Asymmetric Polarization
Two Wrongs Making the Right
Racing to the Bottom
I haven’t written about Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, mostly because I don’t care enough to have a strong opinion about it. I will say, it seems a little weird to me. If I was the sort of person who had $44 billion to throw around, I wouldn’t spend it on some garbage social media site. And I say that as someone who uses Twitter sort of a lot. There’s a lot of consternation that Musk could fiddle with the moderation policies and make the user experience worse; to which I say — how would we tell? But beyond that, it doesn’t particularly matter to me which weirdo billionaire owns like the 12th most-popular social media site in the world.
Suddenly, however, people care a lot more about what Elon Musk says on Twitter. So it, uh, made waves when he posted this late last week:
The general contention is, apparently, that Musk has remained the same politically but “the Left” in this country has moved so far to the left that it has moved the political center leftward such that what was previously considered center-left is now considered center-right.
There’s some evidence to support this assertion, as this Pew graph from a few years ago:
But it’s also evident just in our own lived experience over the last, say, 20 years.
People forget that Barack Obama, in his 2008 campaign, was nominally opposed to gay marriage. I don’t know anyone who actually believed him, but he at least felt compelled to say it. Bill Clinton and many Senate Democrats were veritable immigration hardliners in the 90s, supporting strict immigration enforcement at the southern border. Hillary Clinton once ran on reducing the abortion rate. Bill Clinton also ran on welfare reform and increased policing. These days, it’s unthinkable that a Democrat would oppose gay marriage. Virtually every policy to limit immigration at the southern border is decried as racist, any attempt to regulate abortion is considered anti-woman, and Defund the Police is a straight-faced proposal from progressives.
Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis’s recent preening notwithstanding, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Republican willing to oppose gay marriage. The spending reduction obsession of the Tea Party is a faint memory. Many Republicans have adopted stereotypically leftist language toward international trade and military intervention abroad. With the possible exceptions of immigration and abortion, by traditional political measures, any movement by Republicans over the last 20 years has been at least marginally leftward.
Even if you quibble with the idea that Republicans have moved leftward at all, I think it’s self-evident that Democrats have moved farther left than Republicans have moved right.
If it seems implausible that Republicans have drifted leftward, however slightly, or have only moved marginally rightward, I think that’s because the major shift in the Republican party isn’t one that can be measured in the traditional left/right paradigm. Even if it’s true that Republicans have remained largely static on the left/right axis, they have no doubt gotten crazier, angrier, and meaner.
The undisputed leader of the Republican party is a man chiefly known for his petty insults of literally anyone who criticizes him, his viciousness towards immigrants, and his indulging in various provably-false conspiracy theories. The face of the Republicans in the House, and one of its most prolific fundraisers, is a woman known for literal harassment of her political opponents and — sensing a theme — was stripped of her committee assignments for her indulging in crackpot conspiracies and various racist and anti-Semitic comments.
In his now-famous A Time for Choosing speech, Ronald Reagan said “You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a Left or Right. Well, I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a Left or Right. There's only an Up or Down — Up: man’s old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order; or Down, to the ant heap of totalitarianism.” Republicans have no doubt chosen “Down” in recent years.
The Republican platform, to the extent that it exists, is almost beside the point. The chief distinguishing characteristic of Republicans these days essentially boils down to being an asshole to anyone to your left. (I know it ruffles some feathers when I describe such people as assholes, but sometimes vulgarity is warranted.)
The problem for Democrats is that quite a lot of voters are willing to tolerate conspiratorial assholishness if it becomes a choice between that and the rank leftism currently professed by the Democrats’ progressive flank. 2020 should have been a blaring red alarm, but it apparently wasn’t. The leftward shift by Democrats is unappealing to many once-reliable Democrat voters; such as Hispanics and Black men. And the idea among some on the left that the mass hysteria currently afflicting the Republicans presents an opportunity for Democrats to achieve more liberal goals does not appear to be borne out by electoral victories.
Don’t misunderstand, I sympathize with the temptation. It’s galling to think that you might have to work to appeal to voters when the other party is so glaringly unpleasant. In the immortal words of Office Space’s Michael Bolton: “Why should I have to change? He’s the one who sucks.” It’s much more satisfying to win by default and run up the score. It requires humility, however, to understand why voters aren’t lining up behind you even when the other party is so blinkered — a humility I am not confident Democrats possess. If the muted success of 2020 didn’t bring about introspection, maybe a rout in 2022 will shake them from their stupor. Otherwise, 2024 could be a lot like 2016.
Guess Who’s Back, Back Again
As I’m sure you’re aware, President Biden’s stuttering is a bit of a passion project of mine. And there has been increased talk lately of how his various verbal miscues lately are evidence that he doesn’t have the mental acuity required to faithfully execute all of the duties required of a president.
And y’know what? Sure. The dude’s pushing 80. He’s the oldest president we’ve ever had. He’s lost a step or two even since the Obama administration. Being president is difficult and requires a mental sharpness not common among octogenarians. Fine.
But it really pisses me off when the vast majority of videos used to support this theory are merely clips of Joe Biden stuttering.
The conservative website Townhall posted this clip, saying “Biden’s brain just broke, again”:
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton posted the same clip, calling it “alarming”:
It’s infuriating. If you want to make the case that Joe Biden is mentally incompetent, by all means make that case. But if the best you can do is post videos of him stuttering, I’m going to [continue to] raise hell.
This is a classic Joe Biden stutter — when he gets to the feared sound, in this case the “cr” in “kleptocracy,” he closes his eyes, says “uh,” and backs up to try again. He then blocks on the “kl” and abandons the effort all together, saying “yeah.” He then pauses for a second until he can say the word fluently, which is know as a postponement.
These are all well-documented stuttering behaviors. And while stuttering can be considered neurologically atypical, it is not, strictly speaking, evidence of a “broken brain.” Nor is it “alarming.”
I’m not usually one to use terms like “ableist,” but conflating stuttering with mental incompetence is simply ableist bullshit.
Meanwhile, at a rally over the weekend, Donald Trump touted his endorsement of “J.P., er, J.D. Mandel”:
For those who aren’t aware, in the Republican Senate primary in Ohio there is a candidate, J.D. Vance, who Trump endorsed over another candidate, Josh Mandel.
So what we have here is a video of Trump unable to remember the name of the candidate he endorsed, and instead mish-mashing it with the name of a candidate he quite conspicuously did not endorse. And yet Town Hall isn’t speculating about his “broken brain.” Tom Cotton isn’t wringing his hands and calling it “alarming.”
All of the people concern-trolling about Joe Biden’s mental state have nothing to say when Trump shows his own mental decline. I notice the difference, is all I’m saying.
Occasional Trivia
Answer from last time:
Category: Musical Instruments
Clue: Originally from Africa, this variety of xylophone became a popular folk instrument in Latin America.
Marimba
Today’s clue:
Category: Science
Clue: The word “laser” is actually an acronym of this term.
Dispatches from the Homefront
I still haven’t fully adjusted to the fact that my older daughter is an individual person capable of expressing independent thoughts.
Over the weekend, my wife asked if she wanted to go to Target, to which she enthusiastically responded yes. Then my wife asked if they should bring the younger daughter, and again she enthusiastically said yes.
But then my wife asked if I should come, and my daughter thought for a few seconds and said “…hmm, no, he should probably stay home with [our dog].” Which is fair! I don’t like going to Target anyway. But the fact that she put thought into it and was able to express it so well took some of the sting out of the fact that my company wasn’t wanted.