The Way You Do The Things You Do
There's another signature rhetorical maneuver of the "If you don't vote for Biden, you're voting for Trump" cohort (especially the "even though we all know how bad he is" group) that reprises a classic liberal concern for shedding and assigning guilt in a way that I find particularly deceptive and offensive.
I refer to the surreptitious elision of political and moralizing discourses, a perceptible shift from a "political" register when they talk about whom they are voting for, to a "moralizing" register when they talk about whom you are not voting for: "Me, renowned leftist, a Biden supporter? I'm not supporting him (or any of the terrible things I acknowledge he has done and will continue to do), I'm just voting for him. But, you, if you don't vote for Biden, are complicit in and responsible for all the horrible things the other guy, whom you didn't vote for, may do."
It's an attempt to attenuate their complicity with Biden's likely terrible policies by describing their act of voting for him in terms of political realism, only then to adopt a moralizing discourse that hangs responsibility for Trump's possible future actions on voters who did not vote for him. They're trying to shame people for what they are not voting for, while minimizing responsibility for what they are.
Nice try, but you can't make the indirect, negative choice more moralistically consequent than the direct, positive one. The most direct line of complicity is from the voter to the candidate s/he votes for.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
2
