#badtake

I’m not here to discuss the content of this article. I don’t care if Black Lives Matter tweeted something dumb. People, organizations tweet dumb shit. Make fun of it, don’t make fun of it, fine. I really just want to talk about how pathetic this article is.

Ben Shapiro is so self-important that he has an article on the website he runs that specifically talks about how his tweet OWNED a tweet from Black Lives Matter. That’s it. This is apparently news, or it’s at least something worth mentioning, because, well, Ben is so cool when he owns the libs so hard.

It is so embarrassingly sad how figures like Ben need validation so badly that they have articles run on their websites about how cool it was when they owned the libs. It’s all Ben has; his ideas are often outdated and poorly constructed, so he OWNS dumb tweets and writes about them, he DESTROYS college students and has his website publish articles about it, because if he had to pit his ideas against serious people, his ideas would fall apart and he wouldn’t be worth much.

David French kind of gives the game away in this paragraph:

Some will read this piece and say this is all “whataboutism,” an attempt to misdirect attention from Trump’s misdeeds by pointing to the misdeeds of others. But the problem with “whataboutism” is its use as a tool for rationalizing or justifying misconduct. There is still real value in questioning the sincerity of the alleged grave concern for “norms” and “institutions” that all too many men and women on the left have in the past been happy to desecrate for the sake of preserving their own political power and the political program it supports.

He’s right. There is real value in questioning grave concern for norms and institutions. Maybe there are some claims that are unfounded. Everything should be questioned.

But he’s also right. This article is textbook “whataboutism.” Consider it in aggregate with the rest of National Review’s articles. David French says here that liberals, Democrats, they’re all just talking in bad faith. They’re all just ready to undermine the same norms for their own benefit. So fuck ‘em. Don’t listen to them. They’re liars, some are even criminals.

But look at National Review’s current coverage of Trump.

2017 Was Trump’s Year of Living Dangerously

Trump’s Strong Start on Policy

All of this is paired with the delusion that conservatives are really beating Trump! They’re winning, beating back the forces of extremism!

At the End, Conservatives are Winning the GOP Civil War

Conservative Policy, Populist Attitude

So put all of this together. Trump is making some great policy wins for conservatives, even though he’s shredding norms and institutions along the way. But we don’t have to worry about the norms and institutions, because hey, conservatives are winning, even though people like Roy Moore are political candidates and traditional conservatives are wildly unpopular. And all that talk about shredding norms, hey, the left does that too, so let’s point the finger at them!

David French makes some good points in this article, even if his overall perspective is bad.

He’s right. Honorable people certainly fought for the Confederacy. The Union wasn’t out to end slavery as much as they were out to restore order. Turner’s rebellion wasn’t simply a glorious revolt, as they slaughtered men, women, and children.

But he’s also wrong. Honorable people can still be complicit in genocidal violence. The Union may not have been out to end slavery, but ending slavery was still an honorable action. Turner’s rebellion, while horrific, was a predictable result of generations of brutal oppression.

Where French is most wrong is at the end of his article, where he says that we need to keep Confederate statues up. The cause of the Confederacy was brutal, unrelenting violence against black people. People can learn about that in books, in museums, Statues glorify. Statues tell us who to honor. But Confederate statues were put up in eras when black people were supposed to be terrified, especially during the early 20th century, when black people were brutalized in the streets, subject to indiscriminate and horrific violence.

French doesn’t understand the sheer brutality that was inflicted upon black people during slavery, during “Reconstruction”, and during Jim Crow. All it takes is some reading, Black Reconstruction by Du Bois, White Rage by Carol Anderson, Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram Kendi.  Black people didn’t want to slaughter all of the white people. They wanted their lives back. They wanted not to be brutalized. And history tends to back that up.

This is an abysmally stupid take.

This article is essentially a primal scream aimed at the Russia investigation. Why should Robert Mueller resign? Goodwin answers with a combination of “DNC FUNDED THE DOSSIER, MUELLER WAS FBI DIRECTOR UNDER OBAMA, UNMASKING WAS A THING, CLINTON URANIUM ONE, SOMETHING ABOUT THE JFK FILES.”

There is no real argument to be made for Mueller resigning or being pushed out of his role. Mueller was appointed because Comey was fired, not because of the dossier. It’s irrelevant that Mueller was FBI director under Obama because this probe has nothing to do with Obama. Unmasking wasn’t a thing; Nunes literally apologized for saying it was. The made-up scandal concerning Clinton and Uranium One has nothing to do with Mueller, even if it was true. And I have no idea what point he was even trying to make by mentioning the JFK files.

As I’ve said, the reason people are going after Mueller is because the truth is scary. To think that the party that you belong to is full of criminals and morally bankrupt cowards is deeply unpleasant. I can understand that. But the truth needs to come out, and just because people are anxious and cowardly doesn’t mean it shouldn’t.

Fetuses are not children. Life does not begin at conception.

And you know how clear it is that such things are facts? I don’t have to resort to sensationalist rhetoric to sell it.

For example, this is what the National Review has to say about abortion:

“We have reached the point in the abortion debate where it is not only socially acceptable to publicly crusade for the intentional killing of one specific unborn child, but where we are expected to applaud when that execution is carried out.”

“This is what our most powerful public voices choose to celebrate – that a minor has finally been permitted to execute her innocent unborn child. But we’re being asked to do more than simply dance on this child’s grave.”

“This is perhaps the most despicable thing about this entire ordeal — that justice in our modern world demands the blood of an innocent child.”

Phrases like “execution is carried out”, “dance on this child’s grave”, and “blood of an innocent child” are nothing more than emotionally-driven rhetoric to drive a stance that has no real ground to stand on. Abortions aren’t bloody and gruesome. Nobody is dancing on a grave. No child is being executed. Abortion has happened for thousands of years, and feverish anti-choice rhetoric largely coincides with Christianity, which has nothing to do with science or fact.

Nobody actually believes that an embryo or a fetus is the same as a child. If you asked somebody to save either a fetus or a child, they would save the child. But people have been told this absurdity that DeSantis is peddling, believe it with the same religiosity that they believe in their faith, and so it’s supposed to carry weight. But it doesn’t.