The left’s snark shut down political discussion over a decade ago. To defeat the left’s weaponization of civility, the left was forced to use vulgarity. By Wokal Distance.
[2013 saw] the height of the progressive left’s dominance of culture, government, education, and almost all of our sense-making institutions. This was the period when Jon Stewart was seen as a sort of moral arbiter of liberalism, when most of the late night hosts and comedians treated the right like a joke; something to be laughed at not seriously engaged, and when the left had the social, cultural, and political high ground almost everywhere, and leftist moral authority was taken for granted default almost everywhere….
Progressive leftists developed a sense that they had won the culture wars, all that was left was enforcement. Progressive leftist law professor Mark Tushnet wrote an influential piece declaring that the left had won the culture wars, and therefore the only question worth talking about was how to deal with the losers. In other words, the culture wars were over, and all that was left was to decide whether to proverbially shoot the survivors or send them into exile. …
It was in this environment of progressive cultural and political triumph that a style of engagement emerged that Emmett Rensin called “the smug style in American Liberalism.” The animating feature of this smug style was the “knowingness” of it all … “a way of conducting politics, predicated on the belief that American life is not divided by moral difference or policy divergence — not really — but by the failure of half the country to know what’s good for them.” The basic outlook of the triumphant progressives of 2013 was that they had won the culture wars, that they alone possessed the moral authority to speak credibly on moral issues, and those who disagreed with them were not merely wrong but inferior both morally and intellectually.
The default view of many progressives is that it does no good to even attempt to persuade conservatives and right wingers of anything since they lack the intelligence and moral goodness to be reasoned with, the only thing that’s worth doing is using social shaming to force a change of mind or ridicule as a way to ostracize them and destroy their social standing. …
[After 2013, snark became] the default response of progressives to any conservative or right leaning person who dared oppose any core element of the progressive leftist project. …
The upshot of all this was that through the 2010’s it became nearly impossible for anyone with right wing views on marriage, immigration, trans issues, race issues, colonialism, or education to get a fair hearing in the public square. Any attempt to bring forth conservative arguments on such issues was met with a deluge of dismissive, rude, caustic jeering and mockery. Conservative ideas were not met with arguments and evidence, they were met with a combination of searing hostility, open contempt, and condescending snark. …
The left shut down political discourse — our way or the highway, the height of arrogance and stupidity:
You can’t get into a good faith debate with someone whose engagement with you oscillated only between searing contempt and condescending snark. …
During the 2010’s it was simply taken for granted in the culture that progressives were smarter, better educated, and morally superior to conservatives. This was the default assumption of most of the late night comedy set, most of the journalist class, and almost all of the prestige media publications. For this reason progressive snark always came across well, and conservatives who were victims of it always ended up looking like total idiots (one can think of all the conservatives humiliated by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert)….
The left then went way too far, because they stopped listening to people or reason:
Progressives, having thought the culture war was over, went full speed ahead on a number of initiatives that turned out to be incredibly unpopular with regular people: trans kids, mass immigration, safe injection sites for hard drugs, short sentences for violent criminals, ugly racial identity politics, and a host of other issues.
Of course, the way they went about advocating for these policies tended to be between jargon laden academic speak (we must invoke marginalized voices to speak against the heteronormative patriarchy and the systemic racism that is structurally embedded to oppress historical minorities and people of color), and the rhetorical tonic of caustic snark I have outlined. This sort of strategy works with the social and cultural wind at your back, but when you are a minority acting like a majority and you condescend to the people you need to win elections, this strategy falls flat.
The signs appeared:
It was becoming apparent in the mid 2010’s that the progressive project was struggling. The consequences of many of their policies were coming into view and those policies were not popular. What made this situation maddening is that progressives used the cultural momentum they had built up beginning in 2008 to essentially short-circuit any discussion of issues like immigration by invoking heavy amounts of snark and smugness to make debating these issues almost impossible. And failing that, they used cancel culture to punish their opponents. …
Example of snark:
In 2016 Elizabeth Warren was asked at a CNN town hall about how she would respond if she met a voter who claimed to have traditional beliefs about marriage and thought marriage was between one man and one woman. Watch her response:
Snark at 35 seconds
She responded by saying “Then marry one woman…..assuming you can find one.” Warren is being asked how she would respond to a good faith question from a sincere conservative religious person and she tells everyone that she would respond with condescension and snark — at which point she is greeted with rapturous applause from the progressive audience and a standing ovation.
It isn’t just that she was being snarky, it was that her snark actually got her a long standing ovation because the audience approved of her decision to respond to good faith objections with snark.. There is simply no way to have a sincere conversation with a person who has made “I will use sarcasm and snark against anyone who sincerely disagrees with me” as part of their presidential campaign. …
But conservatives learned to fight back, using vulgarity to slice through the snark. Trump led the way:
It was against this backdrop that conservatives adopted the strategy of engaging in simple, crude, crass, and vulgar responses to liberal snark….
In 2016 when Donald Trump was running for president he was faced with criticism from Elizabeth Warren. As you’ll remember, Warren had claimed that she was a Native American, but when she got DNA tested it came back that she was….1/1024 Native American. So when Warren criticized Trump what did Trump do? Did he give a good faith answer or response to her? No. He gave her the nickname “Pocahontas” as a way to make fun of her and ridicule her for claiming native American heritage when she has almost no Native American blood in her. This is the vulgarization of politics…and it is also an incredibly effective way to fight back against someone who has announced their intention to respond to any good faith objection you make with snark.
This is why the voters picked Trump.
They realized that arguing and debating with progressives was impossible because progressives had saturated the political discourse with snark in a way that made dialogue impossible.
How to do it:
Imagine now that a progressive accuses a conservative of “invoking discourses of homophobia and heterosexism and engaging in transphobic rhetoric in the service of marginalizing LGBTQ folx by not letting children get gender affirming care,” and the conservative responds by saying they don’t think 12 year olds should be given puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, the progressive typically snarks back with “why do you care?” or “you sure care about kids genitals a lot.” There is no way to have a dialogue with that person.
Rather than trying to get into an academic argument about gender ideology with someone who’s just using snark to make them look stupid, conservatives have started to simply respond with: “You guys cut the tits off of teenagers and the dicks off of kids, get out of here.”
This too is the vulgarization of politics. …
The use of crass, crude, vulgar, and blunt rhetoric is a very effective tool for dealing with a situation where your opponent creates an impenetrable layer of smugness and snark. …
The right had to go vulgar to defeat the bad faith f the leftists:
A lot of the political right’s invocation of vulgar rhetoric is aimed towards destroying the ability of the left to weaponize civility norms in the service of trying to shame, silence, and ostracize conservatives, or as a way to bury the right with snark. The blunt force of the vulgar rhetoric is an attempt to cut through the over-intellectualized rationalizations and snark. Vulgarity has been adopted by conservatives in hopes that it can be used as a tool to cut through the faux sophistication of leftist rhetoric and their attempts to short circuit debate through snark.
The left criticizes Trump for being vulgar — because it’s so effective. And some on the right, who lean globalist, bought into it and decry Trump for being vulgar! Outed.