I Divorce You, Dumb Wapo Opinion-Man!

Marc Thiessen of the Wapo opinion section is afraid America is headed for divorce court and tells us–more in sadness than in anger–that it’s probably the fault of mean liberals.

There is a place for contempt in our public discourse. We should have contempt for a regime in North Korea that brutalized a young American student named Otto Warmbier. We should have contempt for a regime in Syria that uses poison gas to massacre innocent men, women and children. We should have contempt for Islamic State terrorists who behead Americans, burn people alive in cages and systematically rape Yazidi girls.

But we should not have contempt for each other.

TL;DR: “Be angry about the things I tell you to be angry about and not behaviors I may be complicit in.”

Yet, we do. Our politics today is descending into a bitter spiral of contempt. And we saw the consequences in the attempted assassination of Republican members of Congress on a baseball field in Alexandria, Va., last week. Back when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot in 2011, many on the left were quick to blame conservative political rhetoric — falsely it turned out.

Actually, it didn’t turn out that way, so either Theissen is misinformed or just lying. I couldn’t begin to guess which.

Case in point: A few weeks before the Alexandria shooting, Hillary Clinton gave a commencement speech at Wellesley College where she declared that Trump’s budget is “an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us, the youngest, the oldest, the poorest” (emphasis added). No, it is not. Using nerve agent on the innocent is “an attack of unimaginable cruelty.” Putting a hapless college student into a coma is an “attack of unimaginable cruelty.” Reducing the growth of government spending is not.

Well, it might be if people literally die because of it.

Think for a moment what Clinton was saying: It’s not simply that Democrats and Republicans have an honest disagreement about how best to help the most vulnerable among us.

It would be a lie if she implied that such a thing were happening because R’s and D’s don’t have a disagreement about how to help the vulnerable. D’s genuinely want to help the vulnerable and R’s don’t give a shit about them but can’t think of a face-saving way to say this.

No doubt, Trump has contributed mightily to our descent into the culture of contempt. (For example, the media is not the “enemy of the American people,” Mr. President). But since Trump’s election, the scope and scale of political contempt on the left have reached unprecedented heights.

It’s almost as if there’s an vicious, unstable toddler in the White House and that makes people nervous. Anyway, UNCIVIL.

Worst of all, we are in the process of cementing these attitudes in the next generation. On college campuses, students are being taught that it is acceptable to treat with contempt those with different ideas. We saw this phenomenon on display when Charles Murray —racist racist a distinguished conservative scholar — was shouted down and assaulted at Middlebury College in a riot that sent a professor to the hospital.

Right. Charles Murray just thinks black people are inherently inferior. It’s just his opinion. No biggie. I’m sure Marc Theissen would be cool if Murray thought all “Marks” who spell their name with a “c” had micropenis because it would just be his opinion. But again, TL;DR: folks are being mean, but literally every example Marc “Micropenis” Theissen is sharing is that of perceived liberal malfeasance.

Liberals need to understand: When they show contempt for Trump, they are expressing contempt for the millions of Americans who voted for him — including millions who twice voted for Obama.

I’m happy to own this; I do hold them in contempt, which was so very unlike the Obama years, where right-leaning folks had nothing but kind words to say during his presidency. But, Marc, come on: it was 80,000, not millions. Does micropenis make you bad at math?

These Americans felt that the establishments of both parties were ignoring them and wanted to send Washington a message. The response they are receiving could not be clearer: We have contempt for the man you elected, and we have contempt for all of you who put him into office. They will never forget it.

OK. I’m cool with that.