Korner: Rules of Polite Conversation
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Sherminator uses a smile and a light touch bringing up the subject:
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[with respect to my kidding about Gallardo, Sherm kids back] I'm offended sir. A man should not be judged by his worst moments. That's why we can't judge Donald Trump by his Access Hollywood blunder... or was it the time he called Mexicans "murderers and rapists"... or when he insulted that Gold Star family... or said John McCain was a loser... or Charlottesville...
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We've used a few Korners to work around the edges of relatively cool political topics in 2017. The Denizens have been simply awesome. We tread gingerly onto the minefield itself, encouraging all Denizens to laugh a little bit and keep it light. Like they say, "Do Not Enter Dangerous Areas When Playing Pokemon Go." You'd think we would already know better than to follow Pikachu into a Viet Nam mine field, but that's humans for ya.
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As I've said many times, I'm no Trumpie by any stretch and my goal in an article like this is low-friction idea exchange. In that spirit, here is one thing parallel to Sherm's comment and one thing perpendicular to it.
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PARALLEL: The Access tape, and many other things Trump has said, would have in the 1950's (probably even 1980's) been "extinction-level" political events. It's one of the great phenomenon of my political-watching life to watch Donald Trump NOT become an ex-politician, about twice a month.
We never know what Trump is going to say next, and not in a good sense. If we expected the next difficult statement to be merely "awkward," that would be one thing. Our collective worry is where the next thing is going to rank, 1-10, on the catastrophe scale.
I thought it at least 80% likely that McConnell, Ryan & Co. were going to use the first possible excuse to impeach Trump, mostly on the basis of his personality. Am dumbfounded that Trump's power, relative to theirs, is spreading like an amoeba.
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PERPENDICULAR: It's interesting that Sherm went 5-for-5, a cycle plus a walk, objecting to things Trump said. Not that Sherminator couldn't also list two dozen things Trump did that he doesn't like, but it illustrates a syndrome: America seems to object to Donald Trump personally much more than it objects to his policies. With President Obama it was precisely the reverse (huge likeability ratings, including from me, even as Democrats were swept out of power). Very, very odd.
But then again nobody wants the 1950's chivalry, modesty, and sexual taboos back, do they? As Camille Paglia put it, Donald Trump's offenses against women are mild and few compared to Bill Clinton's. Or your local football hero's, probably. That doesn't excuse any of it, from anybody, but let's not forget the "shoe on the other foot" standard.
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RULES OF POLITE SOCIETY: In my view, militant progressives often view Trump as, literally, mentally unbalanced because --- > they simply don't process the fact that he doesn't care about their approval. We were very close to a "microagression" culture, in which the rules of polite conversation revolved around identity politics.
Those rules were measured in yards, then in feet, then in microns ... and when Donald Trump ignored those rules, transgressing the rules by miles instead of microns, they processed this as CRAZY. Many, many people are still doing exactly this.
Not using the term lightly, it's textbook cognitive dissonance. If you think about it from the point of view of a person who believes "hate speech" should capture incorrect pronouns, as it does in Canada ... here all of a sudden a person appears who doesn't care AT ALL what pronoun you prefer and whatcha gonna do about it?
It looks like a six-legged beagle standing in the back yard. It does not process. The press still does not seem to grasp the very simple idea that maybe half the country simply does not want to play by those hair-fine "microagression" rules any longer. No more, no less, nothing much to see here. The PC stuff got too silly; take a hike, pal. Maybe that's really all this is about?
Sounds funny but that was the entire pivot of James' 1/17 political piece, How the Democrats Can Win Kansas. Plot spoiler: stop calling everybody racists for disagreeing with you. You do that, you win, Dems. Deal?
It wasn't. The comments went 10:1 against the suggestion.
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ALTERNATIVES: At BJOL they are discussing peaceful ways to split the country up into 2 or 3 nations, as opposed to having the hot shooting war that James says ALWAYS occurs at this point. Similarly, Newt Gingrich referring to the slavery issue warned us, historically one side wins and the other side loses.
Perhaps we've got to put our faith in the moderating, calming influence of the U.S. election. Perhaps far-right influences will be gracious in victory -- for example, the far right is very angry that Bannon's out, Kushner's in, is very angry about Trump's approach to DACA -- and perhaps far-left influences will hold up their palms and say "Okay, okay, we'll lighten up a bit on the speech codes."
Both sides continue to win and to lose elections 51-49, and both sides have always been forced towards the middle by this. It's just like sports. The team down by 10 makes changes, and the team up by 10 sits laughing on the bench, and the game tightens again. If you'd spread 100,000 votes around three battleground states, Hillary Clinton would be President and this whole conversation would be quite a bit different, wouldn't it :- )
Respectfully,
Jeff