There is a place for contempt in our public discourse. We should have contempt for a regime in North Korea that brutalized a young American student named Otto Warmbier.
We should have contempt for a regime in Syria that uses poison gas to massacre innocent men, women and children. We should have contempt for Islamic State terrorists who behead Americans, burn people alive in cages and systematically rape Yazidi girls.
But we should not have contempt for each other.
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Yet, we do. Our politics today is descending into a bitter spiral of contempt. And we saw the consequences in the attempted assassination of Republican members of Congress on a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, last week.
Back when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot in 2011, many on the left were quick to blame conservative political rhetoric – falsely it turned out. But the attack on Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and his colleagues was politically motivated. The assassin volunteered for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called President Trump a “traitor” on social media and, according to witnesses, asked if the players were Republicans before opening fire.
No one is responsible except the would-be assassin. But his actions should serve as a wake-up call that the demonization of our fellow Americans who disagree with us has gone too far. The culture of contempt permeating our politics has now had near-fatal consequences. We need to put on the brakes and learn how to distinguish once again between our opponents and our enemies.
Case in point: A few weeks before the Alexandria shooting, Hillary Clinton gave a commencement speech at Wellesley College where she declared that Trump’s budget is “an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us, the youngest, the oldest, the poorest.” No, it is not. Using nerve agent on the innocent is “an attack of unimaginable cruelty.” Putting a hapless college student into a coma is an “attack of unimaginable cruelty.” Reducing the growth of government spending is not.
Think for a moment what Clinton was saying: It’s not simply that Democrats and Republicans have an honest disagreement about how best to help the most vulnerable among us. In Clinton’s telling, Republicans are waging war on the vulnerable. That is toxic.
No doubt, Trump has contributed mightily to our descent into the culture of contempt. (For example, the media is not the “enemy of the American people,” Mr. President). But since Trump’s election, the scope and scale of political contempt on the left have reached unprecedented heights. Just a few months ago, when President Barack Obama was in office, it would have been unimaginable for a comedian to proudly pose for a photo holding up the president’s bloody, severed head.
Worst of all, we are in the process of cementing these attitudes in the next generation. On college campuses, students are being taught that it is acceptable to treat with contempt those with different ideas. We saw this phenomenon on display when Charles Murray – a distinguished conservative scholar – was shouted down and assaulted at Middlebury College in a riot that sent a professor to the hospital. Not a single student suffered any real consequences. Similar incidents are taking place on campuses across the country. Young Americans are learning that people they disagree with are not to be listened to respectfully and debated; they are to be silenced and driven out of the public square.
This is not to suggest that there is no role for righteous anger in political discourse. Conservatives felt anger about many of Obama’s policies, and liberals have every right to be angry about Trump’s policies they find objectionable. And they have every right to fight like hell to stop them.
But it wasn’t so long ago that, despite bitter differences over policies, Republicans and Democrats still found ways to work together. President Bill Clinton and Republicans in Congress worked together to pass NAFTA and welfare reform. George W. Bush and congressional Democrats cooperated to pass tax cuts and education reform. Today, that kind of cooperation is unimaginable.
And the reason is simple: When anger transforms into contempt, permanent damage takes place. As American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks points out, a marriage can recover from anger. But when couples become contemptuous of each other, they will almost certainly end up in divorce court. That is where our country is headed today.
Liberals need to understand: When they show contempt for Trump, they are expressing contempt for the millions of Americans who voted for him – including millions who twice voted for Obama. These Americans felt that the establishments of both parties were ignoring them and wanted to send Washington a message. The response they are receiving could not be clearer: We have contempt for the man you elected, and we have contempt for all of you who put him into office. They will never forget it.
We need to pull back from this spiral of contempt before it is too late. North Korea is our enemy. Our fellow Americans who disagree with us are not. It’s time we learn the difference – before someone gets killed.
Marc A. Thiessen, a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute and former chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush, writes a weekly online column for The Washington Post.
“We should have contempt for a regime in Syria that uses poison gas to massacre innocent men, women and children.”
My, your knowledge/facts are impressive. Were you referring to the Gas Attack in 2013 in Ghouta? Probably not, as the Syrian Gov’t as the perp was dismissed by two sources: the UN investigation and a distinguished Professor at MIT. So, it looks like that was a False Flag to entice the U.S. into war.
Maybe it was the supposed ‘Sarin Attack’ earlier this year, but that was not investigated – the US proxy army (al-Qaeda and ISIS) would not let the UN or anyone investigate. Thus, we cannot pin the blame on Syria Gov’t. Another False Flag? You do realize that entities that support the overthrow of Assad also have chemical weapons/stockpiles – what do you think of the possibility the CW was provided to the bad guys (supported by the US) by one of those entities??????
I think he is trying to tell us we need to gas the Democrats.
This was one of the most retarded pieces of propaganda I have read in years…The CIA told Trump that the Sarin attack was either an accident due to bombing or a false flag…The people for whom I have contempt all live in D.C., including the author. What is this “working together” nonsense? In fact, all that happens is that the Republicans surrender to whatever currently fashionable marxist ideas the Democrats are pushing…
I stopped reading after “We should have contempt for a regime in Syria that uses poison gas to massacre innocent men, women and children.”
The MSM is trying really hard to imprint the “Assad gassed his own people” brand. Sorta like the Sandy Hook affair and why the FBI doesn’t list it as a “Mass casualty”.
Who’s the contemptible sob who down voted Kokoda?
He’s a neocon, what do you expect?
+1 Kokoda– I also immediately cringed at that line of BS (always using “regime” is a dead giveaway)
“Trump has contributed mightily to our descent into the culture of contempt. (For example, the media is not the “enemy of the American people,” Mr. President).”
Dufus has really shown his stripes: the MSM is the enemy of the American people and Trump has enlightened the populace to that fact.
Are you on the DNC or CIA payroll?
Too funny, this line also made me wonder what this establishment shill was trying to BS us with.
Of course the MSM, aka ” the voice of the establishment” is the enemy of the average American.
I believe he was an adviser for Rumsfeld, who never saw a country he didn’t want to carpet bomb. That should sum it up quite nicely.
Indeed, the MSM is the primary enemy of the American Nation, which it is attempting to destroy with 3d world immigration and cultural marxist insanity. I am betting that this idiot is on several payrolls, including the media and the Deep State.
Mr. Thiessen,
For you to say that “the [main stream] media is not the “enemy of the American people,”” clearly demonstrates that you are either a knave or a fool.
Marc is neither knave nor fool. He is simply a contemptible asshole. Posted here on TBP just to get our dander up. Please no more Jim.
I find this post offensive. How can this criminal be allowed to spew his vile hatred without consequences? He clearly, in his position with the criminal in chief, was one of the prime perpetrators of that which he now claims to despise.
I almost miss not being plugged into the matrix, where America could never kill innocents, the US news is entirely reliable and the government is your best friend.
This dickhead used to write speeches for W. That’s enough to make him a contemptible asshole. He seems to think that it’s Trump’s fault that “the left” has such contempt for normal people. He needs to STFU before somebody beats the piss out of him.
Sorry for parroting you Ed. Hadn’t got to your comment yet. Asshole and dickhead is exactly right.
North Korea kept this young man alive for over a year .Comes back to the best medical care in the world and is dead within two days. Doesn’t make sense.
Wondering if Thiessen the Neocon was guiding Cheney’s hand as those remote control planes hit the Towers, and how much he received in the Building 7 insurance fraud?
Trump is merely catalyzing a hatred that will one day soon see a free US Air Force dropping MOABs on Rothschild, Vatican City of London/Buckingham Palace and DC cockroach infested Citadels of Debt. The PEOPLE, have contempt and blood-lust because you abused our trust. Vengeance time.
I had Hope for beneficial Change when Trump was elected and bless his besieged benevolent heart, he has been trying hard; but the Democrats and MSM are way to far gone over to the Dark Side to even consider trying to coexist with good Americans; the left cannot make it back to sanity (no matter how many of them come to their military senses and write such pathetically factually handicapped essays) before they start their Hot Communist Revolutionary War here like they did in Spain in 1936. When it happens probably later this year, I know what must be done when dialogue is impossible.
I am not descending to utter contempt for liberals,progressives,democrats and bushie neocons. Been there for several years . I hate the motherfuckers and I hate the weasel ass Republicans more than that.
“for a comedian to proudly pose for a photo holding up the president’s bloody, severed head.”
I thought the unnamed “comedienne” (Kathy Griffin), was holding a model of Trump’s severed head, not the real thing.
The divorce we need is called Secession. We have to separate from these fools before they literally start killing us and finally eat themselves, as well. We are headed straight for the killing fields of Cambodia if the Left gets it way.
“We should have contempt for a regime in North Korea that brutalized a young American student named Otto Warmbier.”
Sorry, couldn’t make it past this tripe. I get that all of us did stupid shit when we were kids. Some of us still do really stupid shit now. But there’s a difference between a drunk in public misdemeanor and going to a Communist dictatorship and stealing prop posters. Even assuming he didn’t steal anything, I can’t get past his nonexistent situational awareness as to the state of affairs between the Norks and us. It takes a special kind of snowflake to step foot in that shithole.
Am I now suddenly supposed to feel pity for the white Miami denizen who meanders down MLK and finds himself in the epicenter of civilization, Little Haiti???
Mr. Thieseen’s article is a perfect example of the sort of muddled, fuzzy thinking that is so typical of the George Bush/Mitt Romney RINO’s. The cluelessness is breathtaking. No wonder Trump wiped the floor with these dolts. “We should not have contempt for each other.” God help us. I do not have contempt for the so-called “Progressives”, the outright Marxists and the Democratic vermin. I see them for what they are, the Domestic Enemy. They are not Americans in any real sense of the word, except for their ability to obtain U.S. passports with their possibly forged birth certificates. Idiots like Thiessen are so ignorant of history in general and the Marrxist Left in the U.S. in particular that they have no idea that the “Progressives” are nothing but rebranded Reds. Thiessen has no idea that the entire Democratic playbook was invented by the Frankfurt School Communists who were vomited up on our shores as alleged “refugees” from the evil Nazis. The truth be told, Hitler had every right to throw these scum into concentration camps. They were subversives who had collaborated with the Soviet attempts to establish a Communist regime in Germany. Once on our shores (thanks to do gooders extending them a welcoming hand) they immediately proceeded to repay our generosity by setting about the undermining of our government, our traditions, our core population, and, most of all, to utterly corrupt our educational system. There is nothing “American” about the “Progressive” agenda and that of the Democrats. Blather like that spread by Thiessen and those of his ilk, this Kubayah nonsense, this “Why can’t we all get along” rubbish, is largely to blame for the inability of the pathetic Republican Party to stand up to them. They are like the League of Women Voters confronting a Bolshevik murder squad.
The American people are in a fight for the future of this country and it is time to call a spade a spade.
Mark…you ignorant slut…..Did you choke on that wad in your mouth just shortly before writing “No doubt, Trump has contributed mightily to our descent into the culture of contempt. (For example, the media is not the “enemy of the American people,” Mr. President).”
The Media Mark did it’s damnedest to shove the Hildabeast down our throats . They gave her everything she needed to win ( or so they thought) . They subverted the Demorat’s nomination process by playing dirty with Bernie’s laundry.
I have nothing but contempt for the media .
Yes, the media IS public enemy number one.
The media is the tool of public enemy number one.
There, fixed it for you.
Wow. This moron, a speechwriter for the powerful no less, appears to actually believe this simplistic horse shit. Who is paying the salaries of these assholes whose mission is to spread nonsense among the American people? They don’t even have the imagination required to create plausible or internally consistent falsehoods. Talk about a failure of intelligence in Washington!