Well Excuuuse Me

I went with that famous Steve Martin line as the title of this strip because that is how I feel lately whenever I see anyone dunking on the millions of Americans who have simply been trying to act morally in the face of an authoritarian onslaught. There's a whole industry of political consultants and media figures making hay by relentlessly scolding Dems (and random people online who get conflated with Dems) for causing all of this, while billionaires flagrantly destroy our institutions and Trump voters embrace ever more extreme positions.

The truth is that the right has long been an engine of demonizing liberals, while simultaneously portraying liberals as the scolders and abusers. It's the "Always Blame the Left" strategy: "We can get ever more abusive and scolding and threatening, but if you say anything bad about us at all, then you are the problem."

Now, in normal times -- which these aren't -- it sometimes makes sense for prominent political figures to temper their words when dealing with terrible people and ideas. But everything changes when half the country is getting almost all their "news" from coordinated authoritarian sources such as Fox. Actual real-world events become increasingly irrelevant, and the pro-democracy opposition -- who lack such a huge media apparatus, and are burdened by reliance on science and evidence rather than just making everything up -- literally lose agency, or the ability to cause anything. They are mostly defined by this authoritarian media machine, which has no problem cherry-picking and distorting what people on "the left" have said or done.

And so it becomes a self-defeating doom loop, this attempt to solve the problem of fascism by insulting the very people trying to fight it. The idea that if "the left" just stopped saying x, y, or z then the right would stop getting more extreme and politics would go back to normal again is just completely absurd. Now, don't get me wrong: I am all about effective framing and persuasion, and I sometimes see activists being unstrategic. But I'm not about to abandon my moral principles or adherence to the scientific method.

Here's a cartoon from the 2008 presidential race, in which we saw some of this old familiar playbook. A number of well-heeled columnists tried to pin the "elitist" label on Obama, including one notorious NYT writer who thought Obama looked awkward "purchasing Utz Cheese Balls at a ShopRite." I grew up in the land of Utz cheese balls, and though I am partial to the Utz brand, I think this sort of commentary is idiotic and unfortunate.