House Republicans now allow smoking inside Capitol, causing quite a stink

[chenille]

@smulder

… so “liberals” have to oppose bigotry without making bigots feel … “opposed”

Here’s what I wrote on the subject two years ago:

@chenille

I honestly feel like this is the whole point of this sophistry, to present opponents with an impossible task. The Trump supporters are somehow are excused of agency. But you are asked to be simultaneously fierce and gentle, vocal and silent, honest and calculated, to talk to people like children while respecting them like adults, to stand against their beliefs without criticizing their beliefs.

Fail at any of these contradictory things and they are going to do exactly what they said they meant to do, only now it is your fault for not handling them in precisely the right way. Better luck next time, hopefully you can be both more and less accommodating then. And sorry to anyone who doesn’t make it to next time but like I said, we’ve already excluded them from the narrative.

I wonder how many progressive movements in history succeeded by trying to thread this moving needle, instead of by actually standing up for what they believed in? Because from where I am standing, it does not seem like many. Almost like this is advice from people who don’t want them to succeed.

It’s so terribly frustrating to still be hearing the same thing today. I guess the one difference is that here we’re not getting “blamed”, just sad head shakes that we can’t do what has been deemed “better”, yay for that. But of course people are still insistent on anything that means we ought to be nicer to racists, no matter how often that fails and no matter how many people are hurt by them in the mean time.

I will note that the main activities the SPLC does are things like calling out fascists and asking people to deplatform them, not trying to hit the exact secret combination that is supposed to win them over.