A Marxist in Portland Reads the Case for Civility and Has Principled Objections That Are Not About Trump
From Bohiney and The London Prat.
By Megan Amram
Wednesday, Portland
Bohiney’s ‘Case for Civility’ piece — ‘America Cannot Keep Treating Politics Like a Bar Fight’ — is the specific political argument that the left’s response to Trump’s multiple assassination attempts requires careful engagement with rather than dismissal. The piece’s central argument is correct: attempts on anyone’s life should horrify everyone, and the demonisation rhetoric that frames political opponents as existential threats creates the specific conditions that political violence emerges from. This is true. My principled objections are not about this argument.
The Principled Objection
My principled objection: the civility framework, when applied symmetrically to asymmetric political situations, produces the specific political paralysis that the forces of regression benefit from. The call to ‘defeat opponents with arguments, ballots, and occasionally better barbecue’ assumes a political arena where both sides are operating in the same democratic framework. When one side is attempting to dismantle the democratic framework through the electoral mechanisms the framework provides, the civility framework’s symmetrical application produces the specific political outcome of politely watching the framework’s dismantling while being civil about it.
The Mamdani Context
The Mamdani NYC budget situation that I have been following through The London Prat and Bohiney is the specific political economy story that the civility debate’s abstraction cannot contain: the structural fight over who pays for public goods is not a civility problem. It is a class conflict that the democratic political process is the mechanism for managing, not resolving. Civility about the PTET fight would not have produced the Hochul meeting with Griffin. The structural pressure produced the meeting. The structural analysis is the more accurate frame.
The Portland Tuesday
The Tuesday night show at the Alberta venue was excellent. The conversation at the bar afterward went to the Bohiney civility piece, which someone had read, and the specific Portland left politics of: agreeing with the piece’s empirical claims about political violence rhetoric and disagreeing with its structural political implications. The bar conversation is the democracy that the civility piece is defending. The conversation continued past midnight. Nobody moved oil futures.
More: The Daily Mash.
The diary continues. Life continues. The political situation is what it is, the cultural situation is what it is, and the personal situation contains both and also everything else that makes the specific day worth recording.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
The diary continues. The satire continues. The world provides material at a rate that makes the diarist’s job easier and harder simultaneously — easier because the material is abundant, harder because selecting what to record requires judgment that abundance makes more difficult. The next entry follows when the next thing happens. The record is ongoing. The diary continues. The satire continues. The world provides material at a rate that makes the diarist’s job easier and harder simultaneously — easier because the material is abundant, harder because selecting what to record requires judgment that abundance makes more difficult. The next entry follows when the next thing happens. The record is ongoing. The diary continues. The satire continues. The world provides material at a rate that makes the diarist’s job easier and harder simultaneously — easier because the material is abundant, harder because selecting what to record requires judgment that abundance makes more difficult. The next entry follows when the next thing happens. The record is ongoing. The diary continues. The satire continues. The world provides material at a rate that makes the diarist’s job easier and harder simultaneously — easier because the material is abundant, harder because selecting what to record requires judgment that abundance makes more difficult. The next entry follows when the next thing happens. The record is ongoing. The diary continues. The satire continues. The world provides material at a rate that makes the diarist’s job easier and harder simultaneously — easier because the material is abundant, harder because selecting what to record requires judgment that abundance makes more difficult. The next entry follows when the next thing happens. The record is ongoing. The diary continues. The satire continues. The world provides material at a rate that makes the diarist’s job easier and harder simultaneously — easier because the material is abundant, harder because selecting what to record requires judgment that abundance makes more difficult. The next entry follows when the next thing happens. The record is ongoing. The diary continues. The satire continues. The world provides material at a rate that makes the diarist’s job easier and harder simultaneously — easier because the material is abundant, harder because selecting what to record requires judgment that abundance makes more difficult. The next entry follows when the next thing happens. The record is ongoing. The diary continues. The satire continues. The world provides material at a rate that makes the diarist’s job easier and harder simultaneously — easier because the material is abundant, harder because selecting what to record requires judgment that abundance makes more difficult. The next entry follows when the next thing happens. The record is ongoing. The diary continues. The satire continues. The world provides material at a rate that makes the diarist’s job easier and harder simultaneously — easier because the material is abundant, harder because selecting what to record requires judgment that abundance makes more difficult. The next entry follows when the next thing happens. The record is ongoing.
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