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I reflected a bit on this. Generally among conservatives and here on The Motte there are two types of responses, both I dislike.
“The left started this with Charlie Kirk/Jay Jones so this is fine.” All I can say is that this way lies ruin. Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals? Are we expecting some kind of come-to-Jesus mutual disarmament moment or just escalation until Civil War? If we are hoping for mutual disarmament, how does that happen? Why can’t this be that? Doesn’t someone have to move first?
“This is different from Charlie Kirk/Jay Jones, that was not okay but this is because reasons.” Here my reaction is to say that you never step in the same river twice. Even though I share the intuition that this is a nothingburger while Kirk was a big deal I have to recognize it is always possible to conjure self-serving reasons why “this time it’s different.” I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough
I am team: "This is different, and is still kinda bad."
My opinion is all these folks should exit public service, if they are in it, for 5 years or so, to mature. There are plenty of jobs at advertising agencies for Coca Cola, and THOSE companies should vigorously recruit these fellows because that is what they would do in a free market based on their comedic stylings and ability to understand the dark comedy of the modern youth.
Then in 5 years these bad jokes should be forgiven and they can do whatever.
This is, of course, a very high standard in comparison to the left, but it is what I prefer. Unfortunately, it also requires leftish cooperation because most ad places are run by the exact sort of people fake-outraged by this. So they kinda have to give up something to be reasonable.
Right, approximately no one left public service over open and unironic anti-whiteness, and Kittycat almost certainly didn't care one jot about any of that.
It's an asymmetric game.
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In a perfect world, where this is a society-wide norm, maybe.
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I'm not conservative so maybe you aren't counting me among the responses you read, but I wouldn't fit in either of those categories.
I think people are allowed to be ugly imperfect beings within private spaces, because we already have a great deal of "public" spaces and the judgement within those public spaces is already very harsh.
Politicians and political actors need to be good about distinguishing between private and public spaces.
The Charlie Kirk situation seems totally different then this one or the Jay Jones one. The outrage there is about leftists making public comments of glee or happiness at the man's death. These aren't leaked conversations, its people posting it widely on social media, or saying it on a TV show.
The Jay Jones situation is comparable. And I think the democratic machine mostly did the correct thing and the republicans should have done it too: just entirely ignore this and pretend it didn't happen.
Which is a norm I'd kindly suggest everyone adopt: ignore all leaked private conversations. At a minimum, know that the leaker or publisher of the leaks is an asshole. The reason I'd suggest this norm is that society with zero privacy in communications is awful for everyone. And incentivizing leaks is going down the road of zero private communications.
The difference between this and the Jay Jones situation is that the Jones conversation was seemingly more serious in tone. It wasn't otherwise soaked in irony and hyperbole, but rather a one-on-one conversation with someone who felt uncomfortable with what Jones was saying and even pushed for clarification. Maybe Jones felt like it was just private joking between friends, but it was less obviously that. It came across as relatively more sincere venting. I did not take it as a statement of intent by Jones, and it was certainly not a realistic threat. Mostly it just reflects the rising hostility between the political tribes. It's certainly more concerning for a prospective AG to be saying those kind of things, though not unexpected in my opinion. Both sides think terrible and horrific things in private, because in private you frequently give voice to thoughts and feelings that you don't even agree with yourself. However, it's important that you can have those thoughts, otherwise you'll be blindsided by people who have those thoughts and actually intend to act on them.
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I don't think it's an inconsistent opinion to believe that:
These are obviously jokes and that this is substantially different than actually wishing death on political enemies and doubling down on it in public.
I want serious people to be staffers and serious people don't put jokes like this in writing these days.
Have you never jokingly pretended to eat your toddler? I have of course. But if I wrote out the joke it's different. We've begun to treat writing like it's conversation, when of course it's not.
This is friends engaging in taboo banter. Saying taboo things is part of the friendship bonding process, because it's a demonstration of trust.
Yes, in person.
People don't talk in person anymore.
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Discord chat is conversation. It's not like these were published essays, or even top level The Motte posts.
It's Computer-Mediated-Communication, which lacks several important features of in-person communication, like tone, body language, and synchronous feedback. Most importantly it is easy to reproduce/leak by malicious actors.
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Eh, Young Republican chat thread isn't on the same level as pissing on the altar. I'll save my outrage stocks for worse things.
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Cooperate-bot is a good way to lose forever.
There needs to be a sufficiently-influential and popular figure that can actually, credibly lead the first move. Unfortunately, no one like that exists on either side, and neither side believes they need to be the one to produce that figure. There's no longer a messianic organizer, an MLK or Billy Graham, that can credibly speak to and for enough people.
I started reading Nussbaum's From Disgust to Humanity yesterday, and was immediately struck by how self-serving and blinkered liberal usage of the disgust concept is. Indeed, it is always possible, and this circles back to the lack of the messianic figure.
Is public versus private similar enough for these purposes? Or is this, as an anti-parallel to recognize one can always conjure self-serving reasons as to why it's different, a desire to conjure a self-serving reason why it's not? Jay Jones is much more similar than the Kirk commentary, and I think lumping them together weakens your broader point for that reason.
We don't have to go fully braindead and think that Lawrence v Texas means public indecency laws are moot.
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What is the escalation on the part of the Red Tribe in this case?
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It's amazing how this point is brought up when someone defected thinking the other side could do nothing, and then realized they were wrong.
It really isn't, and we aren't going to have peace anyway. If one side gets to do all sorts of shit and get away with it, and then not only excuse all of it but have the other side punished for doing something which vaguely rhymes, we've still got nothing but who/whom for a standard.
I think all us righties, of whatever degree of farness to the right, on here smile wryly when the outrage emanates from the other side. It's like something Scott posted a while back about honour versus dignity cultures. The clash between the two, when someone dares the other person "what are you gonna do about it? gonna hit me, you coward?" and then acts shocked and surprised when they get a punch in the face. That's not supposed to happen! You're not supposed to resort to violence! You're supposed to back down when the tough talking goes on! But someone from the honour culture comes from a system where if you talk tough, you better be ready and able to back it up. Dare someone to punch you in the face, nobody will think you were mistreated when you get punched in the face.
The lefties engaged in a lot of "yeah, what are you gonna do about it?" talk and behaviour. Now they're shocked and appalled when the other side don't play by their rules of their game and just back down and take it.
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