Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"I first think that it's kind of important to understand why this narrative about civility and meeting in the middle and developing relationships, is wrong. I think what is wrong with it is effectively, for a number of years -- for actually quite a long time -- primarily Republicans have been playing a different political game than Democrats have been playing, and that generally we would expect to define democratic discourse in a democratic nation like the United States. [...] They're about winning, and they're actualy not just about winning for Republicans, but actually about beating Democrats. Winning for them means defeating Democrats. And this is evident in many concrete things they have done. I think that this is a factual statement about how Republicans have conducted politics in the last many years. And one of the incorrect assumptions of Braver Angels is that everyone's really trying to play the same game, we just hate the people on the other side. And I don't, particularly Trumpism and Trump supporters and his way of doing politics, is the democratic game. I think it is a authoritarian, populist game. It's certainly a game that doesn't care about the truth at all, and it's very clear how that infects so many areas of politics. I mean, we saw the Vice President, who's usually considered to be at least a little bit more truthful than the President, repeating the President's lies in the debate recently, seemingly quite unashamedly -- and we see that all the way through Republican politics, is that people feel like, to be close to the President, they have to repeat his lies. So it's infecting the entire body politc on that side. And I think Democrats have been too slow to realize that Republicans are not just playing dirty but playing the same game; they're playing a totally different political game. And if you've got one side that's trying to play by the rules of normal politics, and one side that has given up on those rules and is just trying to defeat the enemy any way they can, then you can't have ... What civility looks like in that context is different. It's not speaking nicely to other people and understanding other people's point of view; I think civility becomes defending the democratic process from this attack, from the virus that is infecting it. So it would mean saying. 'Actually no, Republicans, you can't gerrymander districts in this outrageuous way. Actualy, no, you can't prevent people from voting, you canot say that you might not give up power if you lose the election.'" -- James Croft, on the Queersplaining podcast, 2020-10-15 (clip starts around 0:19:28 -- transcript not yet posted on the podcast's web site, which seems to be running a couple months behind on transcripts) [bold emphasis added -- Daphne]