Tolerance won’t be tolerated by progressives
If you want to know why so many Americans don’t like Donald Trump, watch Joe Biden’s speech from yesterday.
If you want to know why they elected Trump president, anyway — and might do it again — watch Sen. Cory Booker’s.
Biden’s speech ripping the hide off Trump was the best I’ve ever seen the former vice president give. Then again, that’s a pretty low bar. His previous best work was plagiarized from a British politician during the Reagan era.
But Republicans dismiss Biden’s attacks on Trump’s offensive oafishness at their own peril. “Sleepy Joe” landed some real blows recounting Trump’s litany of racial and xenophobic comments, and lines like “Trump has more in common with George Wallace than George Washington” are likely to stick.
In fact, when Biden was done, there were probably people thinking, “How the hell did Trump get elected in the first place?”
Cue Cory Booker.
I actually like the New Jersey senator, despite his Spartacus-sized case of selfabsorption. At a time when American politics is jonesing on fear and loathing, Booker’s spoken out for bipartisan unity and promoted the power of love as a force for social good. If nothing else, it’s fun watching East Coast journalists squirm as he earnestly quotes scripture and makes what appears to be sincere appeals for divine guidance.
But like so many true believers — and that is the best label I know of for the AOC wing of the Democratic Party — what he lacks in humility, he makes up in intolerance.
Yes, intolerance.
“To proudly claim that we are a nation of tolerance is no great aspiration,” Booker said, in an astonishing moment of honesty. “We are not called to tolerate injusno tice; we are called to combat it.”
But what about the millions of Americans who just don’t care about Trump’s idiotic tweeting and instead are happy that their wages are rising and we’re not invading anybody? Who think of the president as just another politician — an insult in and of itself — and don’t want to engage in the political culture war?
Sorry, folks. You’ve been drafted.
“There is no neutrality in this fight,” Booker said, echoing the beliefs of millions of American progressives. “You are either an agent of justice or you are contributing to the problem.” And that, citizen, will tweeted in support of a claim that the network “mainstreams white nationalist ideology.”
Speaking of Obama, his was the first POTUS campaign in the modern era to “out” donors for supporting his opponent. They had a website dedicated to shaming supporters of that vile, racist hater, Mitt Romney.
In fact, a representative of the Obama ’12 campaign hit a black audience with the hateful notion Romney and the Republicans “would put y’all back in chains.” Who would say something so nasty about a nice, harmless guy like Mitt?
Joe Biden.
This is the problem with abandoning “tolerance” in the pursuit of social justice. The people who get to decide what opinions or politicians or “deplorable” voters are beyond tolerating, are usually pretty intolerant themselves.