we shouldn't normalize asking people to lie... That's just a demand for large-scale hypocrisy.
How many people not on the politically engaged or online right could have told you a single thing Charlie Kirk had said before his murder made him famous? How many non-very-online liberals/leftists had even heard of him? Very few I think, and yet that didn't stop the ones I know from calling him a fascist, and being more vocally concerned about Jimmy Kimmel's brief cancellation than about what one gathers was a sympathetic if (maybe, quietly) regrettable episode of political violence. Why did they "believe" he was a fascist? Either because they had uncritically imbibed one of the many blatant misrepresentations or outright lies about the things he had said circulating in their media environment, or simply because they had been told to by trusted sources. Most people (right and left) have an appallingly low tolerance for cognitive dissonance. If their side appears to have murdered an innocent man, either it wasn't really their side (remember the attempt to pin it on the groypers?), or he wasn't really innocent. Or just as often, an incoherent superimposition of both.
To accuse someone of hypocrisy presupposes an internal distinction between higher-order moral principles and actions or judgments of narrower scope. But it's risible to speak of higher-order principles when people are so easily manipulated; and most commentators hardly make any pretense of having considered all the facts relevant to any "controversial" case (the controversy generally being between sides, not within them, let alone within individual minds). The most unambiguously universalist slogans are subject to casuistry, and even the word "casuistry" gives too much credit, because case-by-case reasoning is still a form of reasoning. Imputing an autonomous rational intellect to people, such as would be necessary for them to be truly hypocritical, more often than not impedes one's understanding of and ability to predict their verbal outputs. What the response to Kirk's assassination brought home to me wasn't that liberals have a surprisingly robust anti-fascist value system, such that even Kirk, who (to those on the right who were aware of him) epitomized the moderate religious faction, was beyond the pale; it was that their beliefs -- not only, but to be honest, yes, especially their beliefs -- are not even really beliefs, not even the ones they would most readily ascribe to themselves in a vacuum; that the danger is best understood on an impersonal level, because it's misleading to model most of the people in question as people. I don't respect their "hatred" of Charlie Kirk enough to expect them to be tactful about it. Their hatred is just a boulder in an avalanche started by someone out of sight. Will I "tolerate" my difference of opinion with the boulder as it comes hurtling towards my face? No, but I won't think of it like that in the first place, and I know better than to expect the boulder to suspend the law of gravity for my sake.
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How many people not on the politically engaged or online right could have told you a single thing Charlie Kirk had said before his murder made him famous? How many non-very-online liberals/leftists had even heard of him? Very few I think, and yet that didn't stop the ones I know from calling him a fascist, and being more vocally concerned about Jimmy Kimmel's brief cancellation than about what one gathers was a sympathetic if (maybe, quietly) regrettable episode of political violence. Why did they "believe" he was a fascist? Either because they had uncritically imbibed one of the many blatant misrepresentations or outright lies about the things he had said circulating in their media environment, or simply because they had been told to by trusted sources. Most people (right and left) have an appallingly low tolerance for cognitive dissonance. If their side appears to have murdered an innocent man, either it wasn't really their side (remember the attempt to pin it on the groypers?), or he wasn't really innocent. Or just as often, an incoherent superimposition of both.
To accuse someone of hypocrisy presupposes an internal distinction between higher-order moral principles and actions or judgments of narrower scope. But it's risible to speak of higher-order principles when people are so easily manipulated; and most commentators hardly make any pretense of having considered all the facts relevant to any "controversial" case (the controversy generally being between sides, not within them, let alone within individual minds). The most unambiguously universalist slogans are subject to casuistry, and even the word "casuistry" gives too much credit, because case-by-case reasoning is still a form of reasoning. Imputing an autonomous rational intellect to people, such as would be necessary for them to be truly hypocritical, more often than not impedes one's understanding of and ability to predict their verbal outputs. What the response to Kirk's assassination brought home to me wasn't that liberals have a surprisingly robust anti-fascist value system, such that even Kirk, who (to those on the right who were aware of him) epitomized the moderate religious faction, was beyond the pale; it was that their beliefs -- not only, but to be honest, yes, especially their beliefs -- are not even really beliefs, not even the ones they would most readily ascribe to themselves in a vacuum; that the danger is best understood on an impersonal level, because it's misleading to model most of the people in question as people. I don't respect their "hatred" of Charlie Kirk enough to expect them to be tactful about it. Their hatred is just a boulder in an avalanche started by someone out of sight. Will I "tolerate" my difference of opinion with the boulder as it comes hurtling towards my face? No, but I won't think of it like that in the first place, and I know better than to expect the boulder to suspend the law of gravity for my sake.
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