“Let them eat frozen dinners,” writes Josh Moon, a columnist for Alabama Political Reporter, in his Wednesday column.
Appealing to man’s greater instincts, Moon encourages progressives to continue heckling Republican leaders out of restaurants, to “protest them at their office, boo them in public settings,” and to “not stop making life absolutely, utterly miserable for the conservative lawmakers who have worked so diligently the last several years to make sure life is.”
Moon implies that he wouldn’t have always made these calls to the ranks, but it’s a desperate time, and a desperate measure is needed.
“The time for civility and reasoned debate has passed us by. We tried that,” he writes.
Such attitudes unsettle the stomach, as do some of the things which Moon cites as having brought him to this point of last resort: President Trump’s vulgarities and treatment of immigrants at the border.
I even agree that Trump is largely to blame for the wretched state of political discourse in America and recognize a dramatic irony in certain Republicans’ calls for “civility.”
Even still, justifying a continuation of maltreatment strikes me as highly questionable, both morally and practically. I’m sure Moon, in other circumstances, would hold a similar point of view but he’s so pissed off that he can’t help but to flail his arms.
The moral concerns of such an approach can, I believe, be defended with a certain amount of ease by simple but authoritative invocations of Ghandi, Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., or Barney.
The practical concerns of such an approach, on the other hand, perhaps deserve some consideration with the specific question, what will it accomplish?
It certainly won’t convince the harangued, or their allies, to change their minds. They may leave a movie, but that accomplishes nothing related to the resolving policy differences which started it all.
When chiders chide, they fail to offer the ‘chidee’ an argument to consider. If the chiders are screaming, “You’re a fascist, you’re a fascist,” – a sort of argument – their argument isn’t being heard.
If Moon’s primary aim is to change minds, his approach won’t bring that result.
Perhaps that isn’t his primary aim.
Secondly, continually heckling folks out of restaurants will likely result in violence.
National Review Online’s editor Charles Cooke made this case in a recent edition of NR’s The Editors podcast.
“I think, though, one can draw a distinction between words and cartoons and political rhetoric and statues and television shows and so forth, and mobs,” Cooke said.
“The recent movement towards a mob mentality has bothered me for two reasons. The first is, okay, you got rid of Sarah Sanders from the restaurant. I think the owner is entitled to do that. I’m slightly more bothered by the report that she followed her across the street to another restaurant and harangued her.”
“We’re starting now to move to actions, not speech,” Cooke continued, citing the recent episodes involving Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao and her husband Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who reported being spat upon at the movie theater.
“And one of the reasons that we try to discourage that in civil society is that tempers can flare, and people can get quite easily drawn into physical conflict, and in a country with this many guns, that can have serious consequences.”
Cooke is right. There’s nowhere else for it all to go but to violence. I don’t think that’s something Moon wants, but I don’t know.
It’s difficult to know just how practical Moon intends to be in his exhortations, whether he meant what he wrote literally or poetically, but it’s certainly harmful.
I conclude with this reflection: Was it more effective when, as a child or teenager, a parent yelled at or spanked you or when a parent expressed “disappointment” in you?
Disappointment always hurt me more, and I’ve heard a lot of people say the same.
If you’re disappointed in your government or your fellow Americans, find a way to let them know through measured words.
And just let them eat out.
@jeremywbeaman is a contributing writer for Yellowhammer News
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