Katherine Franke's Recipe for Defeat

Again, if you want to see why Democrats are struggling to control America's bathrooms while Republicans are wrecking the world and planting "GOP" flags in paradise, just like Islamic fundamentalists, take a look at Katherine Franke's screed against Mark Lilla. Mark would like to win an occasional election and see the country not sink into darkness under Republican rule. Katherine wants to win the argument. She wants to win an argument she has already lost and she is guilty of a Republican speciality, a selectively weak stomach. 

Franke has more important battles to fight, about language and acceptance, than preventing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Think of what the world might be like if George Bush hadn't won in 2000. Think of what the world might be like if Republicans hadn't caused the 2008 recession by deregulating everything, ultimately with the complicity of Bill Clinton, another narcissistic, morally weak individual. Katherine can't seem to get it through her head that people are dying every day because of us. She doesn't care.

And, Katherine, tolerance is not about eliminating distinctions and pretending to like everything and everyone, it's about respecting the rights of others to be different even in ways that offend you as long as they play by the rules. Grow up. I doubt I would like you at all, finding you strident, overbearing, judgmental, puritanical, self-righteous, humorless and hypocritical. But, hey, nobody is forcing me to have anything to do with you. If your attack on Lilla is indicative you are too self-centered to judge an argument on its own terms. 

You are the intolerant one. Please step aside and let us win some elections. Go fester in the purity of your principles. My God, we lost to Donald Trump. What does it take to get through to you? George Bush thought, and probably still thinks, that history will judge him well. I think he will be seen as a pawn in his own, monstrous administration. You seem to think history will judge our side well. It will not, any more than a knowing parent should be forgiven for permitting a spouse's child abuse. We have a responsibility to resist.

We have a responsibility to win.