Is This (Finally!) the End of Dems Going High When They Go Low?

I Certainly Hope So

With a headline like the one above, a new or casual reader could be mistaken for thinking they’re about to wring another grating, hand-wringing think piece about the heartbreaking decline of “ye civilitie of yore” among today’s polarized Americans.

Let me pause right here at the beginning to clarify that nothing could be further from the truth. I consider it a very good thing that Democratic leaders finally seem prepared to fight hard against both Republican messaging and Republicans’ authoritarian policies, and I’m hoping it lasts.

This is The Bugbear Dispatch, not The Atlantic, and your author, America’s cuddliest bugbear, has a long record of decrying civility politics as at best upholding the unacceptable status quo. At worst, offering “civility” and “compromise” to ruthless fascists helps them advance their political goals, and that’s exactly the situation we’re in now. To be civil to the uncivil when the latter have immense political power is as silly as speaking of oneself in the third person. In fact, it’s sillier, because the consequences are much more serious.

Apropos, here’s a quote from a previous essay of mine:

I won’t belabor at length here why taking a ‘neutral’ approach on an issue, or letting it slide, protects the status quo and the already powerful at the expense of the marginalized. I will, however, recommend an excellent book on the topic: Bernard Mayer and Jacqueline N. Font-Guzman’s The Neutrality Trap: Disrupting and Connecting for Social Change, which underscores how in the pursuit of justice it can often be necessary to deepen a conflict before agreeing on a solution. This is a lesson that America’s media gatekeepers and almost all nationally elected Democrats desperately need to learn. You do not stop authoritarians by coddling them. They are not going to magically become reasonable if you just ‘compromise’ enough. Enough never comes.

There’s another salient point to make here as well. Authoritarians have no sense of humor. They seek to assuage their gnawing insecurities by belittling others over whom they consider themselves superior, and they often find that funny in a twisted way. But they have no need, or room, for sophisticated wit or satire or irony or nuance, and they certainly have no ability to laugh at themselves.

Fascists are bullies, and like all bullies, they’re not only humorless, but also cowardly. Hit them where it hurts, and they can’t take it, as we saw recently when insurrectionist and convicted felon Donald Trump threw a fit in response to perfectly valid questions during his interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, and then left the event early.

Down With the Weirdos!

Fascists certainly can’t take a joke at their expense, which is exactly why the more the public mocks the absurdity of their views and their life choices, and the more the media amplifies that mockery, the better things are for Democrats and democracy. Not too long ago, many Democrats would have eschewed participation in such mockery as “going low,” as beneath them, insisting instead that they should “be the bigger person.” That did absolutely nothing to stem the rising tide of American authoritarianism, because that is no way to deal with authoritarians who want to ban abortion, ban books, take over school boards, and prevent doctors and parents from providing gender-affirming care or allowing their children to access it.