Songs for the Trump Supporters in Lanny Davis’ Head

St. Lanny admits that Trump is awful and some of his supporters are deplorable. But he is Very Concerned that people who merely support Trump but don’t go to Trump rallies wearing a shirt with the C-word emblazoned across the front or anything are being subjected to the mean nastiness of mean nasty McCarthyite Liberals bent on publicly shaming nice, thoughtful, non-bigoted Trump supporters. (All none of them.)

Or maybe he’s one of the first wavelets of the flood of Republican Exceptionalism articles that’s heading our way. (e.g. Trump’s humiliating defeat proves that except for a teeny-weeny portion of the population there’s no bigotry in the U.S. – and even then it’s probably socio-economic anxiety or gas cramps – so Democrats need to be nice to Republicans even though they tried to put a shrieking orange scrotum in the White House.)

At any rate, here’s Lanny.

However, I am becoming nervous that some of us Democrats and Hillary Clinton supporters are allowing ourselves to fall into the trap of what I shall call “label creep” — where we increasingly allow accurate descriptions of these radical, hateful Trump supporters to creep into descriptions of anyone who supports Trump.

Could it be that as Trump’s vileness has become so obvious that creatures on Europa are fruluvating their damn sense-palps, so has the fact that support for him is support for his vileness? Of course not. It’s naughty Democrats who are forgetting their inclusivity lessons.

This label-creep phenomenon opens us up to the antithesis of the progressive views and values that has made us proud to be Democrats — specifically, tolerance for political expression and opinions that are different from our own and most importantly, avoiding generalizations and stereotyping.

If you’re so very open minded, why won’t you let people stick their dicks in your ears, tonight? Lanny croons.

I didn’t receive the flyer on being tolerant of intolerant people in my Welcome to the Democratic Party, Comrade packet. However, I do note that during these little finger wag sessions the self-appointed arbiters of civility will never touch on the fact that one’s political expressions and opinions can indicate intense hostility, even if the opinion is delivered in a calm, measured dog whistle.

So Lanny consults his short list of Things That Are Not Done and finds – for example – that one man who says that he personally grabs women by the genitals is dreadful. On the other hand, a bunch of people working to enact laws that would give the state control over a woman’s body the minute she becomes pregnant isn’t on the list, therefore that’s O.K. and Democrats should tolerate those people.
It seems to me that anyone who enjoys this particular flavor of twaddle would say that true tolerance requires true Scotsmen Democrats to tolerate Trump and all of his supporters, even the really nasty ones.

It’s almost as though Davis is full of shit.

Another thing that’s never clearly defined is what form the tolerance is supposed to take. Based on experience the civility arbiter will switch to Dispense Banalities mode and advise everyone to be the better person and show some respect and to not sink to their level.

If necessary they’ll come up some sort of false equivalence, such as

I am hearing more and more instances of the public shaming of anyone who is a Trump supporter or donor, regardless of whether these individuals disagree and repudiate Trump’s bigoted words and the hate speech and conduct of his most extreme supporters.

Again, it’s really hard to shake that suspicion that he’s chock full o’ shit. Public shaming is a thing that doesn’t happen but is supposed to be as bad as (if not worse) than doing whatever it was that goaded one person into saying another person is a bigoted dickweed in the first place. I think it was created by the sort of weasels who think people should protest oppression by writing polite, short, letters to their elected representatives. But who knows or cares?

As for the idea that some supporters and donors just signed up for the travel and the water-skiing, not the killing further enrichment of the rich and protecting the zygotes, not the comments about Mexican rapists: Certainly there are Republicans who’d like everyone to pretend this is the case. After all, this is a group of people who wanted everyone to pretend that their tooth and nail fight against allowing two adults of the same gender to marry was about protecting families. (And if you didn’t believe them, you could ask their divorce attorneys!)

What I have yet to see is a reason I should enable these people by accepting their version of reality, other than they and skin wasters like Lanny want me to, so fuck ‘em.

I hear about thoughtful, non-bigoted people who are for Trump and who have become fearful of wearing a Trump button in public or admitting to their political preferences to friends, at dinner parties or at work.

I find a thoughtful Trump supporter as plausible as a non-bigoted Trump supporter, and both are more plausible than anything that includes non-ironic mention of dinner parties.

Final rating: A solid 5 out of 5 Turds.