On the face of it, your suggestion seems a perfectly reasonable way to analyse an article. However, here we are not dealing with perfectly reasonable matters, we are trying to understand a political polemic. It is standard practice in such polemic to use rhetorical methods of persuasion accompanied by sly and insidious statements. So the ideal for such an article from the author's perspective would be that 99% would be sweet reason and sense, providing the padding within which 1% of extreme malevolence can be packaged. Where a main point is objectionable, the aim of the author is like an assassin who seeks to insert and remove the rapier unseen, in order to inflict the deadly wound but avoid detection. Surrounding a vile comment with reams of guff is to be expected.DWill wrote:Let's take Charles Taylor's column by paragraphs in consideration of how you've characterized it:
What you call “having an opinion” reads to me as a statement of bigoted prejudice, namely that “having a dialogue” with Trump supporters can be called “that most useless of bromides.”DWill wrote:After the introduction, he gets to his thesis, which of course is partly an opinion, but also based on the solid fact that Trump's committed voters expressed anti-elitism.since the presidential election, in the guise of tolerance and understanding and that most useless of bromides, “having a dialogue,” we are being told that there should be no shame in not knowing. The emerging narrative of this election is that Donald Trump was elected by people who are sick of being looked down on by liberal elites. The question the people pushing this narrative have not asked is this: Were the elites, based on the facts, demonstrably right?
In speaking of the shame in not knowing, here is the wiki definition of bromide, something made illegal forty years ago before most people alive today were born: “Bromide compounds were frequently used as sedatives in the 19th and early 20th century. Their use in over-the-counter sedatives and headache remedies (such as Bromo-Seltzer) in the United States extended to 1975, when bromides were withdrawn as ingredients, due to chronic toxicity. This use gave the word "bromide" its colloquial connotation of a boring cliché, a bit of conventional wisdom overused as a calming phrase, or verbal sedative.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromide#Medical_uses
So Taylor argues that dialogue between red and blue is a boring cliché, a verbal sedative, ie something impossible since, he insidiously implies as he warms up to his hateful main point, the blue democrats have all truth and the red republicans are sub-moronic fascists.
'Pundit' has its origins in Hindu religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pundit#Origins but has morphed into a partisan ability to convey reliable confidence.DWill wrote:So far we're still waiting for the part where Taylor incites hatred. You may not agree that the media was somehow "craven" (I would reject that myself, as it sounds a little too much like Trump himself), but he's only doing his pundit thing.… the charges of Clinton’s lying and Trump’s business genius were both the sheerest fictions. That Trump voters chose an easily disprovable myth over readily available facts is one sign of their willful ignorance.
Taylor and you are failing to distinguish between tactical and strategic issues in the election. For the Trump campaign, the fictions of Clinton’s lies were a tactical means to sow public doubt about her broader reliability as Commander In Chief, namely the ability of the Democrats to adequately defend America’s strategic national interests given their ideological views.
That overall view of security and national interest is a highly complex question, relating to defence, economics, foreign policy and the Supreme Court. It is convenient and effective to bundle up these difficult policy questions, where voters must make a binary choice, into an easily understood statement that Clinton is a crooked liar, even if that is an oversimplification. But as Clinton’s more serious supporters have now started to say, ‘the campaign is the campaign’ and the task is to work with Trump, putting the inflammatory rhetoric aside. Similarly, Trump’s olive branch on election night shows a retreat from his extreme campaign rhetoric.
That is clearly the case, illustrated by the popularity of the “Build the wall” chant at Trump rallies such as this two minute clip from Cadillac, where Trump’s observation that his opposition to illegal immigration struck a deep nerve. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfIKzP_IRwQDWill wrote: Racism and xenophobia (not misogyny so much) were in full force, at least with what I call the committed Trump supporters.
It remains to be seen if it will be possible for Trump to channel this negative parochial sentiment into something constructive. Obviously part of it reflects economic illiteracy surrounding mercantile arguments which are profoundly ignorant about the benefits of trade for America. But the core issue is the need for American power to advance American interests. Just castigating opponents of illegal immigration and critics of dubious trade deals as xenophobes does not clearly advance national interests.
That is a new use of cultural relativism, which is more often used as a term from anthropology to mean that primitive cultures are just as valid as modern cultures. Trump supporters reject prevailing cultural relativist ideas as political correctness, so turning that charge back on them looks a neat trick.DWill wrote:Any politician doesn't need to exactly mirror the sentiments of a bloc of supporters; he or she needs only to come closer to identifying with the group than the available alternatives. Taylor is challenging a kind of cultural relativism that counsels respect for the group's values, whatever they may be.
The Trump view of American superiority does not mean the values of his voters have no faults, which your monolithic formulation of his attitude almost implies, but more that American traditional culture should be respected as the foundation of American success.
I am simply asking that the statement you quote here from Taylor be examined in its appalling literal meaning, which foreshadows Trump as a military dictator rounding up and murdering minority populations in a process of ethnic cleansing. Taylor’s statement that minorities are “being told they must respect people who believe they have the right to jail, deport, or beat — if not yet kill — anyone who makes them uncomfortable” is not “within the bounds of reasonable discourse.” It is the concealed stiletto at the heart of his ostensibly reasonable article.DWill wrote:I really don't think, Robert, that this review of Taylor's piece justifies your calling it " ridiculous lying exaggeration which is becoming all too common in the bubble parallel universe of political polarity today." It is within the bounds of reasonable discourse, and I would challenge your accusing Taylor of lying. It is similar in strength to opinions that you express all the time.Time was when battered women were told by police or by their priests that they must try not to antagonize their abusive husbands. That is exactly how Americans of color, gay Americans, undocumented immigrants, and women are now being addressed: They’re being told they must respect people who believe they have the right to jail, deport, or beat — if not yet kill — anyone who makes them uncomfortable. Because, of course, unlike the black or brown or queer people on the coasts, those Trump voters are the real America.
Can you provide any evidence that any Trump supporters who wish to “beat and jail” people just for “making them uncomfortable” are demanding respect from minorities? That what is happening today is "exactly" like former demeaning disregard shown to battered women? Or that Trump or those close to him are saying such genocidal attitudes deserve respect? It is completely outrageous, but readily imaginable for those whose vivid fantasies compare Trump to Hitler and his supporters to Brownshirt thugs. Did Hitler say Jews must respect the Gestapo? That is the equivalent in its grotesque extremism of what Taylor falsely alleges without evidence. We should engage with what people actually say, not with what we imagine they think as distorted through our tinted ideological lenses.