Political Memes

Peter Shamshiri from the podcast 5-4 demonstrates how this is done in their patreon only episode Your Questions: Jury Nullification, Law School Reform, and More

I wish I could post the clip because it's so well done and so cathartic but here's the transcript:

0:46:19.2 Peter: "My question is, why don't you ever invite guests on who disagree with you? If your arguments are strong, there is no downside. Plus it would be nice to hear how you react to others of goodwill who don't see things how you do. Just a thought." Well, the question I would have for this listener is why the fuck would we ever do that [laughter]?

0:46:40.0 Rhiannon: The downside is I have to hear a conservative talking on my fucking podcast.

0:46:45.4 Peter: The downside is the podcast would suck ass first of all, [laughter] Okay. We're a podcast about critiquing Supreme Court decisions. If you want to hear the other side, just read the fucking opinions. That's the other side. That is the purported smartest people in America trying to do the other side.

0:47:03.1 Rhiannon: Exactly. Clarence Thomas has the platform. Fox News has the platform. We're doing our own thing over here.

0:47:09.1 Peter: Fucking read the VALA Conspiracy or whatever you feel like doing.

0:47:12.4 Rhiannon: Exactly.

0:47:12.9 Peter: Plenty of people have written about like the conservative fetishization of like debate. The implication here is that by debating with some conservatives, we'd all somehow arrive closer to the truth. Right? Despite the fact that there's like endless research showing that that's just not true and not how debate works. And my strong hunch is that this dude is not writing into National Review or whatever pervert publications he reads requesting that they give space to opposing views. It's just something you want left-leaning media to do so that you can hear your fucking freak friends in their ill-fitting suits describe their arguments to our faces directly.

0:47:51.8 Rhiannon: Exactly.

0:47:53.4 Peter: Turning our podcast where we speak openly from a left perspective about the law into some bullshit New York Times debate nonsense that no one wants to hear and would end our careers as podcasters.

0:48:07.9 Rhiannon: That's great.

0:48:10.4 Peter: So my strong suggestion to this listener is for you to shut the fuck up and suck my dick.

I love what you write, and I agree. Or rather, I want to agree.

We need to dispel the myth that playing dirty and arguing BS has no consequences. It has severe consequences, as the bad-faith actor loses credibility, respect, dignity and their seat at the table.

But like... Maybe I'm misinterpreting what you mean, but I'm sitting here thinking that apparently it has no consequences. Trump hasn't gotten in any trouble for the absolute shitload of things he's done and said over a period of at least 9 years (not to mention everything before that), and he's still for some inexplicable reason eligible to run for president and thus have a very big seat at the biggest table there is, and is polling well for some reason. I see no reason to believe there will ever be consequences if there has been none thus far. But I really hope I'm wrong.

/thread

At the end of the day, the goal still needs to be to get politics "back" to being a cordial affair. I agree that you can't just take shit without responding but you also need off ramps.