bully threatening to kill your Tamagotchi. Now let’s say you countered that surely his actions would exhibit a break from norms and that he would feel hypocritical because he’d probably once been victimized by someone. You would, in all likelihood, get your ass beat.
Anyone who went to an average middle school understands how this plays out. Which is why it’s all the more bewildering that leftists, centrists, and guardians of the genteel status quo seem to think this approach will work with Trump after it failed to work with the Republican Party for at least a generation. This has not, and will never, work. The president-elect’s team is a hammer, and every problem, including you, is shaped like a nail. They have no sympathy.
Like a lot of bad ideas, this all started with a misunderstanding. It is an article of faith among the left that people vote against their own self-interests and tolerate political chicanery because they don’t understand economics or history or good governance or what popular conservative demagogues said once six years ago….
This misreading also fuels the bottomless liberal faith in the power of political comedy. The Daily Show and its descendants run on hypocrisy: Take one appalling statement from some malicious clown today, then run file video of that same clown saying the opposite under the previous administration. Now, morally, said person in power has no choice but dissolve in a puddle of self-ownage.
No one should be surprised that this kind of comedy took off. With eight years of George W. Bush followed by eight years of spectacularly cynical Republican obstructionism, you could circle the globe three times over with one-liners alone. Moreover, the prospect of massively successful viral clips that explain events to casual voters is practically irresistible.
The only problem is that it doesn’t work. A pathological liar who acts as the setup for at least a dozen punchlines merely by standing still just got elected president in spite of audio/video evidence of him bragging about committing a sexual offense. Even when comedy speaks truth to power, it usually does so in another room with a locked door between itself and its target.
Playing gotcha! with hypocritical conservative statements about the Constitution, Russia, Middle East, or personal liberties, is like treating measles by putting Clearasil on the rash. It doesn’t work because it fundamentally misunderstands the message and appeal of conservatism, which is punishment….
Against this, the left and social media has arrayed a democratization of the zinger-gig economy—”Uber, but for pointing out the politically contradictory!”—balanced with the performative how dare you, sir of the electorate and even louder lamentations about America, heartbreak, and loss. Apart from being almost wholly ineffectual on its own terms, all it does is vindicate the conservative message….
You cannot shame the shameless; you can’t appeal to an inborn trait someone doesn’t have.
“When they go low, we go high” is something you can say when someone’s agreed to sit at the table with you, but Trump and the people who revel in his omnidirectional crass abusiveness and opportunism don’t have to go anywhere to hit low. Their resentment and bullying will always find the lowest elevation. When they go low, let them—like the bully who eventually trips one day on the playground, it makes it easier for everyone in the rest of the class to see how small his size, how few his number, how low his road, and how everyone, together, can defeat him.
Unfortunately, with fellow citizens who think like this and believe they’re being sensible it’s going to be a serious uphill battle.
(It would so easy now to praise the wisdom Arnaud Amalric and become a fully-vested misanthrope. But that’s the chickenshit way out. Not gonna do it. At least not today.)