This post is a short one for two reasons: Its point is exceedingly simple, and it's already been made by Ken White of The Popehat Report, bold and italics, original.
"Fuck Civility."
I told you it's short, that version being the shortest.
While brevity has its virtues, strict fidelity to the seriously laconic when quoting it can leave the reader a trifle confounded, as in, What in hell does that mean? The case-in-point incomprehensibility of this little adage is that it's massive in scope.
We prefer civility and we prefer it most always, hence some narrowing of the quote's universality is needed. We'll approach the endpoint by the process of induction; Ken White kindly begins the particulars:
Don’t be conned by the cult of civility and discourse, the "now is the time to come together" folks. You are under no obligation to like, respect, or associate with people who countenance this.
They're everywhere, these people he speaks of, the folks who tolerate the intolerable. When I read the line my memory bank opened to a long-held opinion which, I believe you'll agree, is less an opinion than the bloody clamoring truth. Ken certainly agrees:
Do people really think you shouldn’t cut ties with, say, someone who votes for an overt neo-Nazi, or an overt "overthrow the system and nationalize all assets" tankie?
The mention of "neo-Nazi" completes the induction process — not that anyone was ever in the dark. More than just deeply disagreeable to logic and extraordinarily repugnant to human decency, Trump voters are steeped in one of their master's swindles: You mustn't judge them, insists MAGA, as they wholly disrespect your right to judge him.*
And that, as Ken White observes, is a "double standard" to be dispatched with haste.
Part of the way Trumpists win is when you announce "ah well, voting for Trumpists is just a normal difference of opinion" ... while the Trumpists are saying "everyone who disagrees with us is cuck scum, they’re the enemy within." Stop that nonsense.
Or, return to the short version.
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