The irony, it hurts

So…President Obama, who has a well-earned reputation of denigrating anyone who disagrees with him, and for whom many others are quick to jump in with accusations of racism against anyone who disagrees with him, is having a tiff with the Elizabeth Warren camp because she has publicly disagreed with him on his proposed trade agreement. His remarks have now been tagged as sexist, either for claiming she’s a “politician like anybody else” or by referring to her as “Elizabeth” when he normally calls his other targets by their last name and title.

While there is a certain karmic satisfaction in watching well-known torch-bearers for Political Correctness fall into their own pit, it’s also very sad. No one is allowed to disagree with anyone any more. Any such disagreement has to be immediately dismissed as motivated by evil rather than thinking “gee, they see things differently, and that’s okay.” We no longer debate positions, we destroy the debators. I don’t think this is a Left/Right thing. It’s a problem endemic to our entire political class, and it’s spread malignantly to public discourse as well. Differing opinions are not to be welcomed, not to be tolerated, but to be delegitimized at all cost.

Like I said, I’ll admit to a certain level of schadenfreude on this. Even though President Obama espouses the exact same opinion/position on many issues as Sen. Harry Reid or Rep. Nancy Pelosi, I can disagree with the latter without any problems. But if I disagree with the President on the exact same positions I’m suddenly a racist. So it’s amusing to see someone getting a taste of their own medicine.

But the longer view is that none of this is good for America. People assume that just because we’ve held the country together for  nearly 240 years it’ll hold together forever. We need only look around at the rest of the world to realize the tenuous nature of that claim. There are exceptions, but the natural trend for countries is toward instability. Leaders govern with the consent of the governed, and if the governed ever get to the point where they feel their voices no longer matter, that they can’t get a fair shake within their own country, then that country is not long for this world. I think we kid ourselves that Balkanization could never happen here–or that the level of atrocities shown there are beneath us.

The last thing we need is as a people to be looking to dismiss, divide, delegitimize and denigrate our opposition. To see usually-cohesive groups using such tactics on each other is not cause for amusement, but for alarm.