My last post was very overtly anti-Trumpian and by proximity also very anti-Right Wing. I think the danger of a post like that lies in its ability to alienate. Because I feel like the most dangerous threats to democracy and the American government lay at Trump’s feet, that is and will continue to be my primary focus. Until that danger is gone, the dangers that I see in other camps won’t feel as dire and I will not feel as much of a need to write about them. However, that doesn’t mean those dangers aren’t there. I’m writing this to play Devil’s Advocate with myself and to help establish that being critical of one’s own camp is just as important as being critical of the other.
The Liberal Agenda
When you think of a Republican voter, you generally have a solid idea of the kinds of programs and policies they want. They’re usually for agendas that support strict abortion laws, defense spending, border security, and lower tax rates. They are also usually for agendas that are anti-abortion, anti-gun control, anti-education budget, and anti-immigration. The agendas and the rhetoric are usually pretty consistent across the party line too. Certain candidates may have stronger opinions than others, but the Republican sled dogs are usually all pointed in the same direction.
Good luck finding that consistency on the Democratic side of the aisle. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders might be in the same party, but they do not share the same political orbit, if even they share the same solar system. The Democratic Party is spread thin and divided on every issue from Border Security to Universal Basic Income. It is a party that is populated by Communists and dictated by Conservatives. The Liberal Agenda cannot agree on nearly anything and so they watch radicals like Donald Trump steal their voters and swing the states that count because nobody wants to ride on a sled being pulled by its dogs in thirty different directions. The Liberals don’t even know what their agenda is, but they do know that anyone who disagrees with it isn’t to be dealt with.
Cancel Culture
“Cancel Culture” is an extremely charged phrase. You’ve likely heard it cried the most from people upset that they can’t say the N-word or fuming that their Redskin mascot is now something more generic. I think that the right blows cancel culture out of proportion, but I still wholeheartedly agree that it is something that exits. However, I also believe that it exists both positively and negatively.
Cancel culture really started to grow as a term in the Harvey Weinstein era of public fallings. to a certain degree cancel culture is warranted and productive. It has enabled movements like #MeToo to empower women to speak up and it has helped expose predatory monoliths such as Weinstein, Epstein, and Donald Trump. It has utilized social media to bring attention to crimes committed by otherwise untouchable people. There are absolutely positives in the way in which so called cancel culture has created the inability to escape public accountability and how it has empowered otherwise powerless people to speak up.
At the same time, cancel culture has also created a Kritarchy where judges and lawmakers are virtually the same entity. It has created a court of public opinion that is capable of being simultaneous judge, jury, and executioner. It has also created a system in which people are reduced only to their worst mistakes or most controversial beliefs. I am all for accountability in the public eye, but I’d like to look at an example where this issue has gone too far; J.K. Rowling.
J.K. Rowling
I reckon that a lot of readers who enjoyed and agreed with my last post are probably a little concerned at seeing this particular person become a topic of this discussion. You are free to agree or disagree with me on why I feel like she is a victim of cancel culture rather than someone being served justice by it. I’m not here to debate the validity or absurdity of what she stands for, I’m here to defend her right to stand for it and still be a member of society.
My biggest concern with the vitriol around J.K. Rowling is how it hinges a person’s entire existence around one issue. I understand the sensitivity of the issue, and I think that is part of where all of the rage toward her comes from. Whether you agree or disagree that trans people should exist, they do; and they continue to do so at great risk because of so much of the discussion and divisiveness around them. What frustrates me with the discourse around J.K. Rowling is the sincerity with which she talks about her stance on trans women being designated as women and given access to women-only spaces. If you read her interviews or watch clips of her discussing the issues, she’s not coming at it like Trump comes at immigrants. She approaches the issue with very detailed reasoning why she believes what she does and doesn’t push overt hostility or violence towards the trans community. Her stance doesn’t come from a desire to attack the trans community, but a belief that she is defending a community of her own. At the same time, she is a victim of similar abuse and violence to what her trans opponents fear. She argues for one cause at the expense of another, but she does so earnestly. Now you can absolutely disagree with what she says, and you can absolutely make the point of how her status as an author can place discomfort and harm on those people because of the stance she has taken. But, I feel it is equally important to acknowledge the attitude she takes and the intent she seems to have. How we say things is just as important as what we are saying.
Disagreement coming from a place of earnestness is important. This is not only how issues are discussed, it’s how compromises are reached and problems are solved. If you walk into a conversation with gasoline and I walk in with a lit match, combustion is inevitable and destruction the actual goal. It’s concerning to see threats of violence and doxing to someone who I believe is earnestly defending something she believes in whether she is right or wrong on the issue. Part of conversation and discourse is understanding and listening even when you don’t like or agree. Only through empathy and understanding can we actually make our voices heard by each other.
That said, I’m not directly affected by her stance, her words do not have the same impact on me that they do others. I understand why people do not want to hear what she has to say, I understand why so many are so upset by her stance. Disagreement, even adamant and passionate disagreement is okay, but minimalizing “the enemy” to nothing more than an effigy to burn is not. Liberals pretend to be better that their opponents; but Liberals are still people, and people are hateful and violent regardless of whether they’re an ass or an elephant.
Black and White
This world isn’t binary. There are black and white situations, yes, but the overwhelming majority of them are grey. Our political identities don’t allow for much wiggle room in these gray spaces. Like a Sith we deal in the absolutes of “you’re with me or against me”, and there are some cases where this is a true conclusion, but overall we in this country are united under the same Constitution and its noblest intents. To step on a few more toes, I’d like to break open a bit of another issue that is colored with far more grey than either side would like to admit. Israel and Palestine isn’t good vs evil or God vs Satan. And yet across the board I generally see my Republican friends calling for the extermination of Palestine and my Democratic friends calling for the extermination of Israel. And I’m sorry, but any position that requires the complete dismissal of the other is not only ignorant and un-empathetic but scarily violent.
A lot of this black and white interpretation comes from the fact that we don’t have the time or space to understand the complexities of the issue, and our politicians like it that way. We want bumper sticker slogans and one-button solutions when the history of this issue demands far more understanding of its nuances and systemic solutions to its generations old problems. Few parts of the modern world have been imperialized and obliterated quite like the Middle East. We are dealing with an issue in which the political strife goes back through more than a century of American, English, French, German, and Russian occupation. The hard decisions require an understanding that good and bad can coexist in one being, and that two contradictory things can be true when dealing with situations this old, complex, and engrained. The United States has ethnic rivalries that are flavors of the month, but the rivalries between foreign ethnicities often go back as far as recorded time. It is difficult for many Americans to fully grasp the depth, longevity, and brutality of what is happening there because they lack the knowledge of that history and they do not want an answer more complex than as simple yes or no.
I’d like to speak directly to my Christian friends on this issue. The Israel that exits now is a nation state, it is not the 12 Tribes of Jacob and it should not be held on a godlike pedestal as if it were. The attack on October 7th was horrendous and the continuing actions of Hamas are despicable, but the total war retaliation of Israel against the people of Gaza, including many Christians, has claimed a lot of innocent lives and done irreparable damage to both the people and the land. Empathizing with the Israeli people, believing that they are justified in retaliation, is one thing, but cheering relentlessly for the destruction of an entire people is not okay. Christ died for the Muslims in Palestine just as he did for the Israelis, and wishing destruction upon one neither sanctifies nor elevates the other.
A Lack of Leadership
I think something that tends to separate the liberal camps from the conservative ones is the fact that Democrats tend to hyper fixate on specific issues whereas Republicans tend to hyper fixate on the people pushing them. The Democrats are divided on nearly everything, including the issues briefly mentioned above, and the party as a whole lacks any semblance of overarching leadership. There is no Democratic Trump, and the party can’t seem to find its next rockstar candidate like Bill Clinton or Barrack Obama. Love or hate Trump, he is a candidate who polarizes and mobilizes the party base. The Democrats don’t have anyone who can genuinely grab the reigns of its factions and get the sled dogs pointed all in one direction.
This has long been a problem since the Kennedy’s were assassinated. The candidates who truly captivated voters inside and outside of the party like John and Robert Kennedy do not much exist anymore. Now I love the homespun charms and servant’s heart of Jimmy Carter but he’s just a nice guy, he’s not a rock star. And since Reagan gave Republicans a monopoly on the Christian values tactics that got Carter elected, the Democrats have leaned further and further into this belief that a vanilla politician with a long history in government will somehow be the most magnetic choice. Entrenched politicians are like trickle down economics, how many times do we have to “just try it and see if it works” before we’re ready to call it a misfire?
Secretly Awful
A lot of Big Democrats were actually terrible people but they did their deeds like being racist (Woodrow Wilson but he was pretty open about it), whipping his genitals out constantly (Lyndon B. Johnson), and being a predator (Clinton but again not that secretly) in private. Liberal Leaders do bad things but then either hide them well enough or apologize profusely while Republicans wear those same bad deeds like a badge of honor. Different standards are set for different teams. Part of the issue that Democrats have is that they champion themselves as these idyllic and untainted individuals, whereas Republicans present themselves as John McClane-esque cowboys. When John McClane tracks bloody footprints all over the carpet he doesn’t have to apologize because he’s already shown you that’s who his lack of shoes. When a Democratic closet is opened and the skeletons fall out, there’s a greater sense of hypocrisy because it is usually a skeleton they’ve taken an adamant stand against.
The Republican Party does not care that Donald Trump is guilty of paying hush money to a porn star he had an affair with or that he incited a coup against them, because he is the loose cannon they elected him to be. The Democratic Party doesn’t have a margin of excuse like that. I don’t mean that to seem like a bad thing, because I truly believe politicians and leaders in general should be held to higher and more critical standards, but it does create quite the problem for the Democratic Party when it’s time to get literally anything done. Which brings us to the other candidate in this upcoming 2024 election, Joe Biden.
The Biden Conundrum
Why is the Democrats’ best candidate positioned as “The guy who isn’t Trump”. Republicans run off how much they hate the other guy, but with Liberals its a “where’s my hug?” energy. It’s the attitude of “well if they don’t want Trump then this guy is just vaguely moderate enough that they might go for him”. Biden does not polarize or mobilize his own sect of the party, let alone the party as a whole. Biden isn’t a rockstar, he’s an old reliable who is now mostly old and somewhat unreliable. At the same time, the Democrats are fracturing over their conflicting stances on Israel and Gaza, and because nobody wants this argument to become a discussion, Liberals are willing to stick it to their candidate and hand the election to the other guy because his values do not perfectly align with their own. The party is cannibalizing itself and if it is not careful, it will hand a dangerous (and now officially criminal) Former President the keys to a kingdom he’s already proven himself incapable of respecting let alone leading for a second time.
The Perfect Society
It feels like Liberals believe that if they do X, Y, and Z, then the perfect society can be achieved. Republicans believe the Perfect Society is long gone and will do whatever construction or destruction they can to get back to this revisionist past. I think both are idealists vying for an ideal that either never existed or can never be achieved, and they’re more dedicated to their version of what that should be than they are to the actualities of the nation and world around them. I hate to bring this to a close on such a dour and pessimistic note, but I do not have the answers. While I do not believe them to be as big a threat to the nation as Donald Trump and his cohorts, I do believe the Democratic party to be guilty of serving its own aims above the greater good of the nation and if it is not careful it will doom us to devices of its own making.
Collin Willis 