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What follows is a somewhat harsh statement that I don't fully endorse:
Gass is on Simulacrum Level 3, Jack Black is on Level 2.
I don't know. Realistically I feel like most hardcore progressives are just concerned about optics on this, not that they actually understand the deeper underlying morality in any real way. By the deeper underlying morality I mean stuff like "how you behave in a conflict is just as important as what side of the conflict you're on".
As someone who is concerned with the degradation of civics, worrying about optics is super-fucking-important and more people should do it. We teach our kids that having bad feelings is normal, but we need to regulate how and where and when we express these feelings. Jack Black can have wet dreams every night about Trump dying, but as long as he knows that for some reason it's important to not say it out loud is crucial to our ability to function as a society.
That, to jump into another discussion upthread, is the toxicity of Trump: he doesn't care about maintaining civility. It may be refreshing to hear someone say all the dirty things we sometimes think in our worst moments but would never dare say -- but it's important not to take that as a license to just say whatever and not worry about its repercussions. (IMO, Trump and a lot of the media/Democrats who hate him are mirror images of each other on this, he's just a sharper, brighter reflection, so it's not a complaint isolated at him.)
Build the wall, ten feet higher, is not a dirty thing we sometimes think in our worst moments, it's a declaration that the line will be drawn here, this far and no further. It is an incredibly popular position that in anathema to the uniparty, and so seldom spoken.
The shithole countries line was more like what you're referring to, and even then, it's not that it's dark, it's that it's both rude AND true. Keep those shithole people from their shithole countries out of America, please, because assimilation works both ways.
If we could say those things without the vulgarity, we would. However, that's not the world we live in. If you want to think, and say, true things, you can't be concerned with civility, because civility has come to mean ignoring impolite reality.
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