One knows full well the pointlessness of taking on every piece of jejunity that finds its way into The Tennessean’s opinion pages, but Sunday’s op-ed screed on the state of liberalism by the paper’s designated milquetoast columnist, Saritha Prabhu, taxes the immune system. The piece mostly just parrots the kind of knee-jerk left-bashing prattle that spews routinely from mouth-foaming commenters on Wall Street Journal articles. But what makes this high-school-quality essay worth highlighting is Prabhu's sublime (though presumably unintentional) sense of irony.
Prabhu charges liberals with trafficking in moral and intellectual superiority — rank condescension arising from conviction that their positions comprise “the only side a thinking person could be on.” Yet by erecting her argument on a gossamer thread of simplistic overgeneralizations and false moral equivalencies bereft of evidence or examples, she unwittingly makes the case for the very thing she condemns.
Let’s go to the videotape.
Prabhu: “They are trying their best to overthrow the results of an election through non-democratic means: trying to get Trump out of office with anything that sticks – mental unfitness, Russian collusion, Stormy Daniels, anything.”
Actually, Saritha, your average “thinking person” knows that machinations involving duly appointed federal prosecutors, conversations about impeachment, or notions of the 25th Amendment implicate distinctively democratic means — processes rooted in the Constitution and the rule of law. They may or may not be good ideas as matters of policy, politics or practice, but to call them “non-democratic” celebrates ignorance, not democracy.
Prabhu: “You could argue that this behavior originated in the right during the Obama years. The right continually tried to delegitimize Barack Obama’s presidency and malign him and his family.”
Sure, many on the left are trying to neuter Trump’s presidency, and some hope for a premature conclusion through legal or Constitutional means, but who, exactly, is seeking to “delegitimize”? A “thinking person” can readily grasp the difference between using the law to take on a president and his policies vs. ginning up birtherism to stoke racial fires and fraudulently challenge a president’s qualification to hold the office.
Prabhu: “What’s also troubling to see is that the left’s avowed tolerance doesn’t seem to extend to white, male, Christian conservatives – there’s a gradual, incremental, obvious shift in academia and popular culture to mock/denigrate/silence this demographic.”
Oh please. There is scant evidence of this “obvious shift” outside the small minds of Fox News talking heads. Who specifically are these all-powerful paragons of academia and torch-bearers of popular culture who so obviously mock and denigrate white conservative Christian men? Who exactly is being “silenced” by lefty intolerance? Sure, it is well documented that academia tilts left, as do many creative and performing fields that shape popular culture. It turns out that smart people and creative people are more likely (not definitively likely, just more likely) to prefer liberal to conservative thought. This tilt is nothing new and should surprise no one — at least no one who is a “thinking person.”
Prabhu: “If you don’t honor facts, civility and established norms, then it’ll come back to bite you in the you-know-where later when your side is in power.”
Even many conservatives (at least the “thinking” ones) will concede that an erosion of facts, civility, and norms is the defining essence of Trumpdom. Is Prabhu really laying that at the feet of liberals with a straight face? Seriously?
Prabhu’s flailing stab at assigning moral equivalence to Trump and his critics may hint at the kind of balance that passes muster with the Tennessean’s insipid “civility” initiative. Fortunately, a “thinking person” knows that civility without critical arguments and evidence is just another word for stupid.
