CT Blue

A few days ago a restaurant owner told Sarah Huckabee that, all things considered, she wasn’t welcome in her restaurant. The lack of civility on the left is now all the rage. As so many have argued, this is a one way street, for when the Trumpers are absolutely in your face, incivility wise (e.g., “fuck your feelings”), the media response is to send more reporters to backwater diners to try to understand why these idiots still worship their Führur. No time is spent bemoaning their incivility, since their targets are liberals and Democrats, and there’s an entire television network dedicated to demonizing them, so they should be used to it, and anyway, who cares. Consider, as another example, Anne Coulter, whose entire career has been built on lying about and demonizing liberals. No one ever asks her to be civil and she’s still constantly on the tube. But when a restaurant owner has a problem with someone who is the public face of a regime that tears children from their parents and puts them in concentration camps, then incivility is a problem.

I would argue that in many ways, civility is a problem. For one thing, since only those of us on the left are expected to be civil there is a dynamic that forces us to find ever more mild sounding euphemisms to describe those on the right. For example, we also learned today that calling Stephen Miller a “white nationalist” demonstrates a lack of civility. 

I’ve always had a problem with the term because it says too little. First of all, in this country, there is not that much appreciation for what the term “nationalist” implies, so that word coveys very little information. The term “white nationalist” is used because it is considered impolite to call someone a fascist, a Nazi, or a racist, all of which terms apply to Stephen Miller. Using the term is, to my mind, the equivalent of using the term “ethnic cleansing” in lieu of “genocide”. Again, there is no hesitation among those on the right to use any term they like against those on the left. No one objects to any term Sean Hannity cares to use to describe us, most if not all of which are lies. I mean, I wish Obama had been a socialist, but so far as the right was concerned, he was, and much more. I don’t recall anyone talking about incivility in that context. Obama just had to take it. Had he emitted one rage tweet, as the very stable genius does almost every day, we never would have heard the end of it.

So, if the term “white nationalist” becomes verboten, what term will we have to use to attempt to convey the idea that someone is a racist, fascist, and/or a Nazi? O, right: alt-right, a term that conveys absolutely no information. A perfect euphemism.

I’m for using the words that accurately describe our opponents. We are in an ideological war right now, and we are being asked to unilaterally disarm. You won’t see the term “white nationalist” used in this space. It’s quicker and more accurate to type Nazi, fascist, or racist, the specific word choice depending on the context. Oh, and by the way, they aren’t detention centers, they’re concentration camps.