IF YOU WANT TO STAND UP FOR ANTI-TRUMP INCIVILITY, START WORKING THE REFS

I argued in the last post that being rude to members of the Trump administration might not be the wisest strategy for the left -- not because the Trumpers don't deserve it, but because the political establishment inevitably gets the vapors whenever people on the left violate decorum. This is an obvious double standard -- conservative behavior that's far ruder, and even actively menacing, is depicted as a mere display of healthy animal spirits on the part of salt-of-the-earth Americans with noble dirt under their fingernails. But those are the rules: The right is allowed to get away with this and the left isn't.

A lot of you don't like what I'm saying. I understand that. In that case, I urge you to try working the refs. I say this especially to anyone who writes or speaks for public consumption: Do what you can to make the mainstream media, and the Beltway establishment in general, defend the double standard. Point it out every chance you get. Write essays. Talk about it in podcasts. Change the subject from the behavior of Maxine Waters or that restaurateur in Virginia to the behavior of the media and the insider scolds -- ask them why Republican commentators, Trump voters, and Trump himself are allowed an infinite amount of insolence while only liberals and Democrats are scolded when they're not nice. Oh, and if you're a Democratic officeholder and you're prodded to condemn Waters, turn the question around ask why we have a president whose core philosophy is a rejection of civil discourse, but it's Democrats and progressives who are being condemned. We have a congressional Republican who retweets Nazis, but the greatest problem in America is, somehow, Congresswoman Waters. We had eight years of rank-and-file Republicans waving pictures of President Obama with a bone in his nose, we had Rush Limbaugh repeatedly calling a defender of birth control a "slut," but now we have a "civility crisis"? Why is it only a crisis when the people who are being attacked fight back?

Put them on the defensive. If we can't do that, we should expect unfair treatment.