Natasha quick hits to this piece by David Roberts arguing (fairly well) that progressives should avoid spending time arguing with the various wingnuts that pervade our discourse. He concludes:
Some time in the next hour, somebody will say something stupid on cable TV. Somebody will write an idiot op-ed. Somebody will be wrong on the internet. Let. It. Go.
Focus on wavering Dems and their constituents and their constituents' jobs. Focus on how energy/climate legislation will make the country cleaner, healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous. The Newts can't stop anybody, they can only distract and sap energy from those doing the work.
They are not Boogie men. They are douchebags, and everyone hates them.
I wish I could agree, but I don't. Douchebags they are, but these vipers have not been defanged.
On one level, I will say I'm pleased we can even have this debate. In our shared quest to drive the wingnuts out of the "sphere of deviance" it is a sign of progress that we can even consider whether they're already out there, safe for us to ignore. From 1994 to 2008, this position was simply unsupportable, the freaks were literally pulling the levers of power. Now at least they're on the sidelines, but I'm not convinced this is good enough. Hecklers can sometimes disrupt the actual participants, or even provoke a rush onto the field so if my metaphor is accurate enough, I won't be satisfied until Security has escorted them from the arena where decisions are made.
So a couple points in rebuttal to David:
30% (his approximation) is too large to ignore. We generally know this as progressives. Many of us took some pleasure in the increase in the religiously unaffiliated, and decrease of Christians, now at 16% and 76% respectively. Richard Dawkins has been running the Out Campaign for atheists in an effort to battle back against the widespread bigotry (atheists were the only group found whom a majority of Americans would not vote for as President solely on that basis) against non-believers in God(s). The idea is that this rather small and loathed minority of the population, if properly organized could seriously alter the political landscape. Maybe Dawkins is wrong, but it's not a crazy idea. After all, it's called the "out" campaign after the movement by homosexuals premised on the idea that by publicly declaring themselves, more people would be forced to accept them as equals. Representing at most 10% of the population, gays have been pretty damn successful in achieving their aims, perhaps even more successful than women, who are actually a majority of the population.
All this is to say that 30% is easily large enough a segment of the population to make a decisive impact to society and government. Gays, women and atheists are mostly just looking for everyone to stop hating and discriminating against them, but this 30% believes all sorts of dangerously crazy things, and fights very hard to see them implemented. They don't have to convince 20% more of the populace of their views to win, they just need 20% to not fight back and go along with them. That's unlikely in 2010 or 2012, but we have to play long ball here too.
It isn't really just 30%. On many issues, they're still the plurality, or even the majority. The recent polling on evolution is not very encouraging. Some of the science blogs have been following how Texas school board creationists are still warping science standards for textbooks. Texas is large enough that its text book standards often become just how textbooks are made for all of the US, just based on the economies of scale. Today, ABC/WaPo has a new poll out on torture which finds 48% agreeing with the sentiment that torture is acceptable in some cases. This is up 8 points from mid January, when only 40% agreed with that statement. How much of that increase is because of the parade of sadists given a major platform to spout nonsense in the Washington Post and on Fox News?
Are progressives really "in power"? David states this specifically in his part one piece as a reason to ignore the wingnuts. I think this is certainly debatable. How progressive is Barack Obama? More than Bush or McCain of course, but you can certainly find people who think Hillary is more progressive. How progressive are his cabinet? What about Harry Reid and the Blue Dog dominated Senate Majority? The extent to which serious climate change action will get through the senate is dependent on how well the wingnuts prevail to a) keep all 41 Republicans in line and b) get 10 centrists Democrats to oppose using reconciliation to pass a climate change bill. They already succeeded on that this year. It is true that the wingnuts are out of power, but not clear at all that progressives are in the driver's seat.
They pervade the discourse. How can we avoid arguing with them? They're ev...ri...whare. We still watch as memes are born in the fever dreams of the chronically wrong right wing blogs and think-tanks, and quickly rise to the level of op-eds and editorials published in national newspapers, and then even get asked of President Obama in press conferences. It would be really nice if these terrible ideas they spout were quickly disregarded like the gold standard set, 9/11 truthers, and Larouchites, but they're just not. It's possible this is because we pay attention to them, but I don't think that's the case. If anything, my sense is that psychologically appealing bad ideas are only defeated by concerted effort. Dave Neiwert at Orcinus has in past made the case that to the extent organized racism is considered disreputable and illegitimate is to the credit of groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and other civil rights organizations which fight them day by day. The KKK didn't become irrelevant because everyone stopped paying attention to them.
So put me in the "keep mocking and rebutting them as they crop up" camp. It may be an endless game of whack-a-mole, but it's not clear to me we're done, and if we stop, I think they only gain strength. Your parents were wrong when they told you to just ignore the bullies at school too. They don't lose interest if you pretend it doesn't bother you, they just try harder and do ever worse.
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