I Respectfully Disagree

What a shame it is that we must disagree so stridently. What a shame it is that we cannot accept each other’s ideas and discuss them calmly in an orderly fashion.

A candidate for lieutenant governor in Idaho can’t just take the position that 20-30% of American women should be executed, for example, without coming in for such uncivil criticism that he has to walk back his statements.

Quite honestly, advocating death by hanging for any woman who’s had an abortion shouldn’t even really be controversial. It’s just a totally normal pro-life position. Mainstream opinion leader Kevin Williamson, columnist in the mainstream thought-leadership magazine The Atlantic, endorses it.  (He now claims he didn’t really mean what he said that one time on Twitter, but other interviews indicate that yes, he really did). Even the president, despite the number of times he has surely handed a woman an envelope of cash and told her to “take care of it,” would like to see some kind of punishment for women so whorish as to get knocked up.

But goodness, we shouldn’t be disagreeable about this kind of disagreement. The New York Times reminds us to be civil to people who think our friends deserve to die.

We may not agree, says the Times, with Williamson’s statements that black children are best described as “primates” and “3/5 scale Snoop Doggs,” that Laverne Cox and Chelsea Manning are grotesque parodies of women, that anyone who’s had or performed an abortion ought to be hanged. But we should be polite to Williamson and people like him.

Come now. Be reasonable, say the reasonable voices:

He has not argued the punishment should be retroactive.

Clifton Fels (@cbfels) April 5, 2018

But goodness, how could we be so uncouth as to proceed from thinking someone says “that common medical procedure is a crime worthy of death” to thinking they’re in favor of the wholesale slaughter of our friends? And to go from there to making ad hominem attacks on the person who advocates that slaughter? Uncivil discourse is a far greater threat to America than sober policy proposals to execute millions of women.

Worse still, how dare we criticize the judgement of an editor who chooses to employ and broadcast such a voice? How gauche. The very idea that people should might hold Jeffrey Goldberg accountable for anything his magazine publishes!

Williamson is an excellent prose stylist, you guys. He worked at the National Review. It’s not like he’s shitposting “Amerimutt” memes on 4chan to show that immigration means that America is already a nonwhite country of mongrel degenerates. He’s not using internet shorthand like “incel” and blaming “feminazis” for his inability to attract “females.” He’s saying these sorts of things with complete paragraphs, which makes it respectable. So treat him with respect.

Etymology

If my calculations are correct, biscuits and Triscuits hint towards a mysterious third food called “monoscuits.”

ᴬ ᵀᶦᶰʸ ᴮᵉᵉᶠˢᵗᵉᵃᵏ (@TenderBeefsteak) April 3, 2018

Cultivating joy
A word of advice: when you are bringing a suitcase full of pepperoni to your friends on the coast, don’t leave it next to an open window in your hotel room. The hotel may ban you for life when your room becomes infested with sausage-crazed seagulls.

This poor sad adorable avocado.

Dog brings tissues to crying girl. 

Disclaimer: My reply to the dog-comforting-crying-person post was my most-viral-ever Twitter moment:

If I was crying my dog would run to the window and bark at squirrels and then beg for food.

Aaron S. Weber (@Short_epics) March 30, 2018