But there remain lines. And calling someone a Nazi without any reason other than their failure to kowtow instantly to your lunatic agenda should be one of them. The proper response is HOW DARE YOU!! This, as my internet friend Tony Blauer likes to point out, is the root impulse behind all effective self defense, either physical or, as here, emotional.
The accusation itself is abusive. It is inherently a personal attack on the character and basic decency of the person to whom it is directed. It is intended to wound. And in the propaganda network built under Obama, it is intended to promote and justify the further marginalization of that person, and to enable eventual actual violence against them. Verbal violence always precedes actual violence.
I think we have all become anesthetized to all this, to the radical inappropriateness of it. I have commented on this before, but I am really feeling it today.
As an English comedian put it, in a rant where he was clearly venting actual anger, saying you are not a Nazi is like saying you don’t finger children. We assume it. It is the default. It should not be necessary to deny it, because no sane people are Nazis, and no sane people are pedophiles.
Thus, as I said a few days ago, this accusation is very much a form of Gaslighting, in which you claim the other person is insane because they disagree with you.
Now, self evidently, this accusation was everywhere for a very long time. Godwin’s Law dates back to 1990, before there even was an internet.
But I have never seen it be so relevant daily. I see people say “But Trump REALLY IS Hitler”. I ask: what do you know about Hitler? Have you read any books, watched any good documentaries? Answer: I DON’T NEED TO. So we are to believe someone who has spent his whole political life mainly talking about bad trade deals is “basically” the same as someone who rose to power with an explicitly militaristic, clinically racist, and politically abusive agenda. This is insanity.
Speaking for myself, I am losing my capacity to interact with these people at all. Speaking for many on the right, I think, we have put up with the bullshit for so long because it is so obviously WRONG. Dennis Prager created PragerU specifically to offer simple, well argued, fact based cases for conservative beliefs. There is no equivalent on the Left, because there CAN’T be. Their agenda is control achieved through conditioned responses to propaganda initiatives.
So I and people like me think “surely to God they can’t be that stupid forever. Surely there remain people willing to listen.”
But I really feel that the public “dialogue” is really about who is human. They accuse us of being Untermenschen. We say that is ridiculous, try to prove them wrong, and they shout louder, then stop participating, all while calling us prejudiced and ignorant bigots. It is lunacy.
For my part, I really am starting to look at THEM as an inferior version of humanity. They lack principles, lack character, lack curiosity, are chronically hateful and angry, emotionally and sometimes physically abusive, and all in support of policies which in general make the very things they claim to care about WORSE. There is no upside. There is no sunny side view of this public debacle. There is nothing good about it. Real people are hurt, the social fabric is torn, and viable solutions to real problems are made impossible.
I was really feeling angry last night, more than I have in a long time. Perhaps that is why I was so flippant this morning. How do you deal with all this? I honestly don’t know.