Response to the Right-Wing Troll

“More anti-TRUMP garbage from a well known LOSER!”

That was the only disagreeing comment I found on the website of a newspaper where a piece of mine had just been published. My piece had argued that the fact that some 37% of Americans “approve” of Trump’s presidency was a clear indication that something had gone seriously wrong.

I did not just assert that proposition. I argued it. With three different arguments – using facts and logic – I made a case for what I claimed to be true.

Little did the commenter realize that his comment provided more evidence for my proposition: that something has gone wrong in that political subculture where Trump’s supporters dwell.

The commenter’s “argument” consists merely of two words of insult and denigration: GARBAGE (the insult to dismiss the message); and LOSER (the insult to dismiss the messenger).

This insulting comment would not be worth discussing—except that it is remarkably representative of what one encounters from the Republican side in such forums of political discussion.

It is not as though these trolls are some fringe of what one encounters engaging publicly coming from Republican-world. Rather, I can say from years of observation, they are almost completely the only kind of voice that speaks for their side.

With extraordinary consistency, these defenders of the right do not deal with the substance at all. No concern with evidence, no concern with logic, no engagement with the ideas under discussion. Just hitting against “the enemy” with contempt and hostility, expressed through insults, showing no concern whatever for establishing what’s true.

And they’re completely unapologetic about their failure to deal with substance. They seem to feel that, by launching salvos of insult, they are heroes in the battle against bad people on “the other side.”

Surely, something has gone wrong in a political subculture where discourse that ignores the work involved in discovering the truth can be considered heroic.

Anyone interested in understanding how American politics became so ugly could begin by asking how a conservative America, which used to have articulate and thoughtful spokesmen like William F. Buckley and George Will, has devolved into a political culture which now brings forth to the public conversation almost only this kind of viciousness of spirit.

If one feels no need to defend one’s beliefs, one is sure to end up with indefensible beliefs.

In this, the commenter is indeed symptomatic of what has happened, on the larger scale, on the Republican side of American politics in our times. On one issue after another – deficit spending, the impact of immigration, climate change, “middle class tax cuts,” … — the positions taken by elected Republicans, and apparently believed by Republican voters, prove indefensible in view of the evidence considered in the light of reason.

Surely, also, something is wrong also in a political subculture that attempts nothing constructive whatever in its interactions with the other side, but rather is invested solely in waging political war against whoever has a different view.

And in this insistence on conflict, too, the right-wing trolls who dominate their side’s contribution to such public discourse mirror what’s gone wrong in the Republican world.

Just as my commenter showed interest only in waging war with his words, so Trump is constantly creating conflict and unease:

• tweeting insults at private citizens and elected officials alike, as no president before him has ever done;
• suddenly announcing tariffs, potentially sparking a trade war;
• unilaterally ending DACA, and then rejecting bi-partisan measures to resolve the issue;
• sabotaging Obamacare;
• disrespecting our most sacred treaty obligations to our best allies;
• bringing in, as his third National Security Advisor, perhaps the most bellicose American figure among international affairs specialists;
• simply declaring war on the role of science in informing policy on such things as climate change and the environment generally.

In both these ways, my commenter stands as an indicator of the problems on the right.

But I don’t think that such right-wing trolls are representative of the spirit of the Republican voters generally. (Certainly, my Trump-supporting neighbors seem a finer, more benign lot.)

What seems to be the case, rather, is that the right has developed a subculture that makes the trolls their public face while the more reasonable are intimidated into silence. (The same seems true of the Republicans in Congress, where the more combative are far more visible than the more constructive.)

America needs a better conversation than such a dynamic provides in our public arena. In view of that need, I would like to issue a challenge to the Republican Party in our region of Virginia:

Don’t let the trolls represent you in public discussion. Find thoughtful people who are prepared to defend their Republican beliefs. If your positions are defensible, you should be able to find someone capable of defending them.

And here’s a specific challenge. I will post this piece on my own website, at www.abetterhumanstory…. Then, on Xday, April Y, at noon, at that site, I will be ready to engage whomever you send to discuss or debate with me the following proposition: “The Republican Party has become a threat to our constitutional order.”

The invitation is for a substantive discussion, worthy of what American conservatism has been in the past. (Trolls need not apply.)

The public is invited to attend, to see whether any thoughtful Republicans show up, and if so how the exchange goes.

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8 Comments

  1. In the piece above, I challenge the Republicans to engage with me in a more thoughtful way than one ever sees from the right-wing trolls who dominate online Republican discourse.

    I specified noon today as the time for such a discussion.

    As the time for that engagement now approaches, I want to say that I will be surprised if any Republicans show up in answer to my challenge. My sense of the Republican culture is that the way they deal with challenges dealing with substance is to ignore them. I’d love to be wrong about this, but I think it more probable that they’ll apply their customary coping strategy — just don’t deal with things — rather than come forward to meet the challenge.

    The reason they would do otherwise, I imagine, is if they felt that they’d be publicly shamed, exposed, etc., for failing to come forward, as challenged. But it’s questionable whether they’d regard any such failure on their part as public enough to worry about.

    This piece — complete with my challenge — has run in three newspapers in VA-06. (It has appeared in the Lynchburg NEWS & ADVANCE, the NORTHERN VIRGINIA DAILY, and the Waynesboro NEWS VIRGINIAN.) So the challenge did go public.

    But whether there will be sufficient follow-through among readers to come out and see whether the GOP has ignored the challenge or responded to it, is another matter.

    There’s very little engagement across the divide these days. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if this gambit succeeds in creating one such occasion.

  2. I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for a thoughtful and substantive response from a Trump supporter. Facts are not on their side but “feelings” are and that is what they operate on regardless of the observable reality and information that they have access to (if only they cared about what is true and what is not). We are indeed in a post-truth era and Trump is a big part of that.

    • We can readily imagine what our Founders would have thought of this “post-truth” political culture.

      (It might be said to have begun, or at least grown intense, during the W era. They were the folks who declared they create their own reality.)

      • Agreed…No doubt, GW Bush’s run up to the great debacle in Iraq played a big part as their administration created a narrative to feed the public in order to get to their means to an end. Obviously not the first time the American public was lied to by a President but it was a rolled-out, concerted effort to muddy the general public’s perception.

  3. An hour into the scheduled time, I hereby declare the “event” over. As expected, the Republicans were a no-show.

    The topic I’d challenged them to discuss was the proposition that “The Republican Party has become a threat to our constitutional order.”

    I’d have had no difficulty making a case for my side of that argument: I’d have laid out the case against Trump, the case against his enablers in Congress, and then there would be that whole sordid picture going back before the Age of Trump where the Republican Party was already acting as a wrecking ball on the American system of government.

    That assault has been gathering momentum since the 1990s, and the challenge facing any intellectually honest Republican would have been daunting, even insurmountable. What we need are Republicans who are willing to face that unfortunate truth and are dedicated to making my proposition false by re-creating their Party in a more benign — more honest, more constructive, more respectful of the Constitution and the other structures of wholeness in America — political party.

  4. An hour into the scheduled time, I hereby declare the “event” over. As expected, the Republicans were a no-show.

    The topic I’d challenged them to discuss was the proposition that “The Republican Party has become a threat to our constitutional order.”

    I’d have had no difficulty making a case for my side of that argument: I’d have laid out the case against Trump, the case against his enablers in Congress, and then there would be that whole sordid picture going back before the Age of Trump where the Republican Party was already acting as a wrecking ball on the American system of government.

    That assault has been gathering momentum since the 1990s, and the challenge facing any intellectually honest Republican would have been daunting, even insurmountable.

    What we need are Republicans who are willing to face that unfortunate truth and are dedicated to making my proposition false by re-creating their Party in a more benign — more honest, more constructive, more respectful of the Constitution and the other structures of wholeness in America — political party.

  5. WOW! This whole article sounds like it was written by a LEFT WING LOSER!!

    • WOW! is right. I can’t tell, fonestar, if your comment is a piece of satiric humor, or if you are simply obtuse at the most extraordinary level.

      If it’s humor, well, I’d just have advised giving a bit clearer signal that you weren’t just another of the very sort of right-wing trolls whose defects the article lays bare. Because that’s what would otherwise be the extraordinary obtuseness of your issuing an insult in place of any kind of substantive engagement with the issues raised.

      That represents a kind of moral and intellectual disease that’s doing great harm to our nation– a disease in which coming out on top (in this case by reducing discourse to the put-down) is all that matters, and where matters of what’s true (as opposed to the lie) and what’s right (as opposed to what works for gaining power) are entirely disregarded.

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