Confronting the Confrontation Question
Yes, you hate her, but give Sarah Huckabee Sanders credit — she served Trump well by tweeting out her experience at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va. Her job is to distract the media from whatever the current Trump horror might be, and she changed the subject masterfully. It happened last Friday and we’re still, sadly, talking about it five days later, mainly because liberals are still debating whether public confrontation of Trump officials is a justifiable or productive policy.
It certainly seem justifiable, because these people deserve such treatment if anyone does. Harvard prof Steven Levitsky, who co-authored “How Democracies Die,” says public shaming of Trump’s apparatchiks is important. “This is not the government taking action to bar people from restaurants. This is essentially society itself engaging in shaming of people who arguably ought to be shamed. This is not a normal situation, this is not normal politics descending into some type of illegitimate incivility.”
While confrontation can be cathartic for the perpetrator, it can be terrifying for the victim in a country with 330 million guns. Anger can quickly escalate these days to anonymous death threats from strangers all over the world. You don’t know which ones might be minutes away, so I understand perfectly well why Sanders is now going to receive Secret Service protection.
Ultimately, if you’re in favor of confrontation, you must acknowledge that it doesn’t play well in our video age. Consider what happened yesterday when a small group of protesters confronted Sen. Mitch McConnell as he left an event in Georgetown, D.C. They blasted audio of crying migrant children at them, prompting McConnell’s wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, to demand, “You leave my husband alone!” Maybe if you already hate McConnell that video is satisfying, but you don’t have to agree with him to think it makes the protesters look like dicks.
Another thing liberals seeking public confrontation should consider is that many laws have been passed to limit it, mostly in the service of women seeking abortions who don’t want to run a gauntlet of abuse from forced-birthers. We run the risk of having such laws used to limit all public protest aimed at private businesses. Don’t scoff. It’s happening in France, where butchers want government protection from protesting vegans.
I would argue we have better ways of fighting back. Consider the story of a woman in San Francisco who earned herself the moniker of Permit Patty for calling the cops on an 8-year-old girl hawking water on the sidewalk outside her home. The woman’s complaint: The girl didn’t have a permit. The catch: The woman is white, the little girl black. The story went viral, and people soon learned the woman’s identity and that she ran a business selling — only T.C. Boyle could make this up — cannabis products for dogs. Or, rather, she did —stores are 86ing her merchandise left and right. She’ll probably be selling water on the sidewalk soon.
When she does, I don’t doubt Sarah Sanders will use Permit Patty’s tale of woe to try to distract us once again.
For another point of view, consider Ross Douthat’s column in the NYTimes today:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/opinion/trump-civility-sarah-huckabee-sanders.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Harking back to the civil rights era (I know, I know, ancient history), he points out the moral value of strategic confrontation, not feel-good one-on-ones that can be escalated through today’s media culture to undeserved victim-hood.
Ocasio-Cortez was running in a majority-minority district, which surely helped her. And she had a couple of good issues going, like Crowley living in Virginia and sending his kids to school there. Broad hostility to Carper is graying out Harris’s campaign for most of us.
I agree the large strategic confrontation is absolutely necessary. I also believe each and every Trump official or surrogate should be shamed and mocked in public.
Certainly we can do both. The reason it’s controversial is because it’s working. They don’t it and they shouldn’t. Their policy and bullshit and propaganda is cruel and causes heartbreak and pain for many people. If any of them get run out of the local restaurant I’m glad.
It’s politics. Grind them into the fucking dirt.
It easy to point out how the demographics favoured AOC now that she’s beaten the 4th ranked rep in the House. Like it was so obvious with those advantages she’d win.
I’ve pretty tired of politician doing despicable things and then calling for civility so they are made to feel the consequences of what they’ve done.
I think many others are tired of it as well.
Notice the people being shamed have no reply. They can’t defend their position. Because these people don’t play by the rules of the reporters in briefing room. They needn’t play those games.
@REV: “It easy to point out how the demographics favoured AOC now that she’s beaten the 4th ranked rep in the House. Like it was so obvious with those advantages she’d win.”
Not quite. Crowley had not had a primary since 2004. From the very begining, AOC was a longshot but she saw that something that others didn’t, or at least didn’t want to do the work to take advantage of. Numbers are not destiny, remember, they are just starting points for organizing.
As for doing one-on-one public shaming, alas the world has changed and it no longer requires that the “victim” defend herself, just that she call attention to the fact that she was bullied. Which is the point about unplanned shaming — that’s feel-good stuff, not a strategic move.
The editors of The Washington Post wrote, in part:
Forget the judges and other public officials; what if those “who strongly believe that abortion is murder” decide that all of those who work at abortion clinics, “doctors,” nurses, technicians and even receptionists, should be personally shunned in their private lives, and publish their personal information to assist in that shunning?
Do you really want to go down that road?
In 1942 a German Panzer squad captured two Jewish men trying to flee into Russia from Poland.
As they were deep in the forest the captain decided to execute both Saul and Bernie.
The captain assembled a three man firing squad and asked the men if they wanted blindfolds.
Bernie said, “Take your fucking blindfold and shove it up your Nazi ass.”
Saul turn to his friend and said, “Bernie, don’t make any trouble.”
“what if those “who strongly believe that abortion is murder” decide that all of those who work at abortion clinics, “doctors,” nurses, technicians and even receptionists, should be personally shunned in their private lives, and publish their personal information to assist in that shunning?”
It would be an improvement on the current practice of murdering them.
That would be one more reason not to set foot in a red state.
Alby wrote:
That would be four people so far this century, three in one incident, and only 11 total. You’re in more danger driving to and from work at an abortion clinic than actually working there.
I understand the meme of claiming that abortionists are being slaughtered, but the numbers tell us that it really isn’t very common at all. Shaming of people who worked in such clinics would have the effect of reducing the availability of abortion, and it wouldn’t be illegal.
Puck wrote:
That would be thirty of them! Guess that you can scratch Yellowstone National Park off your bucket list! 🙂
With the exception of Alaska, you could drive to every state Donald Trump carried, without ever spending a moment in a state carried by Hillary Clinton. But it’s a long drive through some very red states to get to the various blue ones, once you get outside of the northeast.
That is why it’s called flyover country.
As the spouse of a person who would be harassed in public under this stupid and childish thought experiment, I welcome it.
Puck wrote:
Do you think that perhaps, just perhaps, that might be why the people in flyover country don’t give your (plural) political arguments the respect you believe they deserve?
Trying to insult people whose support you want isn’t exactly one of the recommended tactics in How to Win Friends and Influence People.
I watched that CNN video Al linked to a week or so ago. A bunch of red neck fatsos shovelling meatloaf down their gullets explaining why we need kiddie concentration camps.
If you’re looking for me to respect that opinion or give it a honest hearing, I will not.
Take someone like Grover Norquist. I think his position on taxes makes him a despicable ghoul, but no one every confronted him in public to harass him (so far as I know). It’s a political disagreement.
These Trump administrators are purveyors of fascism. Do you see the difference?
The entire foundation of Trump America is to disrespect andown the libs. So they can all choke on my ball sack.
@Dana: “Guess that you can scratch Yellowstone National Park off your bucket list!”
I used to vacation frequently in Arizona. I love it there. I have not been back for many years now, basically since they went nuts after Obama and turned hard right. I’ll probably never see Arizona again, which saddens me because I never got to Saguaro National Park.
I will not visit Texas or Florida because of their guns laws, but then I don’t want to, either.
I do not shop at any national-brand stores that have right-wing politically active owners: No Target, no Wal-Mart, no Home Depot, and lots more.
I can live out my life quite happily without setting foot in any of these places, and I’m sure they’ll stay in business without getting any of mine. It’s not that I think of myself as pure and unsullied; I just don’t believe in giving my business, which represents a minuscule profit, to causes I disagree with. I don’t see what we, as individual consumers in an enormous economic system, can do otherwise.
But now suppose I didn’t have the money to vacation in Arizona, and I have to shop at Wal-Mart because that’s the only place I can afford. I can’t even take the tiny step of taking my business elsewhere.
In that circumstance, I think I’d be a lot more likely to harass someone in public.
FWIW, I see stories every single day of white people flipping out on minority people for little to no reason at all. The big difference is that those people are nobodies, and the people being harassed here are somebodies. That’s the ENTIRE difference, in fact — rich and powerful fucks don’t like being harassed.
Frankly, that’s reason enough for me to reconsider not harassing them. “Afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted” is the journalistic ethos. I always considered the first part of that far more important.
I think Dana understands the difference now.
What, have I been banned again?
Nope, I guess not. At any rate, there’s a comment which got trashed as soon as I posted it.
@Dana: It’s not caught in the filter, so I don’t know what happened.
Is it something you can recreate?
Hey, it’s nice to see what you look like! Hope it’s not as oppressively humid down in Ky. as it is here.
You are probably better off. It was likely very embarrassing to you personally.
It would have to be really something to make my list of Top 1,000 Personal Embarrassments, which is highlighted by the time my pants fell down onstage.