Complaint Department

Some people on the left can be snide, reductive, and needlessly aggressive in dismissing others’ viewpoints. It’s a thing.
Sweet Jesus, Will the NYT’s Conservatives Ever Write About Anything but the “Intolerant Left” Ever Again?

As you may have guessed, the central theme of the article is a complaint the David Brooks and the other conservative writers at the New York Times repeatedly take issue with “the Left” for their perceived “intolerance.” Fair enough, but... maybe if you want people to quit bringing that up, you should ask that your fellow partisans refrain from being snide, reductive and needlessly aggressive. And maybe even dial back the dismissing others’ viewpoints bit.

Because simply counter-complaining about the fact that conservative columnists keep harping on it doesn’t change the fact that those columnists are making a valid point; the admittedly snide, reductive and needlessly aggressive dismissals of others’ viewpoints are crap. And if David Brooks and company had genuinely popped the liberal bubble, the practice would have ended by now.

It doesn't take a degree in the social sciences to understand that Mr. Brooks and company are preaching to their choirs - using this particular brand of liberal self-righteousness to bludgeon a dead horse in the service of allowing their conservative readers to revel in the perceived moral superiority of being “victimized,” verbally or in print, by obnoxious and hostile social justice warriors. It gives them something to talk about; and their readers eat it up, just as the typical Slate reader clicks over to get the latest on why conservatives are bad.

But if the place for the behavior that the New York Times columnists are complaining about is an abandoned coal shaft, then it seems the way to shut them up is to start dumping things down the shaft, not calling on one’s critics to be silent - which, if I may be allowed to point out, simply reinforces the point that liberals are intolerant of disagreement with them.

I was in a conversation with a self-described social justice warrior who also labelled themselves as a change consultant, and they were adamant about the need for, and utility of, creating crises in the lives of those they disagreed with, in order to lever them into coming over the correct side of today’s issues. I would submit that they are a better audience for requests to tone it down than the people who take exception to that particular brand of spreading tolerance and acceptance.

But of course, it’s unlikely that a group as large and diverse as “the Left” would ever be coordinated enough to ever eliminate snide, reductive, and needlessly aggressive dismissals of viewpoints that are considered to be insufficiently enlightened. And in that sense, Mr. Brooks and his compatriots will always have someone whose behavior illustrates the institutional hypocrisy of liberal America. In the same way that the liberal behavior that Mr. Brooks and other conservative commentators complain about is a means for liberals to inform each other that they hold, and are committed to, the right views, those complaints serve the same function for conservatives. That need to find a foil to compare oneself against isn’t going away.