I don’t buy it. First, I think the complaint about lack of respect is really a Catch-22, because respect doesn’t seem to count unless it comes with ignoring things like racism and science denialism, and then it’s disrespectfully patronizing. I argued this here and here, and don’t think I will do better repeating it.
Second, it seems people don’t actually care if they have anything real to hang liberals as the real villains. It wasn’t that long ago that Obama was being called the literal anti-Christ, an existential threat to American democracy, for passing a health care plan based closely on Republican ideas. At that point, you still think there’s a way we can disagree at all without being vilified for it?
Third, this is the same line you hear for anyone who has ever stood up for civil rights – that they are too bold, too adamant, and it will only serve in turning more against them. Even groups like the suffragettes and MLK who were later broadly accepted were derided with this in their time. So I’d want some real evidence why it is actually true this time.
Sure, Pence has some outdated views, like we all end up with. We won’t consider whether things like his attempts to make it legal to discriminate against LGBTQ people and to stop them from marrying who they want, to defund Planned Parenthood and anti-HIV programs, to keep refugees out of his state might actually affect other human beings. Opinions are just opinions, right?
This is the erasure of victims I was talking about above. Pence was a governor and is now vice president; I find it very telling how rarely you see politicians like him defended without the specious pretense that their attacks on other people somehow don’t have real consequences for them. If you care about a civil and peaceful society, you shouldn’t be making excuses for trying to disrupt the civil rights and peaceful lives of other people in it.
