Prove It

What does it mean to “do politics right”?

Your Miss O’ is suffering from a hellacious cold virus (I’m negative for Covid) that came on during the day on Wednesday, destroying my body Thursday and Friday, and around 7 PM last evening, all the symptoms finally emerged—the sneezing, congestion, cough—the signs that the virus is finally working its way out; I know this, too, because my mood is better and while I still feel lousy I have more energy, as evidenced by writing this.

As a result of my confinement, I spent all evening Wednesday and the days Thursday and Friday following the Colorado school shooting. Just kidding—like you and all the world, I followed the murder of rightwing activist Charlie Kirk, professional turd mouth on the payroll of MAGA billionaires to sow division to make it easier for the rich to take even more money from the working white people of America, and by extension everyone else.

While all that was going on, I read in passing that our bank accounts will soon no longer be federally insured (as in FDIC, created after the Great Depression to prevent another one) as those regulations are quietly getting dismantled; and in addition, the House and Senate quietly stopped the release of the Epstein files again. Priorities.

By now we all know the story: Charlie Kirk, a 31-year-old professional pot-stirrer, bigot, misogynist, and hate monger (sorry, “son,” “husband” and “father,” unlike all the other victims of gun violence) was shot from 200 yards, right in the carotid with one shot, at a college campus in Orem, Utah. The murder had all the earmarks of a professional hit, and I really didn’t think they’d find the shooter. In the first place, Kash Patel, a former podcaster and MAGA loyalist with no law enforcement experience, is the Director of the FBI and had recently fired non loyalists and redirected the counter-terrorism agents to immigration. In the second place, Kirk, in a clear break with the MAGA elite, was calling for the release of the Epstein files, and his voice carried weight; he had turned from Trump loyalist to threat.

In the aftermath of Kirk’s murder, the MAGA-verse declared that the Left did it, etc., the Left was mega violent, etc., antifa, etc., trans, etc. And of course, of course, the shooter turned out to be a radicalized white male extremist (as was the Colorado school shooter) who, according to sources who interviewed him, found Kirk’s views not rightwing enough. And had Tyler Robinson not confessed to his father, he would most likely never have been found (see Patel). And following the MAGA playbook to the letter, everyone in legacy media instantly praised Kirk. (This morning, on my weekly call to my nearly 92-year-old dad, Bernie, I was asked, “Who is that guy who was murdered?” I explained, to which my dad said, “Everyone on the news is praising him to the heavens, and I couldn’t figure out why I never heard of him.” Yikes. I set Bernie straight. Before ringing off, he asked, “I have one question for all of them: suppose all the Hispanics, all the immigrants, said, fine, get us buses, we’re outta here. How long do they think this country would last?” That’s my dad.)

Like Bernie but for different reasons, I was baffled by all the praise of Kirk I was seeing, too.

To wit, Ezra Klein of the New York Times:

Lots of people I follow and generally agree with, like comedian and commentator George Hahn, said much the same. Via a live on Instagram, Hahn declared that those of us who disagreed with Klein need to “shut the fuck up.” Hahn asserted that Klein was right, that only Charlie Kirk was willing to “take on” all comers to debate politics out loud, as evidenced by his “Prove Me Wrong” national tour, of which the Utah event was the first on the schedule. “The left doesn’t do that,” Hahn noted (ignoring that Kirk favors deeply red states). (Well, British-American journalist Mehdi Hasan does, I thought, in events like “Surrounded,” but the New Yorker declared that “Nobody wins” in that, and as the final arbiter of culture, they must be right. I watched quite a bit of it—I felt Hasan gave the little uninformed shits too much credit, as liberals do, but he tried; I think these kinds of stunts are inherently doomed to fail because everyone needs fact checkers sitting ringside. But “facts” are intimidating and don’t sell out venues.)

Instead of arguing with Hahn or Klein, in my infirmity, I instead asked myself, “What does it mean to do politics ‘the right way’?” If firmly and confidently talking over all comers with fake “statistics” spouted in a form of chopped logic, devoid of context, and calling out any truly challenging opponent by screaming an epithet or racial slur (“You chink!”—actual Kirk quote) is “the right way,” what is politics?

Years ago (I told you this story), a few years after I’d moved to New York, I was at a dinner party with fairly new friends, back when Obama was president, and one of the guests, a high-powered attorney with a degree from Harvard Law, said something disparaging about Southerners’ politics. Being a native Virginian (via Iowa, to be sure), I saw that her assessment lacked cultural context. As I tried to explain—and I couldn’t now tell you exactly what all this was about—the woman (who was my age) went on offense and used big words to calmly destroy me. In a ploy to prevent me from replying, she effectively ended our exchange in the most condescending of ways, by turning to play charmingly with the dog that had wandered up to the table. Later, in the kitchen, where I was helping to clean up, one of the hosts said, quite proud of his neighbor, “Well, she really told you.” And I said, “No, she won the debate, if that’s what it was, but only because winning was more important to her than learning.” That hit him (and it’s why we are still great friends). I wasn’t trying to argue anything, but rather educate a New Englander about the South, filling in a gap of knowledge that a more secure intellect would have recognized; but rather than learn something new, she doubled down on her bigotry, which is always disappointing to experience from an avowed liberal. I could only shrug.

We’ve all acted out, doubled down, gotten defensive, when we’ve felt challenged, insecure, or inadequate to the task, when what we should have said was, “Why do you say that?” and meant it. But, I hasten to add, we didn’t shoot anyone.

Charlie Kirk routinely excused deaths from gun violence, even the deaths of children (spoken as the father of two), as necessary to “preserve freedom.” (Note: My first, very human, reaction on hearing that Kirk was murdered, was to gasp, and on hearing how he was killed, to laugh out loud at the irony. Then I came to my senses and back to my decency.)

So, politics. To me, here’s what it means to “do politics right”:

1. You have to acknowledge actual problems that need to be solved for the betterment of society; you have to want to solve them in the best way possible.

2. You have to want accurate data and evidence to be at the core of your arguments.

3. You have to be willing to be persuaded.

By contrast, here’s what it means to “do politics wrong”:

1. You have no interest in actual problems; you want to win, and only win, regardless of the issue, and you do this by using rhetoric to reinforce your preconceived ideas and bigotry in the face of all comers.

2. You will disregard any data that doesn’t fit your narrative, even to the point of making up or distorting evidence as it suits your purposes.

3. You will never have your mind changed. Ever.

Charlie Kirk, in my view (however limited) did not do politics at all; he was a shock jock, a junior high school bully, an entertainer whose confidence and convincing rhetoric radicalized young white men and gleefully incited them to commit violence, and he was well paid for it. (You can find all the video evidence easily.) Kirk, the White House quickly announced, will now join his spiritual grandfather Rush Limbaugh in receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

There is no question—and I do agree with George Hahn here—that the Left does a lousy job of communicating, messaging, and drumming up support for their policies, policies focused not on inciting emotion so much as acknowledging and solving mundane problems; and that, my friends—let’s face it—is boring as hell. Are you not entertained? No? Oh. Never mind. Click. Tap. Scroll. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Speaking of rinse, I have to drink fluids now, and go back to bed, but first I need clean sheets, and luckily I have more than one set—I so wish I had the energy to walk over to the laundromat. Ah, poor me. But friends are bringing me oranges and Chinese food (or as the Chinese call it, food). The common work of the world is what all of us would like to focus on, isn’t it, the mundanities of our lives, being healthy, eating well, being with friends, all that? After this idiocy passes, as I hope it must (go, Nepal! yay, Mexico! god help Palestine, Ukraine, Sudan), I don’t want to hear any more of this lying, middle school, divisive shit in America made into normal again in my lifetime if not ever. Let’s all, please, grow the fuck up. And demand gun safety laws.

We’re all so disgusted, so tired, so sad. Like my body and its symptoms, whose emergence indicates a readiness for healing from this virus, I’d like to think that the more the symptoms of our national disease are made manifest, the closer we are to getting healthy again as a democracy. Please, I have to hope.

Wishing you health and healing from my (and our national) sick bed,

Miss O’