Civility

there's a recurring gag in peanuts comics where Charlie Brown attempts to kick a football held by Lucy only to have it pulled away at the last second so that he trips and falls the tension of the joke works amazingly because we know that despite anything he says despite how much it seems like he's wizened up Charlie Brown will always try to kick the football and Lucy will always take it away and make him fall look at this comic Charlie Brown is comforting Lucy who's tricked him like this like a million times and he says to her we'll do it some other time even he knows he's always gonna fall for it he's resigned to that shortly after the Democrats took back the house in the midterm elections earlier this month Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that she would seek bipartisanship with the GOP she said I think we've all had enough of division but have we had enough of division Nancy seems like a lot of people are actually pretty okay with division seems like a lot of people are pretty okay with ice rounding up immigrants and putting them in concentration camps seems like there's a rise in far-right nationalism meaning people want stronger borders stronger national identities and to build giant stupid walls Nancy you can't get much more divisive than a big fuck-off wall but again and again and again we are told to be patient we are told to temper our expectations we are told to treat our enemies with dignity and respect to be civil with them even if they refuse to be civil with us I mean you can't just go around yelling at people in restaurants I mean you can have a little protest if you want as long as you fill out the right paperwork but there's just the way things are done look I get it you're angry but if you do it wrong you're just gonna give the right more ammo you got to be smart you got to think in the long term because the only way to really stop them is to give them whatever they want and then hope their later they'll be thankful for that and and give you something nice just look at the crocodile tears that got cried when some people sorry not people terrorists knocked on Tucker Carlson's door these leftist sickos assaulted a perfectly innocent door just because the guy that owned that door happened to use his national platform to spout xenophobic rhetoric that was leading to a return of far-right populism look we all get mad about politics sometimes but we can't let the little things get in the way of what unites us I mean sure there was the largest anti-semitic mass shooting in American history and sure maybe Tucker Carlson has a little bit of responsibility for that because of all the anti-semitic conspiracy theories he was pushing on his show but but don't let that get in the way of our common values an abiding love and respect for doors [Music] look sweetie there's lots of ways you can express yourself politically without having to resort to such desperate measures as telling powerful people what you think of them the line has to be drawn somewhere some people just have to be treated with dignity and respect no matter what they do for some reason whatever happened to surreal woman here's the thing being polite being civil those are good things most of the time but it's actually not good to be polite with people that want to hurt other people bigots or austerity types or anti-abortion wing nuts or anti environmentalists or fascists or anti feminists or people that prefer smooth peanut butter to crunchy all of these people want to hurt others they do not belong in polite society if you are polite and welcoming to assholes the message that assholes get is that you're not willing to stop them if that means creating conflict and that emboldened them that teaches them that there's room in the discourse for their ideas not to mention it also says to the people that they're targeting that their safety is negotiable something that you're willing to debate but not willing to lose friends over sure you support them in theory but you're not gonna support them too loudly not if it makes other people upset and I know that conventional wisdom is that if you're polite and caring enough to hateful people that eventually they'll come around and see the error of their ways I mean after all you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar right know that expression is dumb have you ever gotten fruit flies you know you get rid of fruit flies you put out vinegar flies love vinegar I don't know how they feel about honey but they are horny for vinegar it's not really relevant to my point it's just it is a it's a bad metaphor what was I talking about again oh right you're not going to convince assholes to stop being assholes by cultivating an atmosphere where asshole ISM is found upon but ultimately permissible I mean don't get it twisted you're probably not going to convince them to be cool by insulting them and being next to them but you might get them to shut up you might get them to go away you might demonstrate to the people that they intend to be assholes to that you have their back and make your community a little bit safer and yeah the assholes are gonna piss and moan about it so much for the tolerant left but they don't care about civility not really you can't believe the things they do and care about civility they just know that you care about it and they'll use it against you I mean you can't have ideas like race realism or white nationalism or anti feminism or and give a fuck about civility because those ideas are fundamentally employed the type of people who believe that type of horseshit also think that civility is a weakness politeness is a luxury for those that lack the clarity of vision that they possess those who don't have the conviction to be as merciless and strong as they are and I'm not saying that if you're polite you will lose because you can be polite and win an argument with these ding-dongs I mean it's not hard they believe a lot of dumb bullshit but even if you win you still play the game by their rules you still conceded that whatever knuckleheaded garbage they brought to you was worth engaging with and for a lot of really dangerous ideas that alone is a victory most reasonable people wouldn't consider an ideal like vaccine denialism to be much better than an ideal like eating diapers but if you wanted to settle this in the marketplace of ideas you might have an expert in vaccines and some charming ideologue who's an anti-vaxxer and then they would they would trade barbs back and forth and you would charge tickets need you get people to watch in the may the best idea win and guess what would happen some people some of whom might not have even seen the debate will walk away thinking that these two ideas are more or less on the same level I mean you've got one smart person saying one thing and another smart person saying another thing looks like the jury's still out and now the thing that used to be a fringe position is just something people are still debating and discussing and that's how bad ideas get normalized so then how come Nancy Pelosi is so willing to engage in good faith with all of these dipshit sin Dumbo's it would be tempting to just say oh she's naive she doesn't see how the game is played she doesn't know how the world works like I some idiot on YouTube do but I don't think Nancy Pelosi is dumb I mean I'm dumb and even I can see that what she's doing won't work I think Nancy Pelosi has done some calculations in her head she knows that this appeal to bipartisanship will cede ground to the right and she knows that every bit of ground ceded to the right means that more people get hurt but I think she believes that if she does this very politely and very even-handedly it's gonna make her look good it's gonna win or some political capital and that is the only thing that politicians on either side give even the slightest of a shit about hey remember earlier when I talked about Charlie Brown and Lucy you probably thought that the point of that story was that the right is Lucy and Nancy Pelosi is Charlie Brown and the right is just tricking Nancy Pelosi over and over but it wasn't see in this analogy we are Charlie Brown and Nancy Pelosi and the centrist establishment she represents they're Lucy and I guess the football is politics Delf deeds it it's an analogy don't think too deep about it something sometimes the leaders of the center-left don't care about you I know that might be a bitter pill to swallow I know that maybe you've invested a lot into thinking that they do but they don't I mean they don't want to burn you for fuel like conservatives do but they don't give a shit whether you live or die you're a number to them you're a checkbox you're a statistic any move they make towards your interests they do because an enormous number crunching apparatus has convinced them that doing so will allow them to seize or maintain power your well-being is a means to an end for them a bargaining chip we are taught to view things through the lens of left and right this is my left it's your right I don't really think the major political parties in America or Canada or most liberal democracies actually corresponds to that axis but that's how we're supposed to look at it according to the media and all the textbooks and everything there is another lens that I would like you to consider for a moment the lens of who has power and who does not when you view things through that lens the centrist obsession with reaching across the aisle kind of makes a bit more sense they don't want people to be able to question authority they don't want people to be a threat to Authority because half of the time they wield that authority if they're gonna stay in control that means they have to set limits on what is and is not acceptable political action it is acceptable if it benefits the political class in its entirety regardless of what ideology they claim to represent it is not acceptable if regular people get power from it and politicians don't right now our planet is on fire I mean parts of it are literally on fire we have about 10 to 12 years to make a dent in climate change and if we don't or plan it and by extension our species are doomed also you might notice that far-right populism has made incredible strides in the past few years threatening to repeat some of the worst tragedies of the 20th century and those are just new problems we have a bunch of old problems as well mass incarceration colonial genocide the war on drugs patriarchy to name just a few these are problems that our elected officials have had generations to solve they like to pretend that it's our fault that we lack the political will to see change happen but if there's one thing leftists and liberals tend to agree on it's that things need to change they need to change fast because the path we're on is not sustainable but the liberal establishment isn't just not want to see progress they want to reverse progress that we've already made in the name of bipartisanship just compromise more and more and give more away and then eventually at some point it'll pay off and we'll start winning I mean that's just how the system is you can't just get what you want you got to do a bunch of shit you don't want to do and then maybe a hundred years from now things will be better they'll do anything to compromise with the right but they won't move an inch for us just look how angry they get it moderates Social Democrats like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Acacio Cortes they've got these outlandish positions like for example maybe we shouldn't let poor people die for no reason or maybe it would be better if people were more or less equal or maybe we should do something about the paramilitary that's currently rounding up immigrants and putting them in concentration camps I mean come on grow up all right just grow up because you're not looking how the modern world works okay because society doesn't make sense without ice the whole our whole modern infrastructure is based on having ice it's been around for 15 years hey though a bunch of conservatives are talking about dismantling the EPA now I think maybe we should let them do that because if we do maybe they'll let it they'll cooperate in them in the Muller investigation and we can finally get Trump impeached the planet is dying at first it seems like they're just morons but it actually makes sense when you consider if they have more to lose from the left than they do from the right they have more common goals with the right than the left when leftists win or even just show up we undermine the pretenses that they need to maintain to stay in power they need to scare you into thinking that they're the only option that if you try to do anything else it just won't work and you'll only make things worse you just have to trust them hey here's a question how come so many politicians on the left are rich how come so many of them come from political dynasty I mean of course these people don't want to see wealth redistribution of course they believe in the free market of course they don't care about imperialist wars those things benefit them maybe not all of them but a lot of them so when we on the Left kind of just roll our eyes and ask ourselves how can these liberals be so naive we're kind of letting them off the hook we're giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they want to serve our interests but they just don't know how I mean they're just so gosh darn innocent aren't they and their little suits in your little ties some of them are handsome and they wear cool socks and oops we accidentally erased legal protections for trans people oh gosh Oh ding ding well what are you gonna do nobody's perfect vote for us again in four years please so they tell us to be civil to know where the line is to act within the boundaries of what they have decided for us constitutes acceptable political action I mean we can fight sure but you've got to fight the right way we have to just accept their solutions I mean they're the experts they know what they're doing and that's just the way the system works well here's an idea if the things we want are unrealistic because that's just the way the system works then the system needs to be dismantled and replaced with a system that works for us instead of them the first step is to be angry and organize and stop being civil we need to see what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real hey everybody people are always asking me hey thought slimy how you doing that how am I going to give you all of my money I want you to have all of my money and I don't want to have any of it because I don't deserve it like you do well there's only one way to give me all of your money that's the patreon.com slash thought slime once again it's patreon.com slash thought slime did you know that if you pledged to me on patreon you are guaranteed to be protected from vampires no vampires can attack you and if you get attacked by a vampire there's a money-back guarantee at patreon.com slash slime hey why don't you like and subscribe already I mean come on I liked and subscribed all of your videos so it's only fair that you do it to me uh-oh I do some live streams now so if you want to be notified when I'm when I'm going live click this stupid Bell thing by the subscribe button I hope you enjoyed my video I hope that real world joke at the end wasn't too stupid because I felt very embarrassed doing it more embarrassed than I normally feel

Channel: Thought Slime

Views: 109,794

Rating: 4.8728442 out of 5

Keywords: civility, thoughtslime, thought slime, nancy pelosi, democrats, liberals, republicans, civil disagreement, what happened to civility, anarchist, anarchy, socialist, communist, donald trump, fox news, white house, libertarian socialism, anarcho communism, fox news channel, united states

Id: rk8CsdxpqII

Length: 17min 28sec (1048 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 23 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/TaydePenn]

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[u/Drex_Can]

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[u/oddjam]

Thought Slime with the great video as per usual.