Here we go with that "different in kind" thing again

[trinityvixen]

One of the things that bothers me most in reportage about political bloggers and commentators is the tendency to forget that just as there is a difference in extremism, there is also a difference in type when people have opinions and suggest courses of action. The extremism equilibrium issue is a bad one, but it is also one that is easy to point out and shut down. You can easily see the difference, with some thought, between people who aren't sure that the health care reform being debated right now is what's best and people who think that health care reform is the Holocaust by another name. That is a difference in extremes of the same opinion.

The differences in kind are quite different and no one will give acknowledgment the time of day because it takes more than hyperbole to see. However, when you compare moderate activists against a hyperbolic, probably insane television anchor, it becomes much, much easier to see what a difference in kind actually is.

A gay female blogger suggests that her fellow LGBT readers should not donate to the DNC because, on the whole, the DNC is doing nothing to advance their agenda. This is better than the RNC, who would do less than nothing, but not acceptable. You donate money, you expect your congressperson/senator/president to pay attention. That's how the system works. She is working within the system to send a message.

Glenn Beck goes on TV and literally threatens his watchers with death, death, loss of liberty, death, death, fascism, and death. His network sponsors a rally against the government, and it inflates coverage of said rally. People at this rally reflect the paranoid mindset of Beck himself, mirroring his suggestions that the government is being corrupted from within and might require the blood of patriots to free once more. A man showed up the to the 9/12 rally with a "We came unarmed. [This time.]" poster. The threat isn't even subliminal. Beck is encouraging a section of the populace, his popularity rides on that segment that wants to overthrow the system.

This, my friends, is what I mean when I say a difference in kind.

Tobin Harshaw thinks that Beck's meddling that undermined Scozzafava in the NY-23, that Beck himself celebrates as a purge of the insufficiently conservative, is the same as a blogger encouraging potential Democratic donors to vote with their dollars to encourage the rise of more progressive candidates. Beck used terror and undue pressure to force out Scozzafava--he and others declared her the enemy, and they moved to hound her out of the race to make room for a know-nothing loser candidate that will never be elected and cannot, therefore, do anything for their movement. Pam Spaulding says that people should direct their support within the party to candidates of a more progressive bent so that they win primaries and then, hopefully, the elections that will get them to a point where they can effect change.

There are similar problems with the struggle--both sides end up risking losing a seat to the opposition if they drum out more moderate candidates (Beck) or promote overly progressive candidates that the district as a whole cannot support (Spaulding). So, yes, in a sense, their issues are alike. But their methods are of such different timbre, I have difficulty believing that anyone could confuse the two.

Then again, this Opinator quoted Jonah "Liberals can be fascists if you rewrite the definition of fascism" Goldberg in his last column, where he was busily forwarding this lie that Obama was somehow materially damaged by supporting his party's non-starter candidates in two gubernatorial races. Clearly, we are not dealing with the sort of deep thinker who can appreciate the apples-to-oranges nature of an obvious difference in kind sort of comparison.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

See what I mean about differences in kind? Ah me, I remember the old days (read: the last eight years) where it was treason to even suggest that the sun didn't shine directly out of Dick Cheney's ass and patriotism to surrender your constitutional freedoms!

Meeeeemories...

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Yes, because Kanye "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and the NAACP's "Bush supports lynching" ads were so much more moderate and sensible.

Keep rooting for the home team.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Who said they were moderate or reasonable? My point was exactly that--that jumping to lump all dissidents, and, importantly, their means of dissent--together is the exact problem. You just conflated Kayne's inflammatory comment with, what, all liberals? Just the ones you know? Just me? Who's on that "home team" you so snidely insinuate about?

Point of fact, Kanye's comment is another kind entirely from either Beck's or Spaulding's. He has a lot more fame than Spaulding, but I would argue his reach--which I measure as his audience and the extent of his influence--is less than Beck's. So he calls the President a name, and people holler about it--mostly because they were probably at a concert where people holler at anything said onstage.

Funny, though, how you get bent out of shape about that, but not the demonstrable, pernicious payback experienced by another artist who voiced dislike of that particular President. The Dixie Chicks said something a lot milder, and people started threatening to kill them, their records went straight to the pits of Billboard Chart Hell (more of which had to do with GOP-friendly corporate insistence that radio stations not play their album than it did people requesting that the album not be played), and they were social pariahs until such time as the entire pop culture realized it's okay not to agree with the President. Which, you'll note, is exactly how Glenn Beck makes his bread and butter these days.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Let's stipulate that death threats are wrong, as are comparisons of major political leaders to Nazis. I think we all agree on that. Oh, and vicious lies about political leaders are also pretty bad.

Then it would be nice to see the oh so concerned liberals who yell about the "Republican hate machine" (Chuckro) show half as much concern over the last 8 years of Nazi comparisons directed at Republicans, and not just by a few protesters or a private talk show host (and note: One major private talk show host; Rush hasn't gone that far.) Or Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), who supported the health care bill with the line, "I would like to apologize: I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America."

I can't stand Glenn Beck; he's an idiot blowhard who made his name pushing conspiracy theories and silliness. But it's not like the left is a fount of moderate civility here.

(And on Scozzafava: the anti-Scozzafava movement didn't really pick up until she tried to have a Weekly Standard reporter arrested for asking tough questions. She destroyed herself.)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Then it would be nice to see the oh so concerned liberals who yell about the "Republican hate machine" (Chuckro) show half as much concern over the last 8 years of Nazi comparisons directed at Republicans, and not just by a few protesters or a private talk show host

You're demanding a response disproportionate to scale. It always seems like the other side, especially when it is out of power, disproportionately violates Godwin's Law versus what your side does when it's out of power. I can't say with certainty that the liberals referred to conservatives as Nazis less often than conservatives do to liberals now. To me, it seems like they do. You disagree. However, I would point out that liberals aren't the ones who published this happy horseshit (http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0385511841) knowing that the little mustache makes up in inflammatory rhetoric what the work itself lacks in evidence and proof. Doesn't prove anything, I grant you. And yes, I agree that such bullshit should immediately invalidate your argument or your expectation of being taken seriously.

However, what I can say with certainty is that the problem of comparisons to Nazis/Hitler is not just that it a) does bad, bad things to historical and current event reporting accuracy, and b) needlessly lowers debate to the point of ridicule, but that it also implies a lot of violence. Let's face it, Nazis weren't known for the puppies they petted. They were known for their cruel, senseless violence. And wouldn't you know it? Just as people are holding up signs agitating that the current POTUS is like those cruel, senseless Nazis of old, the rate of death threats against him has skyrocketed 400%. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/5967942/Barack-Obama-faces-30-death-threats-a-day-stretching-US-Secret-Service.html)

If you perceive that liberals are being less tolerant and forgiving of the Nazi comparisons than supposedly conservatives were when they were in control, perhaps it's because we're seeing correlation (agan, not saying it's causation) of that with threats against the life of the President. Threats so numerous, the Secret Service cannot possibly keep up with them. This seems especially disproportionate given that the man hasn't hardly done anything yet and is barely involved in the deliberations in the House and Senate that are most frequently the target of those awful Nazi posters. Unlike George Bush, who stood out in front of most of his administrations' initiatives, Barack Obama's kind of just played cheerleader at best, disinterested third party at worst. It takes quite a lot of bullshit paranoia to imagine he deserves to draw the same level of Godwin violations as Bush, even if you could say such a thing could be "merited." To me, it's less a sign of what's "merited" than the number of people who believe this shit. You ought to be scared that your numbers are so high. I would be if they were on my side.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I might also just note: you didn't debate me the difference in kind of the objections. Instead, you went for the predictable "ZOMG YOU SAID NAZIS" (which I didn't, actually) and decided to derail me there. That's dishonest debating, but I let you. So it's my bad. I was actually talking about something entirely different.

So, since we've agreed Nazis are useless in this debate, and we declare the people waving Nazi signs to be besides the point, we can look instead at the substance of the protests against the respective folk in power. The anti-Bush protesters' main meme was impeachment. The anti-Obama protesters want to drum the man out of government and are willing to topple the government itself to do it.

Differences in kind mean that people fomenting for change using the governmental process to do it--like, say, that election we had in 2008--should never be lumped in with people who don't particularly care if the government survives their push for power.

[chuckro.livejournal.com]

the "Republican hate machine" (Chuckro) show half as much concern over the last 8 years of Nazi comparisons directed at Republicans

Nazis? Who the hell was talking about Nazis? I was talking about the "it's okay if you're a Republican" double-standard when it comes to defining "treason". An argument which I've had with you and Cubby before, I might add.