it’s hard to escape the conclusion that it was intentional. The car rammed the crowd at speed, backed up, and sped away. This horrific incident capped a day of street brawls after hundreds of alt-right activists, neo-Confederates, and outright Nazis marched together to express and defend their “blood and soil” white nationalism.
.. It would be much easier to write off this small band of racists if they weren’t also part of a larger alt-right movement that was responsible for an unprecedented wave of online threats, intimidation, and harassment throughout the 2016 campaign season. Journalists, writers (including me and my family), and ordinary citizens were targeted with obscene and threatening images, racist messages, “doxing,” and sometimes promises of physical violence — all for the sin of criticizing Trump.
.. Violence then started to spill into the real world. A man wielding a sword hunted and killed a black man in New York City. A member of an “alt-Reich Nation” Facebook group killed another black man in Maryland. A man opened fire on two immigrants at a bar in Kansas, killing one. A white supremacist in Portland murdered two men on a train who intervened when he harassed a Muslim and her black friend. And that’s not an exclusive list. Meanwhile, the online hate campaigns roll on.
.. Incredibly, key elements of the Trump coalition, including Trump himself, gave the alt-right aid and comfort. Steve Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, proclaimed that his publication, Breitbart.com, was the “the platform for the alt-right,” Breitbart long protected, promoted, and published Milo Yiannopolous – the alt-right’s foremost “respectable” defender – and Trump himself retweeted alt-right accounts and launched into an explicitly racial attack against an American judge of Mexican descent, an attack that delighted his most racist supporters.
.. In other words, if there ever was a time in recent American political history for an American president to make a clear, unequivocal statement against the alt-right, it was today. Instead, we got a vague condemnation of “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” This is unacceptable, especially given that Trump can be quite specific when he’s truly angry. Just ask the Khan family, Judge Curiel, James Comey, or any other person he considers a personal enemy. Even worse, members of the alt-right openly celebrated Trump’s statement, taking it as a not-so-veiled decision to stand against media calls to condemn their movement.
Why Trump’s Vengeful Tweeting Matters
He’s crass, vicious, and petty.
.. It’s a sad symbol of our times that one feels compelled to actually make an argument why the president is wrong here. The pitiful reality is that there are people who feel like the man who sits in the seat once occupied by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan should use his bully pulpit for schoolyard insults and vicious personal attacks. But this is what we’re reduced to. So, here goes. –
.. First, it is simply and clearly morally wrong to attack another person like this. I’m tired of hearing people say things like, “This is not normal.” Normality isn’t the concern here. Morality is. It doesn’t matter if Mika has been “mean” to Trump. Nor does it matter that we can point to any number of angry personal attacks on Trump from others. We have to get past the idea that another person’s bad acts somehow justify “our” side’s misconduct. Morality is not so situational. Trump is under a moral obligation to treat others the way he’d like to be treated, to love his neighbor as he would love himself. Yes, he can engage in ideological and political battles, but to attack another person in such vicious terms is to cross a bright line.
.. Second, it’s not classist or elitist to make this moral argument. It’s no justification to argue that Trump simply speaks the way “real Americans” do, or that he’s brought into public the language that “everyone knows” people use behind closed doors. People of every social class and economic standing have the same moral responsibilities, and our society suffers when we relax those responsibilities, whether for a steelworker in a mill outside Pittsburgh or the real-estate developer in the Oval Office.
.. Third, even if your ethics are entirely situational and tribal, Trump’s tweets are still destructive. Attacking Mika like this doesn’t silence her or anyone at MSNBC. It doesn’t move the ball downfield on repealing Obamacare. It does, however, make more people dislike Donald Trump. It’s a misuse and abuse of the bully pulpit, all the more galling because it comes at a time when the positive parts of his agenda truly do need public champions.
.. Fourth, please stop with the ridiculous lie that this is the only way to beat the Left. Stop with any argument that this kind of pettiness is somehow preferable to the alleged weakness of other Republicans. There are thousands of GOP office-holders who’ve won their races (including by margins that dwarf Trump’s, even in the toughest districts and states) without resorting to Trump-like behavior. In fact, at the state level many of these same honorable and moral people are currently busy enacting reforms that the national GOP can only dream about.
.. The election is over. Trump isn’t running against Hillary Clinton anymore. Americans are no longer faced with the awful choice of either pulling the lever for an unfit candidate or voting for someone who has no chance of winning. If there were ever a time for Republicans to show some backbone, to tell their president that some conduct is out of bounds, it’s now, early in his first term, when he has time to turn the page and put his past misconduct in the rear-view mirror.
.. while also condemning Trump’s vile tweets and criticizing his impulsiveness and lack of discipline. A good conservative can even step back and take a longer view, resolving to fight for the cultural values that tribalism degrades. Presidents matter not just because of their policies but also because of their impact on the character of the people they govern. Conservatives knew that once. Do they still?
Unhinged Activists Never Enter the ‘Real World’ Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448037/campus-snowflakes-will-never-face-real-world-weinstein-sulkowicz
They move seamlessly from academia into government, art, and activism.
.. relishing their inevitable education in the so-called “real world.” The presumption is simple — these kinds of antics won’t fly when they’re trying to sell insurance or write code or balance a company’s budget. The “real world” is a harsh teacher, and soon they’ll have to grow up.
.. For the most committed campus radical, the “real world” doesn’t await; a lifetime of activism does. They’ll move seamlessly from academia into government, art, and politics, and sometimes right back into academia.
.. Yes, even ethics professors are beating people with bike locks now.
.. we live in hyper-partisan times and increasingly work in geographically separated ideological cocoons
.. Corporate boycotts directly extend campus politics into the world of commerce, and any person who works for a major progressive corporation knows very well what they risk if they publicly dissent from the company line on the same hot-button cultural issues that trigger campus meltdowns.
.. and a person of any ideology — if they so choose — can live their entire life without facing the stereotypical “wake-up call” that tends to moderate political extremes.
This is How the Elite Poisons Our Culture
The New York Times Magazine takes an open-minded view of open marriage.
A thriving culture needs leaders who don’t just live the right values, but work diligently to advocate for them against our baser desires. Cultural leadership isn’t just about walking the walk; it’s about talking the talk, too.
.. our secular elite speaks blue, but largely lives red. In other words, our wealthy, progressive, urban centers are hardly hedonistic enclaves. They’re chock-full of intact families, featuring moms and dads who waited until marriage to have children, value education immensely, and work hard to make sure that their kids make the same choices they did.
.. When it comes to actually arguing for the traditional family values they practice in their own lives, though, liberals are silent. They wouldn’t dare go so far as to pass moral judgment on those who live differently.
.. Indeed, they may even take great pleasure in embracing the few “transgressive” couples in their orbit as living symbols of progressive tolerance.