Update and scripts (Patreon)

Hi, everyone. Every few years, my video essays go through a soft reboot of sorts. A new aesthetic, a new focus. My political videos will be taking on a new vibe around the end of the month, and I hope that you all stay with me.

Until then, here are some scripts from previous episodes.

HORROR AND TRAUMA

AUDIO 1

Psychological trauma is the result of an adverse experience that creates an impairment in how the brain functions. This includes anxiety, panic attacks, irritability, obsessions, compulsions, guilt and a permanent and often negative change in personality. The adverse experiences often contain violence, abuse, abandonment as well as other devastating life events. A horror movie generally depicts a traumatic event. [The Evil Dead] A trip to a cabin in the middle of the woods turns deadly. [The House of the Devil] An evening of house-sitting for a neighbor ends up being not what it seemed. [Midsommar] A vacation in Europe becomes a hostage situation or some other calamity. [A Nightmare on Elm Street] If the protagonist of a horror film survives the adverse experience, it would be reasonable to assume that they will suffer psychological trauma following its conclusion. [A Nightmare on Elm Street 3] It is possible that the protagonist might heal to some degree, but it is also possible that a recurrence, such as the reintroduction of the traumatic event, might cause greater trauma or at the very least hinder the healing process – much as it is in real life. [Scream] In the horror movie Scream, the protagonist, Sidney, has already suffered a traumatic event. Her mother was killed. Arguably, she suffers from anxiety, depression, and eventually guilt over potentially accusing the wrong man, Cotton Weary. Over the course of the film, Sidney suffers another traumatic event – a serial killer or killers begin to stalk her town and eventually Sidney herself.

Sidney survives the massacre, revealed to be committed by two people that she trusted – one of whom was her boyfriend. The boyfriend is also revealed to be her mother's true killer. Although undoubtedly grateful to be alive, such an experience will likely result in psychological trauma, particularly as it relates to trust and feeling safe among friends. [Scream 2] In Scream 2, Sidney suffers a recurrence of the traumatic event as a new killer or killers wearing the same ghost mask begins killing people around her. Sidney's psychological trauma and inability to fully trust someone begins to make functioning in her day to day life challenging. She is unable to properly pursue her goal of becoming an actor. In the climax, Sidney begins to suspect her new boyfriend of being the killer, something purposefully provoked by the actual killer. Sidney is mistaken, and due to the events of the first film, she is unable to trust her new boyfriend, and because of this, not only is he unable to help her in the climax, but he himself is also killed by the real killer. [Scream 3] In Scream 3, having suffered multiple similar traumatic events, Sidney becomes agoraphobic, and feels unsafe at all times. She shuts herself away, even as another recurrence is happening. Sidney eventually finds the courage to face the ghostface killer again, this time revealed to be her half-brother who provoked her original boyfriend into killing her mother in the first place – the original traumatic event.

AUDIO 2

Sidney defeats the embodiment of her trauma and tries to live a normal life. [Scream 4] In Scream 4, Sidney claims to have properly healed from her adverse experiences, even writing a book about psychological trauma. However, because this is a sequel, Sidney is doomed to suffer yet another adverse experience to trigger her anxiety and other psychological maladies. The amount of recurring trauma Sidney suffers is absurd. Nevertheless, the progression of her trauma over the course of the first three films and her attempts at therapy and recover in the fourth film mirror more mundane versions of  psychological trauma that people in real life face. Watching a horror movie with certain elements that remind someone of their adverse experience could trigger symptoms of their psychological trauma – anxiety, panic attacks, et cetera. However, studies show that horror movies can also be cathartic for people suffering from this trauma. The victim can be introduced to their phobia or something that would normally trigger symptoms of their psychological trauma – but in a controlled and safe experience.

Victims of psychological trauma should read about potential triggers before watching, of course, so that the experience has a better chance of being healing instead of triggering. In short, watching horror movies can sometimes train the body to better handle situations in which psychological trauma is triggered. In fact, the victim might become so comfortable with horror movies that they may feel a sense of control over their trauma. This may be particularly useful when watching a horror movie that is particularly relevant to the victim's individual psychological trauma. [It] It, Chapters 1 and 2, tell the story of a recurring trauma that follows children into adulthood. A psychological trauma stemming from a childhood incident is often called an Adverse Childhood Experience or A-C-E and can be especially potent. In the first film, Bill has several traumatic experiences, including losing his brother Georgie at a young age, and the subsequent dealings with Pennywise. Bill's friends, collectively called The Losers Club, all suffer adverse childhood experiences as well.

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Many of these experiences are related to Pennywise but some that are natural – not supernatural. Eddie is a victim of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy with his mother as the abuser. Beverly is abused by her own father, who has a perverse sexual obsession with her. Richie is bullied on the suspicion that he is gay. Everyone in the Losers Club is already suffering before they meet Pennywise. When the Losers Club grows up and leaves town, they forget about the events of the film. The town of Derry makes people forget once they leave. Mike, who never left, calls them many years later to bring them back to town to face Pennywise again. Although the events that tie both films together are supernatural, they mirror real life psychological trauma. When Mike makes his calls, we can liken this to a trauma trigger, something that reminds the victim of the adverse experience and induces symptoms of the psychological trauma. For example, when Richie answers the phone, he becomes physically ill. When Eddie answers his phone, he loses control of his vehicle and crashes. Bill begins stuttering again, as he did when he was a child. When Stanley answers his phone, he commits suicide. Although Stanley's suicide is later revealed to be more complicated than simply the result of the trigger, it does mirror real life suicidal ideation stemming from psychological trauma. The now adult Losers Club is also still affected by their more mundane traumas.

Beverly is trapped in a cycle of abuse – this time with her husband. Eddie still maintains a clearly hostile relationship with his mother. While the events of both films might be challenging for someone to watch if they suffered an Adverse Childhood Experience, it is also possible that the victim might gain a catharsis so long as they know ahead of time any potential triggers in the films. Watching children grow up and return to face the embodiment of their trauma can be very satisfying. [The Babadook] In The Babadook, Amelia is still grieving the loss of her husband. She is depressed and has fears about what this grief is doing to her son, Samuel. She reads a book to Samuel called Mr. Babadook. The creature from the book begins to stalk Amelia and frighten Samuel. The Babadook, much like grief itself, cannot simply be defeated. As it is said in the film, “You can't get rid of The Babadook.” When the grief monster faces off with Amelia, she shouts that grief cannot have her son. She won't be destroyed by grief, and she will stay as strong as she can to protect her son from it. In the end, the Babadook is not slain like a slasher villain. Instead, it is contained and even fed – a metaphorical stand-in for therapy and healing, perhaps. Trauma must be treated instead of ignored.

AUDIO 4

The Babadook is a therapeutic film for those suffering from the grief of a lost loved one or any psychological trauma that feels like a monster stalking its victim. [Halloween] The 2018 film Halloween features a story of agoraphobia, paranoia, anxiety, alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder. Although Laurie's trauma and how she deals with that is quite elaborate with hidden traps and secret rooms, the portrayal of someone suffering from post-traumatic stress following an adverse experience rings true. The promise of the ending of a slasher movie is that the “final girl” is now safe and will be able to live a normal life. However, that is often not true, and Halloween (2018) exposes this. Forty years prior to the events of the film, Michael Myers stalked Laurie Strode on Halloween. Laurie was able to escape but not without psychological damage. Laurie raised her daughter Karen to fight, to shoot, to potentially kill and to be fearful of the world. Laurie eventually lost custody of Karen due to this extreme upbringing. Although one might claim that the events of the film show that Laurie's fears were well-founded, in the climax of the film, Laurie admits to Karen that they way she raised her was wrong and that it was the mother's job to protect the daughter from Michael and other threats – not to train Karen in what she calls “a cage.” Halloween can be a therapeutic experience, as the cause of trauma is defeated, and though the film is spawning multiple sequels, its finale does feel, well, final.

Bear in mind before watching the film that Halloween is not always great with its representations of the mentally ill. Even ignoring Michael, the other patients are portrayed as nearly inhuman, howling and making animal sounds. I hope this has been helpful to someone out there. There is no quick fix or cure to trauma, but seeking treatment and receiving proper medication are the best ways to process the pain. Horror movies and other exposure therapy methods are helpful but are only supplementary. If you are suffering from untreated psychological trauma, here are some resources that may be helpful in beginning the healing process.

BIBLE AND ABORTION

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The Supreme Court is now even more conservative than it was only a few years ago. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg passed away and was replaced by a conservative, Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a relatively moderate Republican, retired and was replaced by a more conservative Republican, Brett Kavanaugh. Prior to the Donald Trump administration, the conservatives had a five to four majority over the liberals, but Justice Kennedy could be counted upon to be a potential swing vote for the liberals from time to time. This allowed for occasional five to four victories for the liberal justices instead. With Ginsberg gone and with their most reliable swing vote retired, the liberals are mostly powerless. In order for a case to go their way, they need to convince their next most likely swing vote, Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as another conservative justice. This can happen and has happened already in the short history of this new configuration of the Supreme Court, but it will be rare going forward. If the conservative justices are united, they can do almost anything. On December 1, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a Mississippi case that directly challenges Roe v. Wade. Pro-life activists have been waiting for this deeply slanted conservative majority for almost fifty years. Reproductive rights could suffer a significant blow as early as the end of this year.

Convincing conservatives that their position on abortion is wrong is challenging, because far more often than not, it is a position that they believe is foundational to their religion. A pro-choice activist can list all the statistics about how abortion bans do not actually prevent abortion, and the pro-life activist will dismiss this. A pro-choice activist can explain the necessity for bodily autonomy, and the pro-life activist will say that their beliefs outweigh this. A pro-choice activist can explain the science of how a fetus is nothing even close to a fully realized human being and debunk all the myths about pain and viability, and the pro-life activist will scoff. For the pro-life movement, all other considerations pale in comparison to their belief that a fetus has a soul. One cannot prove whether or not a fetus has a soul because one cannot prove a soul exists at all. It is a matter of faith, and not something observable. However, if pro-lifers believe in this “ensoulment” because of they believe the Holy Bible forbids abortion, they might want to consider reading it again. Because the Holy Bible does not condemn or forbid abortion. It is actually silent on the issue.  Christians within the pro-life movement often cite specific verses in the Bible to make their case and to claim that God himself has forbidden abortion. The problem with their argument is that they are extrapolating unrelated verses to make their case. They are combing the Bible for something that almost sounds as if it's about abortion but is not.

AUDIO 2

They have reversed the evidentiary process – reaching a conclusion first, then searching for whatever vague evidence that might support that conclusion afterward. Pro-life Christians often cite Exodus chapter 21, verse 22 as evidence that God sees a fetus as the same as fully-formed human being. “If two men are fighting, and in the process hurt a pregnant woman so that she has a miscarriage, but she lives, then the man who injured her shall be fined whatever amount the woman’s husband shall demand, and as the judges approve.” This verse as evidence for the pro-life position runs into several problems, and these problems actually reinforce the pro-choice position more than pro-life. First, this verse is about a miscarriage, not an intentional abortion. Second, in this scenario, the result of a miscarriage, the men are only fined, not executed. If a fetus were seen as a fully-realized human being, there would be graver consequences. We know this for certain because the verse immediately following is “But if any harm comes to the woman and she dies, he shall be executed.” In other words, if a human being is killed, there are grave consequences. If a fetus is killed, there is a fine. The incredible disparity between these two consequences show that the author of Exodus and indeed the Hebrew people did not consider a fetus a human being. Pro-life Christians tend to leave out that extremely important verse that follows their most frequently-cited Biblical evidence.

Other evidence that pro-lifer Christians cite include the Ten Commandments, specifically “Thou shall not kill.” However, as anyone who reads Hebrew knows, that is a mistranslation. A correct translation of the sixth commandment is “Thou shall not murder.” In Hebrew, the word for murder is retzach. The Old Testament draws both a moral and legal distinction between murder and other killings. For example, the Book of Numbers does not consider warfare retzach because it has been endorsed by the government, by law. Pro-life Christians cite a number of other passages throughout the Bible, all containing words like “life” and “kill” and so forth, but all the anti-abortion interpretation of these verses is built on the false foundation of abortion being the same as murder, which the Bible does not suggest at all. OK. Two can play at that game. Genesis says that life begins when someone can breathe. A fetus does not even form lungs until approximately thirty-seven weeks into the pregnancy – near the very end. Furthermore, a fetus does not exactly “breathe” in the womb. Oxygen travels through the umbilical cord. A baby does not actually inhale breath until after the birth. In either interpretation of what constitutes breathing, the child is not “alive” by this Biblical standard during the time an abortion – meaning not “ensouled” at this point. There are no verses that explicitly condemn abortion, no verses that claim that a fetus has a soul, and no verses or that claim that a fetus has the same legal or moral status as a fully-realized human being.

AUDIO 3

Now, in opposition to this, a pro-life Christian might point out that simply because the Bible has no such rule condemning abortion does not necessarily mean that the word of God endorses abortion either. First of all, verse 22 in the aforementioned Exodus chapter does indicate that the fetus has no legal or moral status. Second, and perhaps even more importantly, the Bible did not leave out a condemnation of abortion by some accident. The Bible has rules for everything. What clothes to wear, how to treat our friends, how to treat our enemies – an incredible amount of minutiae that covers a number of unlikely scenarios. Deuteronomy 25:11-12 states that if two men are fighting, and the wife of one man grabs the other man's private parts, then that woman's hand must be chopped off. Exodus 22:2-3 states that a homeowner may kill a burglar but only at night. No killing a burglar during the day. Leviticus 11:13-19 states that we must never eat an owl. No owls on the menu – ever. The point is that the Bible goes into some weird places and covers a tremendous amount of unusual situations. Abortion existed during Biblical times and was a fairly common practice. The authors of the Bible knew about abortion. If the authors wanted to forbid abortion, they would have forbidden abortion. It is unreasonable to think that the authors of the Bible thought abortion was a grievous and unforgivable sin but simply forgot to include it. They included everything. They had strong opinions about owls.

Centuries after the New Testament was written, some Christian writers had opposing feelings on abortion, but for thousands of years, abortion was not condemned by Judaism, and for almost two thousand years, abortion was not broadly condemned by Christianity. The Roman Catholic Church did declare that abortion was murder until the latter part of the 19thcentury, and considering the Catholic church's views on birth control in general, it is a reasonable to assume that the church made this declaration to help expand their numbers in the face of the growing Protestant movement. It was not made canon law because of some new evidence suddenly found in the Bible thousands of years later. Protestant denominations continue to be split on the issue to this day. The United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church are pro-choice, and others are pro-life. As stated before, pro-life Christians will not be persuaded by arguments of pragmatism or modern ethics. They need to be persuaded by what's important to them: their relationship with God. If you are a Christian and pro-life, you may have to come to grips with the fact that the Bible does not condemn abortion and that many Christian denominations and individual Christians recognize this. Reproductive rights are about to face their greatest challenge this century in the United States, and you should probably take time to consider whether or not you are on the right side of this issue.

THE WEST WING

AUDIO 1

[“Well, this is why we all came to Washington. It's like an episode of a TV show. I'm not in a position to look into a crystal ball here. Which TV show? Maybe The West Wing if something good happens. Maybe Veep if not.”] Ask a liberal about their favorite television series. Ask a Democrat what series promotes their way of life and their ideology. In fact, ask any American even without knowing their party registration what series is the most “American” of all, and in all three cases, there is a strong chance that the answer will be The West Wing. Premiering in September 1999 and closing in May 2006 after seven seasons, The West Wing captured the imaginations of audiences and critics. The West Wing won 100 awards from 289 nominations, including 27 Emmy Awards from 98 nominations. Of its Emmy Awards, The West Wing was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series for all seven seasons and won four times. It is currently tied for the record for most wins in this category, arguably bestowing on The West Wing the title greatest American television series of all time – or at least tied for it. The West Wing follows the President and his senior staff as they maintain the glory and honor of the United States of America. Serious people with serious jobs to do. Liberals love The West Wing because it generally espouses their ideology, and many to the right of liberalism still love The West Wing because the series is bathed in the dogma of American exceptionalism.

Now, those to the left of liberalism, well, that is a different story. Before diving in too deep, let us define some terms. Apologies to those who have heard all this before. Freedom and equality are said to be the defining characteristics of liberalism. Then there is the other – possessions, or property – including private property as defined by capitalism. Under capitalism, a single person can own something that the entire community needs, no matter how much that might damage the community or keep the community poor and reliant on the owner. Those to the left of liberalism would argue that the sanctity of this private property contradicts the other two defining characteristics of liberalism. Capitalism does not create “freedom” – it creates a mandatory system of wage labor. Capitalism does not create “equality” – those at the bottom of the economic hierarchy are less free to act than those at the top. Liberals do not see it that way and instead claim that capitalism and liberalism achieve the most freedom and equality possible and that there is simply no better way.

Liberalism'sadherence to capitalism and a powerful state to enforce it proved unacceptable to those who wanted to bring the concept of liberty further left. In the United States, the left was pushed out of the conversation and demonized throughout the 20thcentury, particularly during the Cold War. Eventually, the US affirmed only two political ideologies represented by two political parties: liberalism for the Democrats, conservatism for the Republicans. The center and the right, respectively. Conservatism rejects certain aspects of “equality” and instead promotes a stricter socialhierarchy. However, the parties are not opposed when it comes to capitalism. The Democratic Party has adopted the socialphilosophy of liberalism, and the Republican Party has adopted the social philosophy of conservatism, but both major parties have adopted the economic philosophy of neoliberalism,characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The Democratic Party and Republican Party are also in lockstep when it comes to major areas of foreign policy, particularly as it pertains in military interventionism.

More on that later. The West Wing operates on three basic premises. First, the United States is a force for good in the world, and its superior wealth and resources grant it exceptional, uncontested status in trade, diplomacy, and military intervention. Second, neoliberal capitalism and liberal democracy are the end goals of history, and any attempt to uproot these systems or replace them are nefarious. Third, the Democratic Party is correct, but Republicans are similarly principled and share common cause in maintaining these systems. These premises form a dogma, and this dogma can be found in every episode of The West Wing. This dogma is sometimes unsound, often flat-out erroneous, and more often than not, dishonest about the United States and its place in the world. The West Wing's dogma is the very essence of the Democratic Party. At the end of season three, President Bartlett contemplates assassinating Abdul ibn Shareef, the Minister of Defense of a fictional nation called Qumar. Shareef is suspected of a crime against the United States. The President wrestles with his conscience, but in the end, because this is The West Wing, he decides that the United States both can and should carry out extrajudicial killings without consequences. The series does not only frame this as something that the President of the United States could do but mustdo. Chief of Staff Leo McGarry finally convinces President Bartlett to do it by telling him that it is the responsibility of the President to order extrajudicial assassinations. [“Why? Why must I do this?” “Because you won.”]

The West Wing explicitly states that the role of President is to perform such deeds and that these deeds are correct. Defenders of this scene might say that The West Wing includes a line stating that this deed is “wrong” but in the same breath says that it must be done anyway, the implication being that the United States is not only justified in doing what it believes is right but also justified in doing what it believes is wrong.President Bartlet's soul-searching made for great television, but in the end, he orders the extrajudicial killing, and the series spends the next season justifying this action to the audience. Bartlet explicitly states that he would absolutely do it again. The audience sympathizes with Bartlet because he was initially conflicted and because it weighed heavily on his eternal soul. The audience does not sympathize with Shareef because he is a strawman created by The West Wing writers to be a monster. Even if an extrajudicial assassination of a so-called monster were justified, killings by the United States – ordered by the President or not – do not exclusively remove so-called monsters from the Earth. To believe that the United States exclusively makes the world a better place by its assassinations, drone strikes and extrajudicial executions, betrays a tremendous amount of misplaced faith in our institutions, an unnatural amount of gullibility about the unambiguous moral correctness of state actions, and a stunning naivete about the United States' actual foreign policy goals.

Between 1948 to 1991, the United States engaged in forty-six military interventions. Between the much shorter time period of 1992 and 2017, the time of The West Wing, that number increased fourfold to 188. The increase between 1992 and today is actually the result of a shift in power. The United States became even more aggressive and more willing to stretch itself across the globe after the fall of the Soviet Union. The United States no longer had a military superpower to rival itself and could recenter its foreign policy on securing its financial interests. The increase in military interventions is not the result of a desire to stomp out terrorism or “spreading freedom” or any other propagandist rhetoric. United States is intervening and invading so many nations to impose its order and secure its global financial interests. The interests that have long kept the United States involved in the Middle East are fairly clear. The Middle East, with its vast oil reserves, is a region of great economic interest. The United States never got most of its oil from Middle Eastern sources, but its political and economic allies did.

Oil is traded on a global market, which means that a disruption of price or supply in one region would cause disruption on a larger scale. Even nations in the Middle East without much oil – such as Afghanistan – hold other important resources, such as cobalt. Presently, the Taliban is sitting on approximately one trillion dollars worth of minerals. In public, the United States instead presents its military interventionism as “spreading democracy,” and unfortunately, so does The West Wing. In the series, the real life attack on the World Trade Center did not happen. The West Wing follows of its own fictional narrative, but the impact of that event still changed the focus of the series.

All of the sudden, the Bartlett administration was worried about Qumar, the fictional nation that serves as a stand-in for everything Americans feared in the post-9/11 world. In the season three special episode Isaac and Ishmael, Leo McGarry dismisses the argument that US wars are about US global hegemony. [“Yes, we have oil interests in the region. So does the rest of the world.”] Yes, Leo, but the rest of the world can't bomb the region. The rest world does not have the military or economic power to impose itself on the region. There are power dynamics at play here. Elsewhere in that same episode, CJ Cregg praises the CIA, calling it our “maligned little brother,” and the episode ultimately sides against civil liberties, sides the intelligence community violating those civil liberties, explicitly refutes the common defense of the Benjamin Franklin quote about sacrificing liberty for safety, and props up the CIA as a force for good in the world. The CIA exists in part to protect United States economic interests in the world. Time and time again throughout its history, the CIA has provoked rebellions, interfered with elections, or assisted in assassinations of foreign leaders who were not friendly to those interests or had the potential to become economic rivals. Italy in 1948. Albania in 1949.

Guatemala beginning in the 1950's. Iran in 1953. Indonesia throughout the 1950's and 1960's. Congo throughout the 1960's. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, much of Latin America, much of the Middle East and Africa, the list goes on and on. These interventions, invasions, assassinations and election interferences were not performed for altruistic reasons – no matter what US propaganda and The West Wing says. Any time a foreign nation experimented with an economic system to the left of the United States, they were taken out. Capitalist apologists love saying that many leftist movements failed but always pretend that their “failures” were internal instead of the products of assassinations, coup d'états, civilian massacres, and other forms of external interference, primarily by the United States. Capitalism needed to be protected. The rich needed to get rich, and the poor needed to stay that way – especially poor nations. Nations full of poor people who could reliable provided inexpensive goods to the United States and its allies. God, The West Wing loves capitalism. It elevates the rich to heroic status. [“The top 1% of wage earners in this country pay for 22% of this country. Let's not call them names while they're doing it, is all I'm saying.”] “Wage earners”? Sam, billionaires are not “wage earners.” They don't have bosses who pay them hourly. They're the bosses, and they usually pay terribly.

[“The World Bank and the WTO are international organizations of which the US is one member.”] Yeah, that is true, Josh Lyman, but the United States holds considerably more sway in international trade than any other nation. The influence of a nation is roughly proportional to its wealth. For example, The United States has the greatest number of votes in the International Monetary Fund and therefore wields the most influence, and its uses that influence to control the global south. As President Bartlett contemplates assassinating Shareef and potentially starting a war with Qumar, the economic interests are never mentioned. The oil in the Middle East may as well not exist in The West Wing. Instead, Bartlett's decision is based purely on morality, a morality that weighs heavily on him. It is truly repulsive scene – a president committing war crimes and political assassinations is portrayed as his burden and not the burden of the families who will be affected by these deaths and the civilians who will inevitably pay the price for United States global hegemony. But that is how The West Wing functions. The president is a hero, and his decisions, though not always perfect, are still worthy of our worship. The West Wing traffics in “presidential hero worship” – a reverence not only for the man but for the office of the presidency itself.

The West Wing gives the president this aura of moral infallibility and a god-like presence, strengthened by President Bartlett's Christian faith and consistent soul-searching on the eve of a critical, life-saving decision. Presidential hero worship is not happenstance but the intentional outcome of the framers of the United States Constitution. During the Constitutional Convention, those present debated forming an executive office that would be shared among several people. Those who supported this model understandably feared what a single executive could do, having only recently cast off the King of England. However, proponents of a single president argued that an individual would offer a sense of governmental strength, and the people could attach their sense of self to a single man. That single man would represent the nation to the people. The United States gives the President too much power for one man, and because the President has too much power for one man, the people cannot help but see him as God, or at least, as King. Even a deeply divided nation still has half the population worshiping modern presidents. See: the cult of MAGA surrounding Donald Trump, or the heroic elevation of Barack Obama. And how could they not? The President is the commander-in-chief of all branches of the military, selects every Cabinet appointment, every Supreme Court justice. The Senate must confirm many of these selections, but the Senate rarely goes against his choices.

He can sign executive orders with far-reaching consequences. He can pardon or commute the sentences of his cronies. The President is effectively above the law – subject only occasionally to civil suits but without the possibility of actual criminal charges. The only instrument in the grand toolbox of liberal democracy to stop the president should he spiral wildly out of control is impeachment. However, due to partisanship, it is nearly impossible for the president to the convicted by the Senate, and no president ever has been.

Toward the end of season one, Chief of Staff Leo McGarry rounds up the senior staff, and triumphant music plays in the background, and everybody – one by one – says “I serve at the pleasure of the president.” The music and the dramatic flare of it all is meant to give the audience a sense that these are serious men and women doing the serious work of government, and that serious work is presidential hero worship. We are supposed to find this inspiring and supposed to feel a renewed sense of patriotism in this scene, and it is just so repulsive, so demeaning, so manipulative. “I serve at the pleasure of the president”? The United States famously emerged by rebelling against a monarch, yet still retains the divine worship, at least from half of the nation. And for The West Wing, well, that worship should be from the entire nation. National unity but only in terms both abstract and vainglorious. An entire nation worshiping one man is not believing in something larger than yourself – it is believing in something smaller than yourself. A single individual with the audacity to believe he should be called “the leader of the free world.”

The propaganda designed to inspire that worship and to create that god-like image is necessary, because otherwise, we will recognize that the President of the United States is almost always some rich man who has been given extraordinary authority over the most devastating and destructive military in the world and veto powers over any bill that does not have the overwhelming bipartisan support to bypass said veto. The West Wing supports the premise of the presidential hero even without the narrative requirement of keeping the main character sympathetic or the television network requirement of keeping the administration intact to support new seasons. It supports it ideologically in every speech, every statement, every quippy, Aaron Sorkin one-liner and overwrought declaration of faith to liberal democracy's one true God: the President of the United States.

In season one, a rich donor named Ted wants the President of the United States to publicly state that he is in favor of gay rights. President Bartlet's staff assures him that if the House and Senate were to, for example, ever pass a ban of gays in the military, the President would veto it. However, this private statement is obviously not good enough for Ted, and he insists on meeting with the President to voice his concerns. In this episode, Ted is not only Ted.

For the audience, he represents the gay community. When Ted asks for help, the President angrily shouts that he knows what he is doing and that Ted is throwing an “adolescent tantrum” for wanting protection for his community. Bear in mind that this episode debuted in the year 2000, not 1955. The President claims that the best thing he can do for gay rights is not publicly come out in favor of gay rights, and Ted calmly agrees. Aaron Sorkin loves writing fictional arguments for himself to win. The President is arguing for incrementalism – a favorite among the Democrats. Political incrementalism is a method of change by which many small policy changes are enacted over time in order to create a larger policy change. Incrementalism allows the Democrats to essentially hide from an issue and quietly change a policy in a piecemeal fashion over the course of years or even decades. Incrementalism in politics has several significant problems. The first is that it employs the “slippery slope” argument – the idea that a relatively small step will undoubtedly lead to a chain of related steps. President Bartlet not coming out in favor of gay rights but also not being explicitly anti-gay is a small step compared to other presidents, and he believes it will eventually lead to greater acceptance as well as legislation down the road.

The problem with the slippery slope argument is that it is a logical fallacy. All actions do have consequences and reverberations, but a slippery slope argument is a statement that a policy will create a series of further and greater consequences and should either be enacted for that reason if one is in favor of those imaginary consequences or avoided if one is opposed to those imaginary consequences.

According to David Kelley, author of The Art of Reasoning: “The slippery slope fallacy occurs when we posit a sequence of effects without good reason for thinking they will actually follow.” In other words, in order for one policy to inevitably give way to another policy and another policy and another policy until it leads to the ultimate goal, there needs to be evidence strongly suggesting that a specific policy related to a specific issue will open the door for the next specific policy for the specific issue. A must lead to B, and B must lead to C, and C mustlead to D. Unfortunately, this hypothetical series of events does not account for variables. It does not account for unknowns. It does not account for big changes to the political landscape that might make reaching B or C impossible. A might lead to X. If A does not lead precisely to B and only B, then A was pointless if the end goal is D. In addition to the problem of variables, by not publiclycoming out in favor of the ultimate goal, the Democratic Party loses focus.

Thus, there is no reason to believe the party will march in lockstep toward this ultimate goal, if that even is their goal at all. The second problem with incrementalism is also related to the slippery slope argument. No matter how small a change, Republicans will sound the alarm every time such a change is proposed, and they use the imaginary consequences as their argument. Staying with gay rights, Republicans in the era that The West Wing was on television would sometimes say that allowing for any greater legal recognition of same-sex couples would lead to men marrying animals or any number of nigh impossible consequences that were absolutely not on the table. Democrats trying to effectively “sneak in” revolutionary changes one piece at a time does not often work because both Republicans also employ slippery slope rhetoric, and when the small change is denounced, Democrats become too afraid to push hard for the ultimate goal. The third problem with incrementalism is that it simply has a history of not working. Staying with gay rights, it was not a series of incremental changes in Congress that allowed for marriage equality through the United States. It was a Supreme Court decision – a big change all at once. It was also very close and is now once again in danger due to new conservative Supreme Court justices. Important moments in history often do not happen in inches but in a big, bold decisions by either the courts or the legislature.

Roe v. Wade as an example of the former, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as an example of the latter. The fourth problem with incrementalism is that even if the goal is in sight, the long wait for progress leaves many behind. For example, in the 1980's, Americans and particularly gay men, could not wait for the incrementalism of social acceptance while they were dying of AIDS. They needed public support to help change policies and divert resources immediately, and many did not receive that support in time. Finally, the fifth problem with incrementalism is that sometimes it simply cannot work due to an externally-imposed time limit. The most obvious example is climate change. Small, incremental alterations to the world's energy policy are not going to solve the problem. Experts believe that big, bold changes are required or else there will be even greater damage than we are already seeing. Now, with all that in mind, why do Democrats still cling to incrementalism? One reason is that a far-reaching public policy change will affect corporate interests. Democrats already have a hard time convincing big business that they can be better friends to them than Republicans, because the Republican Party is usually offering tax cuts to the wealthy. Raising the minimum wage is a popular opinion shared by the vast majority of Americans. Democrats could run on raising the minimum wage and probably gain seats in Congress and secure the presidency.

Every time there is an election, people ask “Why don't the Democrats run on raising wages? They will win!” Well, because corporate interests are not in favor of raising wages, and Democrats are too afraid of losing their money in the long run, following their short-term gains. Thus, Democrats try to enact smaller, less significant policies that might help the workers but without even a clear end goal in mind.

Another reason Democrats stick to incrementalism is because they fear wedge issues that could potentially hurt them in upcoming elections. Although there are more registered Democrats in the United States than Republicans, the ideological makeup of their respective voters tell a different story. The Republican Party has slid further and further to the right in the past several years. Political positions once thought disqualifying are now part of the mainstream. The Republican Party can afford to take conservative positions. What about Democrats? According to Pew Research, less than half of all Democratic voters even consider themselves liberals, and 14% of their voters actually consider themselves conservative or very conservative. Remember, liberalism is internationally understood as a centrist position, which means that these “moderate” Democrats are better understood as right-of-center, and conservative Democrats are right wing. In other words, Democratic politicians are too afraid to even take garden variety liberal positions – let alone make more radical changes.

The ubiquity of capitalism and adherence to neoliberalism make it nearly impossible to affect radical but necessary changes through electoral politics. Yet, The West Wing always portrays the Democrats as boldly fighting the good fight. [“You're the good guys. You should act like it.”] Throughout the series, the implication of all the battles and throwdowns with the Republican Party is that if only Democrats had the majority in Congress and the White House, the United States would be a utopia. But the problem is not the Republicans. The problem is capitalism, and instead of fighting back against it, the Democrats adhere to it. The Democrats are not coming to save us from the system. They love the system. The system enriches them. The majority of Congress is comprised of millionaires. Selfish, disconnected from the concerns of everyday people, and often corrupt. If the one thing The West Wing loves is capitalism, the one thing it hates is the left.

That's Toby Ziegler, and his function in the series is to be the sincere liberal and to show how far the left we may go and no further. [“Come at us from the left, and I'm gonna own your ***.”] In the infamous episode “Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail,” Ziegler uses the power of the liberal argument to convert leftist protesters. It infantalizes them, portraying them as children who simply do not understand, when in truth, they do understand, and that's what makes them dangerous to liberals. Worse still, the episode has the audacity to portray these protesters as insincere. Ziegler says that protests of this sort are an “activist vacation” and “spring break for anarchists.” In the episode, Ziegler is convinced by a police officer to stop griping and to teach these anarchists about liberalism because that is what they need. It is powerfully condescending. The Democratic Party, when confronted by the left, says “Oh, you just don't get it. We have to bomb these nations. We can't have anything but capitalism. Go home and let the wealthy make the decisions, because they have been doing a great job so far.” It happens in elections, too. When voters show up in record numbers to vote for a Democrat, the party faithful never thank the left for showing up. When Democrats lose, the left is always blamed. In 2020 and early 2021, the Democrats took back both the White House and the Senate, but because some local races underperformed, the left was blamed.

What actually happened, and why do moderate Democrats – both politicians and voters – always blame the left? First of all, let us define some terms. The “left” in the Democratic Party is not actually “the left.” For the most part, they are simply more reliable liberals – like the fictional Jed Bartlett. The progressive movement in the Democratic Party also contains a handful of social democrats – mixed-economy capitalists who want a better public safety net. This collection of liberals and soc-dems form the Progressive Caucus in the House and Senate – a caucus that holds a minority of Democratic seats in the House and only one seat in the Senate. Because the Progressive Caucus is not uniform in their ideologies or even sincerity, only a few soc-dems hold true to the “progressive” label under pressure from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Now, if the Democrats did so well in 2020 nationally, why did they lose some local elections in 2020? Why did they take back the White House and eventually the Senate after some runoffs, but lost a little ground on state legislatures and the House of Representatives? Republican gerrymandering and voter-suppression policies that subtract voters from the rosters both played roles. These efforts are local and only affect some congressional districts.

There were also a lot of split-ticket voters, meaning independents and Republicans who voted for their local Republicans and for Joe Biden. A tremendous number of otherwise moderate-to-conservative voters saw the disaster of the Donald Trump administration and made a pragmatic decision. This all adds up to a big win nationally with a few small loses in congressional districts. So, did moderate Democratic politicians and voters give these explanations? No, they blamed the left for poisoning the discourse with talk of the basic needs of human beings. Recently, Democrats had a win-some-lose-some election in a few districts and two states, and the left was blamed. The midterms are next, and if there are any losses, the left will be blamed. The moderates shout “The party in power lost seats? How unexpected! This is the left's fault!” In modern history, the President's party has only gained seats in the House and Senate during their first midterm elections twice – in 1934 and again in 2002. These were small gains, and the latter gains only occurred due to the unusual circumstances and national mood. The Bill Clinton administration gained a meager five seats in the House and zero seats in the Senate during its second midterm election but not first. This happens because the opposition party gets to be “on the attack” – criticizing every decision and behaving like the underdog. Anything that goes right is ignored, and anything that goes wrong is the President's fault.

A loss in ground is absolutely standard operating procedure for the party that holds the White House, but moderate Democrats are blaming the mixed 2021 results on the Progressive Caucus for wanting more from the Build Back Better negotiations. “If only Biden had a big signature win before November,” they reason, “the Democrats would have won in Virginia, too!” However, history shows that the President's party loses seats irrespective of big policy wins. The New Deal was in place by the late 1930's, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt lost seventy-one House seats and six Senate seats in 1938.

The Affordable Care Act passed early in the Barack Obama administration, but there were significant Democratic losses in the midterms anyway. Then, the moderates say “Progressive policies alienate other voters!” In truth, progressive policies mobilize as many or more voters than they alienate. Moderate Democrats have yet to conclusively prove otherwise. Elections are won on turn-out, and the enthusiasm of the base is necessary. Frankly, even if that were not true, better policies would still be worth fighting for in an uphill battle instead of keeping everything the same forever. Nothing has ever changed by playing it safe. So, why does the Democratic Party keep blaming progressives for their routine failures? The easy answer is that a loser wants to blame someone else for their loss. They can't blame themselves, and if they blame their opponent, that is only a roundabout way of blaming themselves.

Their opponent was simply a better candidate. Someone else must be blamed for a boring moderate Democrat losing a race – and the Progressive Caucus is right there and an easy target. With that being said, the reason the Democratic Party always puts the blame to their left is more complicated. The sad truth about the Democratic Party is that blaming the left suits the agenda of the party. The Democratic National Committee, the governing body of the Democratic Party, does not want to move to the left. The DNC does not want higher taxes for the rich, because its members are rich. The DNC does not want a raise in minimum wage because it might alienate some of their friends in the private sector. Thus, every time they lose, the party uses that as an opportunity to say “See? This is what happens when we try to do stuff. Let's not do anything.” The DNC becomes Toby Ziegler, dismissing leftists with his calculated arrogance, and threatening the progressive caucus with icy, flat intonation. The Democratic National Committee mobilizes against soc-dems harder than they mobilize against the Republican Party. The moderate Democrat's favorite boogeyman is Senator Bernie Sanders, a rabble-rouser who they believe cost Hillary Clinton the 2016. Remember, it's never the moderate's fault. It's always someone scheming on their left.

They claim a small number of Sanders' primary voters, 12 percent, eventually voted for Donald Trump is general, which is both true and misleading. There is nothing proving Sanders somehow diverted these votes. If Sanders had simply not been in the primary, there is no reason to believe that these voters would have voted for Clinton in general. There is a supposition of causation that is not backed up by anything. The accusation seems to be that some Sanders voters sided with Trump in the general for spite. First of all, that is not what Sanders directed them to do, as he actively campaigned for Clinton. Second, it's false on its face. The average Sanders-to-Trump voter proved to be much more likely to be “somewhat conservative” or “very conservative” instead of the average Democrat. Remember, it is the Democratic Party that tries to bring in conservatives. Sanders ran on policies well to Clinton's left but attracted a handful of conservatives for his populist appeal. The 2016 general election was not “The Revenge of the Bernie Bros” – it was conservative Democrats voting for the conservative. Thatis the common denominator. Conservatism. Not Bernie Sanders. More importantly, defections from a primary to general election are the norm. More voters switched from Hillary Clinton in the primaries to John McCain in 2008 than from Bernie Sanders in the primary to Donald Trump in 2016. Clinton-to-McCain voters were 15 percent to Sanders-to-Trump voters at only 12 percent.

In fact, 13 percent of Trump's 2016 voters voted for Obama in 2012. Barack Obama did not encourage anyone to vote for Trump, they just did for whatever reason. These voters do not belong to the candidates in any meaningful way. To this day, Clinton supporters pretend that 12 percent is a smoking gun, but it only convinces people who have no idea how elections work. Bernie Sanders did not cost Hillary Clinton the election. There is no math that backs that up. Only outrage from moderate Democrats shocked by the audacity of someone daring to be in the same primary as the establishment candidate.

Sometimes Sanders' own supporters use these statistics to claim that “Bernie Would Have Won” but that is not necessarily true either. A presidential campaign has too many variables. Nevertheless, there is nothing that condemns the Sanders campaign as being helpful Trump. If anything, his constant campaigning for Clinton after he dropped out helped her chances and galvanized some voters. In 2020, when the Sanders campaign was on the upswing in spite of attacks from both the DNC and the news media, the Democratic establishment rallied its forces and internally pleaded with other candidates to drop out and endorse Joe Biden. Defenders of the Democratic Party argue an audacious lie, that everyone decided independently, on the same day, to drop out and endorse Biden. They were all simply in the same place at the same time in front of the same cameras. This was a coordinated effort to get behind Biden and to stop Sanders from securing the nomination. Let's not be naive about politics.

If members of the Progressive Caucus does not do what the DNC wants, they can and will be threatened with a primary or a re-districting that will effectively remove them from Congress. This is reported to be what is happening with regards to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Democrats say “Vote blue no matter who” and then stage a write-in campaign to defeat India Walton, a Democrat and leftist. She won the primary, but Democrats were not done fighting her. “Vote blue no matter who” is a message to the left to vote for moderates, not the other way around. This election proved what leftists already knew: Democrats will join with Republicans to defeat the left but will not join with the left to defeat Republicans.

In The West Wing, Republicans are portrayed as incorrect most of the time but still remarkably principled. Ainsley Hayes, a conservative, is defended by the Democratic main characters. They even  sing to her! Yes, let's sing a song and welcome someone who does not believe everyone should have the same rights. Donna Moss' various conservative boyfriends are good, upstanding men. Arnold Vinick, the Republican Party nominee for President in the final two seasons, is a man of indisputable values and good judgment. The Supreme Court is purposefully balanced by President Bartlett to give conservatives a strong voice in women's bodies and everything else. These characterizations are not only in service to making these characters more three-dimensional and appealing. This has simply been the Democratic Party line for some time. The public declaration of the need for a strong Republican Party. It has continued long after the series ended.

[“I think they understand. We need a Republican Party. We need an opposition that's principled and strong.”] [“Take back your party. This country needs a big, strong Republican Party. I say that as a leader of the Democratic Party. But we need a big, strong Republican Party. You've done so much for our country.”] Notice how the Republican leadership never says this about the Democratic Party. Maybe a Republican here or there, but not their leadership. Joe Biden is the President. Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the House. This is a terrifying prospect to marginalized people in the United States – a strong Republican Party. Knowing this, why do Democrats say that? And why don't Republicans say that about the Democratic Party? Well. The Republican Party wants to be the party of the far right, garden variety conservatives, waffling white liberals, and moderates. The Democratic Party wants to be the party of conservatives, moderates, garden variety liberals, and nobody in the actual left. The Democratic Party will take votes from leftists, sure, but has no place in the party for them. That is the difference between the messaging of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. The Republican Party will take anyone, because they have no fear of leftists influencing their party and threatening corporate interests. Not many leftists are going to join the Republican Party. But the Democratic Party does have a fear of leftists influencing their party and threatening corporate interests. Therefore, they try to appeal to Republicans as well to shore up the difference. The Democratic Party is more comfortable with an incursion of voters and politicians on their right than an incursion of voters and politicians on their left.

The Democratic Party is a party of capitalists, and that will always take precedence. It's important to understand that the Democratic Party is not held back by the occasional Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, although they are especially terrible. It is largely where its leadership wants it to be ideologically. This is not to say that both major parties in the United States are identical. The parties differ greatly on reproductive rights, public welfare programs, and a variety of other domestic policies. These policy positions are not always all talk either. These differences can have significant impact on the quality of life of the American people.

However, it would still be reasonable to conclude that even though the two major parties are different, they are not different enough.  The West Wing continually stumbles to even represent a good liberal position let alone a better position than liberalism. The series has long been criticized for being misogynist. Most of the male characters are casually sexist, a recurring trait due in part to being written predominantly by one man: Aaron Sorkin. Defenders of these portrayals often claim that these are merely flawed, natural characters, but this recurring trait is never grappled with during the series – never denounced, and often applauded. When a character needs to not know something in order to be audience avatar and have someone else explain something to that character and subsequently the audience, the ignorant character is almost invariably a woman, and the teacher is almost invariably a man.

In the early seasons, CJ Cregg is hounded by Danny Concannon, a journalist. Danny is attracted to CJ and wants to date her. CJ consistently says no, but Danny, who believes he knows what's best for CJ, keeps harassing her. Defenders of this always seem to argue as if The West Wing were a documentary and not a narrative that is entirely written by human beings. They say, “Well, CJ and Danny end up together, so it was good that he did that!”

Yes. That is the message of the relationship – that Danny constantly coming on to a woman who said “No” was actually right all along – and that is the problem. It's sexual harassment portrayed as romance, the way men who sexually harass women always seem to see their behavior: As acceptable to reach their goals, and that women secretly want this, secretly desire catcalls on the sidewalk and constant pressure to date them even after being emphatically told “No.” Josh Lyman flirts with his assistant, Donna Moss, in most episodes. The West Wing does not want us to see this as sexual harassment. They want us to see this as will-they-won't-they romance. This criticism is finally acknowledged in season three. In the episode “Night Five,” Sam Seaborne comments on Ainsley Hayes' appearance in a sexual manner. Hayes is not offended because The West Wing does not want her to be offended. Another character, Celia Walton, who only exists for this episode, objects and confronts Seaborne. She says his behavior is unprofessional behavior and these comments are often part in parcel to sexual harassment. At first glance, this looks like The West Wing is about to confront its own misogyny and course-correct after years of criticism, or at least have an after-school-special moment in which sexual harassment and unprofessional, even toxic workplace behavior is admonished. On the contrary, that is not what happened at all. This scene is set up so that Ainsley Hayes, a woman character, can be the avatar of the man writing this episode: Aaron Sorkin.

In the same way, Sorkin has created Celia Walton to be a stand-in for what he perceives to be radical feminism gone too far, feminism that Sorkin has concluded is too uncomfortable for himself and is therefore wrong. In the big monologue of the episode, Ainsley Hayes denounces Walton, defends Seaborne's behavior, and effectively tells women what they should and should not care about. Remember, never denounced, often applauded. [“The point is that sexual revolution tends to get in the way of actual revolution. Nonsense issues distract attention away from real ones.”]  Yikes. Ainsley Hayes is not always written to be correct, but in this case, she is the mouthpiece for Sorkin. Unfortunately for his argument, Aaron Sorkin, through Ainsley Hayes, has collided with the fallacy of limited privation – a common logic mistake or disingenuous argument that states that a problem is not a problem because other allegedly larger problems exist. And those “larger problems” are only larger because the rhetoric says so. Sorkin even throws in the phrase “honest-to-God sexual harassment” to differentiate between what he considers sexual harassment and what women in the workplace like Celia Walton commonly consider sexual harassment. This is a common, rhetorical ploy. A woman comes forward with a story of harassment or abuse, and men who wish to silence her or ignore her claim, but still appear as if they care about women's claims in the abstract, say that this story of harassment or abuse takes away from so-called “real” stories of harassment or abuse.

What is “real” harassment? Only what the man decides it is, and in this rhetorical game, the man never actually needs to take up an individual fight to combat harassment. Every instance can be called erroneous while the speculated “real harassment” can only exist off in the horizon, never to be reached. It is a common, misogynist tactic.

It does not end there, however. In season seven, a woman advocates for reproductive rights, and she is talked down-to by a man – the new main character of the series, no less – Democratic presidential candidate Matt Santos. The character is soon revealed to be pro-life, albeit secretly, and it is framed in the series as bold, challenging, and laudable.

Finally, The West Wing traffics in casual Islamophobia. The conflict between the fictional nation of Qumar and the Bartlett administration is portrayed as a war of “values” more than territory, resources or a diplomatic fallout. That is the implicit Islamophobia, but the series also contains moments that are more explicit. [“Muhammad al-Muhammad el-Muhammad bin-Bazir doesn't make the distinction when he suits up in the morning.”] [“I mean, is it honestly the US flag over Mecca? Is that what's going to straighten this out? And if that's the case, why are we postponing that?”]

What Sam Seaborne and Leo McGarry are talking about is the inevitability of a holy war, its necessity, and their burden. The burden of dropping bombs on civilians. This is what the liberal show was doing at the time? I hate to see what the conservative show was doing. The West Wing sometimes fails to even meet the standards of the middle-of-the-road social politics of liberalism. This is also true of the Democratic Party. Failing to meet its own alleged standards and delivering on campaign promises, and then when the left calls them out for this, the establishment says they are expecting too much. Lower your expectations.

When defenders of The West Wing hear criticisms, they often say that the series is not meant to be a reflection of reality but the dream of how things ought to be. The problem with this defense is that it assumes the critic is ideologically in line with the defender. It assumes that the critic is a liberal. It assumes that the critic also believes in the ideals that The West Wing proposes throughout the series and that the only problem is that these ideals are not upheld in the real world. That is simply not the problem with The West Wing. The problem with The West Wing is its own collection of ideals – interventionism, capitalism, incrementalism – liberalism in general. Furthermore, The West Wing hides the motivations for these ideals and actions. To The West Wing, interventionism is merely the burden of being the most powerful nation on Earth, knocking back anyone deemed to be unworthy of making their own governmental decisions, instead of what it actually is: part of a larger goal of global military and economic hegemony. To The West Wing, capitalism is something that lifts the whole world out of poverty, instead of an economic system that requirespoverty. Capitalism cannot function without a significant amount of poor people with no choice but to accept low wage jobs. Capitalism on a global scale also cannot exist without a significant amount of poor nationsto support the wealthynations.

To The West Wing, incrementalism is a plan that generally yields results instead of a plan that intentionally stalls progress. A plan that is sometimes designed to fail. Democrats do not want to be perceived as failures, of course, they simply want to “fail” to move to the left, because that is not an actual failure for them. That is their goal. To stay in the center, to stay the same, to maintain these systems.

To The West Wing, liberalism is simply the best that we can do instead of the centrist global position. Both The West Wing and the Democratic Party want people to accept their shared ideology and to arrive at their shared conclusion: neoliberal capitalism is as good as it gets, lower your expectations for change. There is a challenge in explaining how the world works to people who assume that our current systems naturally “bend towards justice,” as the saying goes. Refuting this cherished belief sounds too radical or akin to a conspiracy theory. However, these systems do not require a cabal, or even very much secrecy. This is simply how liberal democracy and capitalism have functioned in the United States for a long time. The Democratic Party, or any party for that matter, does not have to consistently crank the wheel of these systems because the wheel is already part of a well-oiled machine. They only need to put their hand on the wheel from time to time, and the systems in place will keep spinning through inertia. We do not have to be satisfied with accepting small concessions from the ruling class. We do not have to resign ourselves to this option, this system for the rest of our lives and for the rest of human history. We can sabotage the machine. We can demand more.

SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT

AUDIO 1

Silent Night, Deadly Night is the story of Billy Chapman. 1971, Billy's parents brought him to see his grandfather around Christmastime. The grandfather told Billy that Santa Claus does not only exist to give presents to the good boys and girls but to punish the wicked. He is the instrument of punishment. That evening, a convenience store robber in a Santa Claus costume hijacked the family car, assaulted Billy's mother, and killed both parents. Billy witnessed the entire crime. Only Billy and his infant brother survived. Billy grew up in a Catholic orphanage under the watchful eye of the Mother Superior. Growing up was hard, made worse by Mother Superior's teachings. Not only should the good be rewarded and the people be instructed, but the wicked, she would say, must be punished. The “naughty” must be punished. She was a harsh, cold disciplinarian with no thoughts of forgiveness, tolerance or compassion. When Billy stumbled upon two people having sex, Mother Superior did not explain what he witnessed or give Billy the child-friendly version of, insisting only that it was wicked, that it was naughty. Mother Superior was convinced that these lessons would serve Billy well as he grew up. [“You will see how well my methods work.”] As a teenager, Billy worked in a department store around Christmas. With nobody else to play the part, Billy was forced to be Santa Claus. During the after party, Billy once again witnessed two people about to have sex, only in this case, it was not consensual.

Billy did not know this, however, and only knew that whatever they were doing was naughty. Something snapped inside Billy. A combination of the trauma he received as a child and the teachings of Mother Superior created a monster, and Billy killed both the man committing the assault and the victimof the assault. He continued his murderous rampage throughout the town – all while wearing his Santa Claus costume. [“Punish!”] Billy concluded that the one person who must be punished most of all was Mother Superior. In the end, the police killed him while he attempted to finally kill her for what she had done to him. So. This is a very Catholic movie, right? The imagery, the characters, the themes. It does not promote Catholicism, however. The film appears to be quite critical of Catholicism. Silent Night, Deadly Night broaches the topics of punishment, penance, sin, repression and other qualities and actions associated with the teachings of the Catholic Church. Although the word “evil” is commonly understood to be something that causes tremendous harm, and the word “good” is commonly understood to be something that prevents harm or creates benefits, evil and good within Catholicism are quite different. God is “good” and only God is perfectly good. “Evil” in Catholicism is absence of (or distance from) God. Evil cannot exist within God. Therefore, distance from God is evil, and any action that distances oneself from God's laws is a “sin.” In Catholicism, a sinful act is not measured in the practical harm it may cause but in its distance from the perfection of God.

AUDIO 2

The Catholic Church may be in agreement with society at large about the goodness of some actions or the evil of some actions but not for the same reasons. The Church can also be in conflict with society about good and evil based on what it perceives as closeness or distance to God. Whether or not God's laws have a practical, measurable benefit is irrelevant, because God is good, and other considerations are either meaningless or secondary to this primary consideration. A Catholic may argue that even if we, as imperfect beings, cannot measure the benefits and harms of what the Church considers good and evil actions, these actions have still have reason to be good or evil. Only God can understand why. We need not understand nor is it acceptable to question this lest we separate ourselves from God. So, how does the Catholic Church decided something is a sin anyway? The interpretation of God's laws are a matter of Biblical scholarship and denominational interpretation – canon law within the Catholic Church. Take note that this is all quite reductive, as the concept as sin has been discussed and debated for two thousands of years in the Christian tradition, and this is a video about a Christmas horror movie? Sins have levels of severity. A “mortal” sin is so severe that it separates oneself from God so completely that it will lead to damnation unless the sinner confesses their sin within the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The sinner confesses their sins to a priest, and the priest gives a “penance” or punishment relative to the sins committed. Although the penance is performed by the sinner, it is still a punishment imposed by the priest – by the Catholic Church. If separation from God is evil, and punishment brings us back into the grace of God, then punishment for sins is an inherent good. [“Punishment is necessary. Punishment is good.”]

Because of this belief in the necessity of atonement for sins, “punishment” is an intrinsic value of the Catholic Church. When Mother Superior punishes the couple for having sex, she believes her actions are necessary and good – and remember, “good” is defined by God. She may believe that she has no choice but to punish. Another nun, Sister Margaret, is less severe. Nevertheless, she is instructed by Mother Superior to becomemore severe, to punish. Billy takes these teachings to heart, and combined with his psychological trauma, becomes an instrument of Catholic punishment, dressed in the secular garb of a Christian holiday. Billy has been twisted up inside by his trauma, by the concept of punishment, and by Catholic guilt. In Catholicism, excessive guilt is not actually mandatory nor is it explicitly taught. Catholics and other Christians sometimes mistake Catholic guilt as the byproduct of the idea of Original Sin – that we are all sinners due to the actions of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. However, the concept of “Adamic guilt” predates Catholicism and was also later taught by Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther himself. Catholic guilt is actually the byproduct of doctrinal teachings about the necessities of confession and punishment. Billy feels that he himself is a sinner. He has been made to feel guilty all his life. He was unable to save his parents, even though it would be unreasonable to believe that he could have.

AUDIO 3

He was taught that he was “naughty” as a child by Mother Superior. Unable to cope with this feeling of wickedness, he instead became the instrument of punishment, absolving himself of hisguilt by punishing others. In the real world, an excessive amount of guilt will not necessarily transform someone into an axe-wielding maniac in a Santa Claus costume, but can have a deleterious effect on psychological health, including anxiety, depression, insomnia, and in some cases, suicidal ideation. Excessive guilt can also act as an enabler for compulsions related to obsessive-compulsive disorder. The feeling of carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders understandably causes a terrible and completely unnecessary psychological burden. Every action is either good or evil – something that brings one closer to God or further from God. If it's the latter, a sacrament is required or else the sinner believes they will face eternal damnation. A permanent separation from God. Billy's transformation is cinematic and over-the-top, and it exists to push the second half of the movie into a proper slasher, but it is not without a kernel of truth. In the film, Billy is the protagonist. We follow his journey. One might argue that he becomes the antagonist later in the film, but nobody specific replaces his role as protagonist. We might be too bogged down in the idea that protagonist means “good guy” and antagonist means “bad guy.”

Protagonist and antagonist are merely opposing forces in a story. Therefore, Billy remains the protagonist throughout the film regardless of his actions, and the antagonist, the opposing force or obstacle in his path, is a combination of his trauma andthe Catholic Church. Another connection between Silent Night Deadly Night and the church is the moral panic it created. When the television commercial first aired, Catholics and other Christians believed that the mere existence of this film was sinful. The film was certainly not appropriate for children, but that was not their primary complaint. The MPAA correctly gave it an R rating. Media can have an effect on society, but what were these parents expecting to happen?According to some publications, parents claimed that their objection was that this movie that would traumatize children and undermine their trust in the fiction of Santa Claus, but that accusation is so preposterous on its face that it is challenging to take as an argument in good faith. Nobody who could see a rated R movie believes in Santa Claus, and even underage teenagers who might sneak in almost certainly had long since stopped believing. Children learn there is no Santa Claus around seven or eight years old. Furthermore, it is not the obligation of movie theaters and movie studios to perpetuate the mostly harmless Santa Claus deception for parents.So, what did the protesters reallyhave against Silent Night Deadly Night?

AUDIO 4

Based on their sense of morality and their association with the church, they almost certainly believed that a fictional, villainous Santa Claus was an inherent evil that needed to be stomped out. They believed that there is such a thing as “evil” – that evil has weight and is measured by its distance from God. Some things have a metaphysical quality of “good” – of being sacred. An offense to the church is an offense to God, and an offense to God is a great and terrible sin. Any consequences of the film – real or imagined – are irrelevant in the face of the metaphysical truth of evil. [“Naughty.”] Santa Claus may be the secular representative of Christmas, and Christmas is still a Christian holiday. Therefore, the film is evil, distanced from God. The protesters did not have to read anything by St. Thomas Aquinas to understand the church's absolute binary of good and evil. It's implied in every lesson, every sermon, every trip to the confessional. Protesters picketed theaters and sang Christmas carols. The studio pulled its advertising from television. Siskel and Ebert clucked their tongues as they often did, stating “Your profits truly are blood money.” That's wildly hyperbolic, but OK. As always, thanks for your reasonable opinions on horror movies and the people who make them. Silent Night Deadly Night was not even the first Santa Claus slasher movie. Another Santa slasher called To All a Good Night was released four years prior. Christmas Evil was released the same year. A killer Santa Claus was in one of the segments of the 1972 Tales from the Crypt movie.

The moral panic about Santa Claus in a horror movie feels quaint today, as the subversion of Santa Claus is now fairly common and largely harmless. So, is Silent Night Deadly Night actually offensive? Well, admittedly, parts of it are certainly sleazy, and some of the nudity is gratuitous, as was the unfortunate custom at the time. I'm not going to defend every decision made by the filmmakers. But was it more offensive than the average slasher movie? No, not really. If anything, Silent Night Deadly Night was more thoughtful than the average slasher of the time, particularly in its criticisms of the religious establishment. If the protesters had actually watched the movie, they may have thought that was more offensive to their sensibilities and their faith than a killer in a Santa Claus costume, but it is doubtful that many of them even took the time to watch the film. Oh well. Merry Christmas!

KID ROCK

An emancipatory movement is an effort or campaign to secure social rights, political rights, economic rights, or equality. A reactionary movement is an effort or campaign to reverse the results of an emancipatory movement and return society to its previous status quo. Although any political ideology can urge a return to a previous policy if the current policy is inadequate, reactionism is a specific tradition in right-wing politics, and emancipation is a specific tradition in left-wing politics. Reactionism, as the name suggests, is a response to either a successful emancipation or an ongoing emancipatory movement. Reactionaries engage in a counter-revolution against social change and social progress. For example, when a group that previously did not enjoy the same rights, privileges or even recognition as the rest of society is finally granted those rights, privileges and recognition, a reactionary movement can form to reverse their progress. A reactionary movement may also be opposed to the entirety of a new government following a revolution that gave new rights and privileges more broadly. Reactionary movements sometimes fail and sometimes succeed, but the success or failure of a reactionary movement is not exclusively binary.

For example, the reactionary movement following the abolition of slavery in the United States certainly failed to reinstate chattel slavery but still scored political victories that limited the rights of people of color and intimidated people of color into a de facto and sometimes de jure second class citizenship. Though these definitions can sometimes be reductive, conservatism under most circumstances aims to maintain the status quo and resist emancipatory movements, whereas reactionism aims to essentially turn back the clock to an even more conservative society before an emancipatory movement. Thus, reactionism is not separate from conservatism but rather a specific movement withinconservatism with a conservative goal. A more right-wing, strictly hierarchical society based on whatever the reactionaries believe are “traditional” values or the “way things ought to be.” In the United States as well as other western nations, there are currently a series of interrelated emancipatory movements and reactionary movements. These reactionary movements oppose, among other things, the recent interest in leftist politics among millennials and zoomers, the recognition of transgender people, and police reform or abolition. These interrelated reactionary movements are controlled or urged by right-wing politicians but are able to be mobilized by ordinary citizens. This is a serious topic, and admittedly can be quite dry as well as difficult to visualize because it happens partially through a form of social inertia instead of a conspiracy of the few.

To better visualize this, an avatar of reactionism might be helpful in better understanding the beliefs, goals, attitudes, and rhetoric of a reactionary movement. And you probably know his name. [“My name is Kid! Kid Rock!”]  In his book The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump, Prof. Corey Robin described conservatism as “...the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win it back.” Conservatives in the midst of a reactionary political movement see an egalitarian, emancipatory movement as a threat to themselves or the values that have come to define their worldview. Kid Rock's song “Don't Tell Me How to Live” will not be denounced as offensive here, no matter how much the musician believes everyone but himself is offended all the time. The song is, instead, telling about what makes conservatives feel threatened and defensive, and how they hope to portray that threat.

Kid Rock makes several references that combine to form the thesis of the song: the United States is becoming soft, sensitive, feminine, and modern, and the nation should return to a time in an imagined past in which the nation was strong, insensitive, masculine and traditional. This thesis is summarized as this: [Here's the situation: a nation of p****** is our next generation!]It would appear that the “Devil Without a Cause” has finally discoveredhis cause: reactionism.There is a common assertion in conservative circles that those who point out racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of bigotry are merely too sensitive. That recognizing either social or economic inequality is simply being offended. This framing of emancipatory movements as emotional, unreasonable or offended benefits the conservative position because it dismisses their demands outright. The details of their demands need not even be acknowledged, because to conservatives, nobody is oppressed, only offended. This tactic is deceptive and ignorant, but highly effective.

Because conservatives often “go with their gut” to inform theirpolitics and consequently assume that anyone to their left is moved exclusively through instinct as well. Conservatives simply believe that theirinstincts are strong, masculine and correct whereas other instincts are weak, feminine and incorrect. This is highlighted by Kid Rock's use of the infamous meme of a woman, Jessica Starr, crying at the Donald Trump inauguration in 2017. Conservatives love this image because it reinforces their belief about their instincts. They share the image but almost never share her actual words that day. So, here they are. “I’m so sorry. I love people. This is not America, this is not what we want. … There’s no way to even comprehend what this means.” Jessica Starr was not simply offended. She was concerned about the ramifications of a Trump presidency, the rise of far right groups emboldened by his election, and the incompetence that he had displayed before even becoming president. She was concerned about a potentially catastrophic four years that many people would not survive.She was right to be deeply concerned, and everyone who said that people were overreacting to the potential danger was wrong. If the problem you have with her is how she expressedthis concern, if your problem is with her tears, then maybe look inside yourself and determine why that is.

Kid Rock repeats the purposefully deceptive conservative talking point that people are offended by opinions. This happens all the time in social media political discourse and sometimes in conservative news media. Someone says something objectionable or proposes a dangerous policy, and when anyone disagrees, they say “Oh, you're mad that I have an opinion, huh?” Of course, nobody is objecting to the existence of opinions or the right to have an opinion. They are disagreeing with the contentof that particular opinion. Having an opinion does not make that opinion sacrosanct or immune to criticism. This deceptive rhetoric is similar to invoking the First Amendment of the United States Constitution when someone disagrees with an opinion. The constitutional right is not in question – only the content of the opinion. Unsurprisingly, Kid Rock makes this very argument in his song. Immediately following another line about people being offended, he says [“But this amendment one, it rings true. And if you don't dissent, b****, then see number two.”]Ah, nothing like a “just a joke” incitement of political violence in the year 2021. Kid Rock's t-shirt reads “Social Media Sucks” but nearly every dated, 2017 conservative talking point used in this 2021 song was popularized on social media. Snowflakes, participation trophies, that meme. Without Twitter and facebook misinformation, Kid Rock's god-hero Donald Trump may have never been President of the United States.

What Kid Rock is almost certainly alluding to is the myth in conservative circles that social media tends to favor liberal politics or leftist politics, and that social media more routinely “censors” conservative voices. Conservatives attempt to prove this by using anecdotal data, but a wider data set and greater research show something else altogether. Research from NYU and other institutions have proven that right-wing voices and institutions actually dominate social media by nearly every metric, and that policies on content moderation are made by a combination of foreign contractors and executives who see the political right as their biggest pool of customers, and are therefore committed to appease them – not censor them. Conservatives instead use particular instancesof a conservative politician or public figure being banned to prove a pattern that does not exist. This most notable example they use is Donald Trump himself. However, Trump was not banned from Twitter and Facebook for being a conservative. He was banned for extremely serious violations and for using their platforms to incite violence. Too little, too late, quite frankly. Twitter bans are not always judicious or correct, but the common denominator in political figures being banned or suspended is not party registration, it's terms of service violations. Conservatives do not see it that way, because when a conservative is banned for misinformation, their media propaganda has told them ahead of time that the misinformation is actually true.

Thus, it feels like their heroes are being “censored” for telling “the truth” when they are actually being banned for violating rules related to misinformation. The album cover is a clone of a copy of every political cartoon or t-shirt about the vague concept of liberty. Based on the context of Kid Rock's adolescent complaints, the artist is equating wearing a mask with the lossof liberty. However, the exact same image could be used to promote wearing a mask as our duty to one another – as a partof liberty. From Kid Rock's perspective, the Statue of Liberty wearing a mask is a tragedy, but without the context of his conservative politics, the messaging of the art can more easily be interpreted as pro-mask, not anti-mask. Remember, a reactionary movement is a counter-revolution – a movement with the aesthetic of revolution but with a different objective. Kid Rock knows how to co-opt an aesthetic that is not his own. His entire career is based on an image of being a trailer park, blue collar, salt-of-the-Earth musician who came from nothing and speaks for the masses. Kid Rock, real name Robert James Ritchie, was raised by a wealthy family in a 5,660-square-foot house with five bedrooms and seven bathrooms. The property is on a five acre lot with a tennis court, swimming pool and apple orchard.

He is also not from Detroit, as his affluent neighborhood is approximately forty miles away. Kid Rock supported Mitt Romney in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, and he has admitted that he has done this primarily to protect his money. To protect the wealthy. Kid Rock is an absolute phony delivering a phony message, using the aesthetic of the people and the aesthetic of revolution to paradoxically protect the status quo. Kid Rock is raging, but he is not raging against the machine, he is raging in favor of the machine. If there is still any doubt that “Don't Tell Me How to Live” is both conservative and reactionary, this next line should resolve that. [“These minions and their agendas. Every opinion has a millennial offended!”] Here, Kid Rock connects offense to a generation. Now, we recognize that his usage of offense is a reductive reference to the demands of modern emancipatory movements, and he casts millennials as the movers of this emancipation. Thus, the conflict becomes generational. If the conflict is between generations, and Kid Rock has sided with the values of an older generation, then his unavoidable conclusion is that we must return to older values. And that is why the song is reactionary. Kid Rock's defenders might claim that the musician is not familiar enough with political theory to express a political belief, a defense that places his ignorance on a pedestal and employs the “idiot defense” in legal strategy.

However, conservatives do not have to be professors of political science in order to have conservative beliefs. Lionel Trilling once wrote: “It is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation. This does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to conservatism or to reaction. Such impulses are certainly very strong, perhaps even stronger than most of us know. But the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.”In other words, Kid Rock'sthesis is reactionary whether the musician is familiar with political theory or not. Let's stop listening to this ungodly track for one moment to dig a little deeper. What does the reactionary movement against the left and against modern emancipatory movements hope to accomplish? What are their goals, and why are their goals so important to them? The hierarchical mindset of conservatism casts freedom as a zero sum game. If more people gain rights or even mere consideration in society, conservatives conclude that their ownfreedom and status within society will be diminished.

The saying goes, “When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression." Conservatives would naturally object to this characterization of their ideology, but the history of conservatism ist he history of resisting these rights and considerations, then forming reactionary movements when all else fails. Conservatives obfuscate this pattern by claiming that everyone already is treated fairly, and that those within the emancipatory movement are actually asking for special privileges rather than equality. This allows conservatives to reframe the demands of the emancipatory movement as unreasonable no matter how reasonable the demands actually are. For example, transgender people face harassment, discrimination, violence, and other challenges on the basis of being trans that cisgender people do not face on the basis of being cis. A movement to bring attention to this and provide more considerations for these challenges is opposed by conservatives and by ignorant liberals. Their claim is that trans people are already treated well, thereby dismissing the emancipatory movement. [“There’s not a lot of overwhelming, overt discrimination against people who are trans, like, publicly other than the sports thing.”] In truth, transgender people face enormous legal challenges. There are still no comprehensive federal non-discrimination laws that include gender identity for various public places and for housing.

Furthermore, legislatures are not only ignoring the lack of non-discrimination laws but passing new discriminatory laws. State legislatures are passing more anti-trans laws than ever before. In 2021 alone, seven anti-trans sports bans have passed in Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Montana and West Virginia. Three religious refusal bills have passed in Arkansas, Montana and South Dakota. Two anti-LGBT education bills have passed in Tennessee and Montana. An anti-trans health care ban passed in Arkansas. An anti-trans public bathroom bill passed in Tennessee. There is a lot more on the way, as more than two hundred and fifty more bills have been introduced in state legislatures, and some of them are probably going to become law. In addition to legal challenges, transgender people face so much harassment and have such a stigma tied to who they are that finding employment and housing can sometimes to difficult. 27% of trans people have been fired, not hired or denied a promotion on the basis of being trans. This contributes to both a much higher poverty rate and much higher homelessness rate for trans people. Worse still, this is compounded by the fact that only 30% of women's shelters even allow trans women. Trans people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime. Thirty-five out of fifty states still do not prohibit the “trans panic” defense in court – even in cases of murder.

The majority of trans people have experienced intimate partner violence and nearly half have been sexually assaulted. These combined obstacles and dangers contribute to a much higher suicide rate for trans people than average. There is so much data about the barriers that trans people face that any claim that they do not face significant challenges is absurd on its face. Conservatives pass anti-trans legislation and engage in anti-trans rhetoric, and at the same time, tell people that anti-trans legislation and anti-trans rhetoric does not exist. It's important to note that not all transphobia comes exclusively from the right, but the reactionary movement against trans people is right wing in ideology regardless of the mere party registration or self-identification of those who inhabit it. Now, take this one example and apply it to any disenfranchised group throughout history or in modern times, and the pattern becomes clear. The emancipatory movement brings attention to the problem, conservatives claim the problem either does not exist or has been exaggerated, the demands are described as special privileges instead of equality, and finally, conservatives engage in a reactionary movement guilt-free, because from this twisted perspective, they are fighting for equality. This common refrain can be heard every time someone says “It's easier to be a minority in this country!” or “It's getting hard to be a straight white man!” This is why conservatives want to believe they are censored on social media, why they want to believe they are criticized for only having opinions. Because if oppression exists, and they themselvesare notthe oppressed after all, then actual oppression could exist that would justify emancipatory movements.

Throughout the song and music video, Kid Rock takes care not to reference specific conservative causes. He uses conservative rhetoric and buzz words to convey his message, thereby courting controversy to sell the song and express his politics without drawing attention from any particular group. Nevertheless, his undying support for Donald Trump and co-opting of right-wing memes and phrases makes his targets perfectly clear: every recent emancipatory movement of the past several years. His overuse of stale but infamous rhetoric and memes actually serves him well. If a political message is a melange of well-knownimagery, code words, dog whistles, winks and nods, then its non-specificity does not hinder what it means to its intended audience. Undoubtedly, those who agree with Kid Rock's vapid assertions may see any criticism as evidence that the left is too sensitive. Make no mistake here. Kid Rock made a purposefully inflammatory song in which his defensiveness borders on parody. When the targets of his shallow observations point this out, he will do what every other incurious ne'er-do-well does when his argument collapses. He will distill his political discourse into a game of “u mad?” and claim victory without the presence of a contest. His juvenile libretto about how everyone else is too emotional is the language of reactionaries. Nobody is “triggered” by Kid Rock's outdated references to participation trophies, and nobody is fooled by his pretense of bringing people together amid his caterwauling divisiveness. Kid Rock wants his audience to believe that everyone else is angryexcept himself, even as he rap-rocks a thinly-veiled incitement of violence. Kid Rock, on the off-chance that you ever watch this, I will tell you the same thing that I used to tell my students when theymisbehaved. I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.