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Last night, I joined thousands at Trump Tower in New York to protest the atrocities that took place in Charlottesville over the weekend. I learned that us liberals and conservatives arent as different as we think. I just wish that were a good thing.

I was never really an activist until the current presidential administration took office. Since then, Ive tried to be conscious about which protests I attend, which chants I engage in, and ultimately be thoughtful about what messages I stand behind. I recall standing under Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue a few days after the election amidst a sea of people chanting New York hates you! donning shirts and signs that celebrated love over hate most notably Love Trumps Hate.It felt wrong. I didnt chant, but I wasnt concerned.

Overwhelmingly, my experience at gatherings like the Womens March on Washington or the protest of the travel ban in New York have been stamped in my timeline as formatively positive. Ive met wonderful, kind, and passionate people spanning from first-time to seasoned activists. I never understood how these people (myself included) were perceived as deviant by the right.

Off to the side of the main gathering near Trump Tower was a small group of Trump supporters. Lined by police within arms reach of one another, a sidewalk was barricaded so that the Trump supporters faced a group of protesters, likely quadruple in size. I squeezed my way to the front, elbows resting on the metal barricade that separated me from my ideological opposites.

Initially, there were some references to America being in the hands of God and how Trump had won so we needed to get over it. It wasnt anything I hadnt heard before.

The mood changed when a man, clad in Trump 2020 regalia, contorted his face, raised his voice and howled, Do you think you would win against us in a civil war? We would crush you! He proceeded to berate a teenage girl for not explaining to him why she had written justice on her sign and called someone a faggot for chanting Boo! I asked him not to use that word and he assured me, Im gay, its fine. My palms met my face were both gay.

The police, mirroring Moses parting turbulent seas, stood as both sides catapulted vulgar threats and insults while throwing their bodies around in uninhibited motions. While I heard things come from the Trump side like, Youre brainwashed and, You pansies are all losers! I was met with comments such as, At least Im not a product of incest like your uneducated asses from the side I was seemingly supporting. People walking through the divide tore signs out of Trump supporters hands and flipped each other off, all the while screaming at one another without pause. No one had come to listen.

My emotions around living in 2017 are without words. Angry, embarrassed, terrified, ashamed, introspective, come close. However, last night I had an unsettling and undeniable realization: the conservative media has just as much content to make us look bad as we do them.

I am firm in my beliefs: black lives matter, trans people are not a burden, Muslim people are at the backbone of America, nuclear war is not the answer, the list goes on. Im no longer grounded in my confidence that we are giving the right the ammo they need to listen to our point of view.

Consider this: Im liberal, and most of my news comes from sources that align with my beliefs. These sources are pushing for what they believe in and its easier to argue that the other side is wrong when they present a clip of someone at a Trump rally yelling go back to where you came from towards a minority group. The same is true about conservative media. Last nights event taught me that the conservative media has ample resources to arm themselves with scenes of liberals threatening violence and rallying around hate, the very hostility were so passionate about ending.

I will continue to show up to rallies, think critically of the opinions I endorse in the heat of protest, and question how I might be contributing to the constraints our country faces. But now, Im committed to supplying the conservative media not with snippets of the darkest sides of our own fight but with ears that are willing to listen. This includes sitting down with myself and my like-minded neighbors to gut check if were always qualified to disarm hate.

My ask is this: if we find ourselves in the face of someone whose opinions dont match our own, we will remember that were speaking on behalf of a movement. We will think about what wed want the Right to see and what concerns of ours wed want them to hear. If were scared for our safety or that of others, by all means we will act accordingly. But in moments of peaceful protest, we will repeatedly remind ourselves that we could end up on the screens of the other side threatening the very hate we abhor.

And damn, our country is divided.

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Liberals, It's Time To Look At Ourselves In The Mirror - HuffPost

Szilrd Nmeth, a prominent parliamentarian affiliated with Hungarys ruling Fidesz party, knows who is to blame for the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia during a rally by neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan. In keeping with the politics of the Hungarian regime, Mr. Nmeth points the finger at liberal fascists, who bear full responsibility for the fatal events in this Virginia college town.

He wrote on Facebook:

Liberal fascism leads to this. It is to the detriment of the quiet, peaceful and normal majority when the possessed people of the far left, the ultra-liberal and the far right cooperate or at times battle with each other.

Mr. Nmeth then went on to commend President Donald Trumps initial statements, in which he relativized the overt racial hatred of the of neo-Nazis, who no longer even bothered to hide their identity out of any sense of shame. They spewed racial hatred on the streets of this town and confidently identified with this, not worrying about professional or personal repercussions. Once again, the presidents understanding of the situation is remarkably precise and one can only agree with his position, gushed Mr. Nmeth.

Szilrd Nmeth

Of course, after two days, Mr. Trump was pressured into unequivocally condemning the neo-Nazis. Most in the Republican party would not have found it so difficult to condemn neo-Nazism as the American president and his Hungarian supporters seem to have. In Hungary, condemning Nazism and racism will often turn you into an anti-Hungarian traitor, but not in the U.S., where there are still a handful of elderly veterans who fought in Europe during World War II. For instance, Republican Orrin Hatch from Utah had this to say:

We should call evil by its name. My brother didnt give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home

He then added about the mainly young men who marched in Charlottesville with tiki torches that are more commonly and more innocuously used in the backyards of American households duringsummer barbecues:

Their tiki torches may be fueled by citronella but their ideas are fueled by hate, & have no place in civil society.

Its unfortunate to note that in contrast to the Republican party, where one will still find dissenting voices on any number of issues (including health care, immigration or an issue such as this), Fidesz is comprised only of yes men who nod and vote as demanded of them by the Prime Ministers office. They are fully servile, always unthinking and at most express any misgivings in private. What should give some solace to those who worry about the state of liberal democracy in the U.S. is that dissenting voices in the party currently in power are still heard and there are still many with a sense of civic courage. And what should concern those who have long spoken out about Hungarys descent into authoritarian rule is that there are still so many in the West who are sufficiently blind and ill informed to see in Hungarys current government a partner in dialogue.

Originally posted here:
Charlottesville A Hungarian government politician blames the liberals - Hungarian Free Press

In the ongoing meme war between conservatives and liberals, Twitter has become a frequent battleground. But the dismantling of a Confederate statue by a group of protesters on Monday in Durham, North Carolina, has kicked off a back and forth thats become all too familiar of late: a tweet full of conservative outrage being immediately hijacked by bemused liberals and progressives who then transform it into an expression of sheer absurdity.

In this instance, the catalyst was a tweet by actor James Woods, who saw the toppling of a racist statue as tantamount to the toppling of democracy itself:

Its mix of exaggerated patriotism and hand-wringing, along with the oddly hashtagged #liberals, made Woodss tweet prime joke fodder. And many of the responses quickly entered the realm of absurdity:

Such a response quickly became so routine that some people didnt even bother to paste the whole text of the meme:

The ever-expanding collection of statues thatve been referenced in the meme is truly, delightfully bizarre, with works ranging from the weird to the much weirder to the perverse to the hideous to the provocative to the completely WTF. If nothing else, the meme is a fun reminder of how versatile art can be.

But it also has a lot in common with other recent Twitter memes, like the Future that liberals want meme or the nothing but respect for MY president meme. Both of those earlier memes also originated from a single tweet that went viral more for its exaggerated outrage than for people supportively retweeting its contents.

And both of them, like this new statue meme, generated reactions in a specific format: the copying and pasting of the original text alongside immediately ridiculous and over-the-top images meant to reflect that exaggerated outrage.

There are plenty of Twitter memes that function around recontextualizing quotes for example, the progressive "she persisted" meme. But the theme that characterizes this particular meme trend seems to be the equating of conservative outrage with complete and utter absurdity. The more sober the original tweet is, the more hilariously unlikely its corresponding memeification is likely to be.

The future that liberals want meme might as well have been a template for this structure: You start with sincere outrage with the future that liberals want, it was a dismissive quip about a photo of a drag queen sitting next to a woman in a niqab on the New York subway and end up with dramatically manufactured outrage over, for example, an apple holding a sea trident. Thats exactly what were seeing with the statue meme, where Woodss suggestion that the removal of Confederate statues throughout the US will inevitably lead to the destruction of a famous memorial honoring Marines has spawned absurd celebrations of all the ridiculous statues, monuments, marketing gimmicks, art installations, and temporary structures that maybe need a good dismantling.

Given that the current political climate seems to make joking about sincerely held views the order of the day, dont expect the trend to fade anytime soon.

More:
Before the #liberals is the latest entry in Twitter's evolving absurdist meme trend - Vox

Washington Times

Liberals faulted for the 'stinging' failure of identity politics Washington Times Arriving Tuesday: The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics by Mark Lilla, a Columbia University humanities professor and, yes, a liberal Democrat. The 160-page book is a tough-minded, and stinging look at the failure of American ...

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Liberals faulted for the 'stinging' failure of identity politics - Washington Times

Catherine Rampell, Washington Post Writers Group

Photo: Mayra Beltran /Houston Chronicle

Liberals should look to all tools to help the poor

Extracting more money from evil, exploitative capitalists has become a rallying cry for much of the grass-roots left. In the meantime, though, its largely ignoring other important policies for lifting Americans out of poverty.

In a recent column, I urged progressives to more seriously grapple with the cumulative effects of policies that make workers more expensive to hire. More than doubling the federal minimum wage to $15, for example, would risk pricing a lot of people out of work. Especially in low-cost-of-living areas such as Mississippi, where half of all jobs pay less than $14.22.

In other words, well-intended, feel-good policies can sometimes backfire, hurting the people youre trying to help.

This humble suggestion generated a lot (like, a lot) of hate mail, along with a good follow-up question: What, then, should progressives who want to help the working poor devote their energy to?

Regarding the minimum wage, there are useful tools available to help set pay according to local costs of living. MITs Living Wage Calculator is used by some public officials and companies to determine reasonable wage floors.

More important, lots of the other anti-poverty tools deserve more love from the left in particular what might be called post-tax policies.

Pre-tax policies such as the minimum wage, overtime and fringe-benefit requirements help increase workers paychecks, with employers (and sometimes workers themselves) generally footing the bill.

Post-tax policies, by contrast, involve redistribution of income and wealth through the tax code and social safety net. Think: the earned-income tax credit (EITC), food stamps, housing vouchers, health insurance subsidies. They are about boosting living standards on the back-end, with the taxpayers paying. Relative to other rich countries, the United States relies very little on these post-tax tools.

If you look at Americas income inequality before taxes and transfers, its not great but its still about on par with France, Germany and Finland. If you look at income distribution after taking into account tax and transfer payments, we suddenly become the second-most-unequal developed economy in the world, behind Mexico.

There have been quiet efforts to expand some of these post-tax anti-poverty policies. This year alone, EITCs have been added or expanded in six states, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. But all these changes were done legislatively, rather than through well-advertised ballot initiatives. They get much less press coverage and popular organizing relative to, say, the Fight for 15.

At a conference last fall, I asked Jason Furman, then chair of President Barack Obamas Council of Economic Advisers, about the countrys reliance on pre-tax vs. post-tax measures to help boost economic security. He said he favored using both kinds of tools (as do I). But he also noted a remarkable disparity in progressive enthusiasm for the two approaches, especially relative to payoffs.

During Obamas tenure, the White House oversaw an expansion of overtime protections that was expected to put an extra $1.2 billion into workers pockets. It also helped pass tax-code changes that put an additional $28 billion in the pockets of low- and moderate-income families. Guess which inspired more attaboys?

Whatever the reason, the dearth of excitement for these post-tax policies is a strategic mistake. Programs such as the EITC and food stamps, if well-designed, complement the minimum wage. They can do things that the minimum wage cant, such as grow more generous for larger families. Critically, they also dont raise the cost of employees, which means the well-heeled business lobby is less likely to fight them.

Post-tax policies can distort labor markets too, of course especially if they result in benefit cliffs that discourage people from working more. Thats where smart design comes into play.

But every policy has limitations, which is why those on the left would do well to consider every tool at their disposal. Bleeding hearts are often helped by hard heads.

crampell@washpost.com

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Liberals should look to all tools to help the poor - San Antonio ... - mySanAntonio.com