Kimmel's statement, as you quoted above, does not assert that Robinson is MAGA, although you can read that implication into it if you want. It truthfully points out that MAGA immediately and forcefully asserted that the assassin's ideology was antifa/trans/insert-leftist-bogeyman before there was substantial evidence either way.
It doesn't assert, but it certainly implies. If Kimmel wanted to say that "MAGA jumped to the conclusion they wanted before the body was cold", he could've said that and his meaning would've been clear. Maybe that was what he was going for and he and his writers just failed to craft a good sentence; it didn't even seem like a laugh line or a set up for one. IMO it's a good examples of the burgeoning echo chamber Nate is talking about.
(That aside, in the context of the FCC's actions, scrutinizing this wording is a pointless side-show.)
FWIW, I don’t think Kimmel’s comment implies any such thing. This is the first time I have seen the comment. I had to re-read Nate’s subsequent characterization of it (and re-read the comment) to understand why he characterized it as he did. I still don’t see it.
Same here, pal. Admittedly, I’m German, so I might not be the average American benchmark. Still, when our media reported about this and printed his words in the original and in German, I did not understand what was so controversial about it.
Kind of logic chopping Kimmel's statement isn't useful. The thrust was to tie the shooter to the right, which was fucking dumb. Given the dearth of information at the time, the sober move was to not say anything or Occam's razor it, which would mean assuming he was on the left.
So one can hardly complain when Trump despite not having any information about the assassin’s identity at the time is trying to tie him to the left. And like many others here: I did not for one second read the comment from Kimmel like you did (I’m German though, so I’m not you average ABC audience).
Nate's point, though, is that it actually hurts the left to engage in cancel culture. Yes, the president is a hypocrite. I don't see how that changes anything.
I wholeheartedly agree with Nate’s assessment of the left excess CC. I was kinda cancelled myself by some lefty women from a politics class where I taught law. My point is: Trump and lots of other MAGA folks tie the killer untruthfully to the left. Kimmel’s remark is by the most ill meaning standard a “thrust”, as you said (I really don’t read it that way but for the sake of the argument let’s do it). So even if Kimmel does the same thing, how would that be cancel worthy?
While I agree, Kimmel's remark was a terribly worded sentence which left it open to that interpretation.
There a # of ways to say what you pointed out more clearly, but, what was said was sloppy enough to allow the statement to heard as"Robinson is MAGA". Heck, I had to read it 2-3x to figure out what Kimmel actually meant..& the MAGA folks looking for red-meat aren't going to even go that far.
& yes, the fact they didn't think of the above is a sign of an "echo chamber".
Kimmel's comments were not about MAGAs immediate reactions, but rather MAGA comments that reached "new lows over the weekend." Such comments that the shooter was not MAGA were not baseless speculation about some unknown assassin but rather based on early data about the shooters beliefs, which as noted by Nate point towards someone who didn't like MAGA elements of Kirk's.
By calling out MAGAs who assert that the shooter was not a MAGA as engaging in a "new low" Kimmel is functionally saying that the reporting is misinformation.
I don't know it certainly can be read the way you are suggesting but that seems to be the most charitable interpretation. It's hard to think that would be the reasonable inference to the average person especially with the claims that Robinson was a groyper that are also prevalent out there.
Correct, Kimmel never actually said Robinson was a MAGA guy. I can see why MAGA people would interpret it that way, and you can reasonably argue that it was implied, but we should be accurate that he never actually said it. He is making a comment about the right-wing political reaction, not the shooter himself.
David Frum was on CNN the other day arguing that this isn't cancel culture because it isn't culture, it's state repression. When the government orders someone be fired for making jokes at the president's expense, that's very different from the company firing someone because of angry viewers or advertiser pressure.
It almost doesn't matter what the content of the jokes are. Sure Kimmel got some facts wrong. Even so, the chair of the FCC can't threaten to revoke a broadcast license over jokes about the president. Doing that is simply incompatible with a free society.
But certainly you agree that the pressure from the Biden administration upon the media during the period of Covid in particular was much more aggressive thian this attempt.
No, we didn’t see media personalities losing their job en masse from the government directly pressuring their employers. Maybe due to a Twitter storm, but that was from influencers online and not directly from the government of the United States.
I don't recall any senior officials of the Biden administration making direct threats to any media outlet during covid in the same format as this one, which was, explicitly, "Remove this person or we will use the power of the state to crush your business"
Certainly many businesses were crushed due to lockdowns, is that what you're referring to? However no business was singled out, and it had nothing to do with the speech of the owners/employees.
"Every business meeting criteria X must close for period Y because of the risk of spreading disease" is not remotely equivalent to "That one specific person mocked the president, so you must remove him or we'll shut down your one specific business"
As a fairly liberal guy, I have been put off by how a lot of the people I follow jumped on the narrative that the shooter was a far right person. I kept reading the information that was public, and couldn't find my way to that conclusion. Just like you said, it seems like his motivation was somewhat muddled. I think that even highly respected people like Richardson can make mistakes, she human like the rest of us, but I would hope that she comes clean about possibly getting a little caught up in the frenzy of activity following the assassination.
Unfortunately she is too totally partisan to admit that her biases were in play.
The incredible success of her Substack seems to have increased her willingness to be openly partisan without regard to the lack of facts supporting her assertions, it was one of the first,Substacks that I encountered and subscribed to when I became an active participant here. Now a great deal of the time I now often. find it to be charitable what I would discrihe as a partisan screed rather than the insights and perspective of an historian.
I dunno. I dislike the cancel culture excesses of 2020 as much as you, but given the Trump admin’s whole-hearted attack on the institutions of liberal democracy from the fed to the department of health to the electoral system and on and on, I don’t think we needed 2020 to happen for him to step on major networks. I just think he’s an instinctual autocrat and he would have leaned on the networks anyway. In times like this, the only consolation I can give is that at least we aren’t starting a war based on bullshit and murdering hundreds of thousands.
My key concern with Trump from the beginning is bad behavior begets more bad behavior. He broke the seal on respect and decorum and you had to expect the left to have an equal and opposite reaction. It took a while but we are seeing it now.
My wish is reasonable people of all political leanings would call out bad behavior regardless of who is doing it. Appreciate Nate for having this approach from the beginning.
After 9/11 the country was legitimately afraid of the outside threat from Islamic Fundamentalists. Three thousand people died. And it was not the last action.
But Bush did not engage in collective blame as MAGA is doing now. Bush made sure to differentiate the terrorists from Islam in general and was especially vocal about protecting Americans who practiced islam.
The situation then and the situation now feel very differently to me. I was 39, married with three children when 9/11 happened. I think to compare the two atmospheres––now and then––it helps to have been a full fledged adult during both.
Kimmel clearly misinformed his audience and/or made a stupid joke. He should at least apologize for that.... He didn't deserve to be fired or censored. Carr deserves to be impeached or fired. The station affiliate owners are the real enemy here.... but they own the stations and have the upper hand.
If I scrapped somebody’s car with my cars door and they responded by taking a baseball bat to my side mirror, I would also be disinclined to apologize for the initial wrong.
I appreciate the calls back to the Bush era, Nate. I lived through it and honestly I'd sort of forgotten how careful you had to be in the early 2000s to even hint at critisism of US foreign policy lest you commit the carnal sin of not "supporting the troops." Political discourse these days seems to not be capable of remembering much of anything before the 2016 election and everything that happens is the first time its ever happened in American history.
That's not to excuse what is happening here - a lot of what this admin is doing is fucked. But someone who lived through the America of the 60s, or the 40s, or the 1910s, lived through worse examples of political violence and/or government censorship of the press.
Would you please define what you mean by "old as hell?" It may surprise you, but even people "old as hell" often read and consume media from diverse outlets.
Network primetime viewer's average age is 64.6, compared to the average american's age is around 38 (there are different numbers for both of these flying around, but these seem to be in range). Maybe it's not a nice way to phrase it by Nate but he's not wrong in saying these networks are reaching a MUCH older demographic
The oldest demo that advertisers like is 25-54. After that age, advertisers aren't interested. They figure your brand habits are cast in stone and your mad money is locked down or kind of slim.
Actually, betraying my age, it feels much more like the Nixon Watergate era where the White House -- Nixon and uber paranoid crew -- used Hoover and many even more dubious bedfellows to as he put "fuck the blacks and hippies." Kent State the shooting of 6 students by the FBI should certainly ring a bell now. The gloves were far further off then than now. So was the resistance. In those days folks didn't fart around with internet protests and late night comedy. They took to the streets. I am in no way condoning their behaviors -- or many of them, but they were were far more serious about a far more serious threat. We could be headed back there, and maybe we should be at least from a dialectic point of view. History tells us these things always start with the Camel or in this case Kimmel's nose under the tent.
I am a free-speech hardliner--if you don't like speech, refute it or ignore it, don't suppress it or punish the speaker. But I wish people could see that political speech is the least important speech, not the most important.
Yes, Brendan Carr abused his discretion, but the problem is that he has that discretion in the first place. And suspending Jimmy Kimmel does not suppress his speech, it's has amplified it. And Kimmel is hardly the unpopular, helpless victim for whom we should be most diligent in protecting rights.
The FCC and other government censors have much more malign influence on non-political speech--the Motion Picture Production Code that ruled movies for half a century under similar threats of government pressure, the actions directed against comedians like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, FCC regulation of television content. These things shape cultural attitudes and encourage racism, sexism, anti-homosexuality, authoritarianism and other ills.
I would hope the outcome of this is pushback against all government censorship, and a reduction of discretion of unelected officials to the minimum necessary.
Tipper Gore's "Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)" took advantage of political connections and arranged a congressional hearing on explicit content in rock music and a proposed labeling system. The "Filthy Fifteen" included Prince- Darling Nikki; Sheena Easton-Sugar Walls; and Judas Priest-Eat Me Alive.
Agreed, although this particular censorship attempt failed, and amplified the target content.
A college friend of mine remembered the local sheriff in West Virginia in the 1960s going door-to-door to collect rock records by Black musicians (she lost her beloved Louie Louie--although she had the famous version by the all-White Kingsmen from Portland, Oregon, not the (Black) Richard Berry original). I asked if the forbidden list included Black jazz, ragtime or classical musicians, and she said no. Hard to understand the logic of government censors.
Nate, you misconstrue the nature of the conflict. This is not about liberal v. conservative, or Republican v. Democrat. The struggle is between liberal democracy and totalitarianism. Republicans can be liberal democrats who believe in elections, freedom of expression, tolerance, creative competition, due process, all liberal democratic values, and Democrats can embrace election cynicism, suppression of diversity, revenge politics, and violence as a means of eliminating opposition. Trumpism is totalitarianism and the actions of Kirk's assassin are that of a totalitarianism mindset. I think Kimmel was insightful in that he recognized that liberal democrats do not favor assassination, but that trumpism foments violence regardless of political belief. You make the connection with MAGA.
I read Kimmel’s comment differently. To me he wasn’t saying Robinson is MAGA, he was pointing out that MAGA figures are eager to attack anything that isn’t them. The point is they don’t care about defining Robinson’s politics accurately, only that he’s ‘not one of us,’ which is enough for a scattershot attack. They are attacking anything and everything “other than one of them”.
What goes around comes around but each round is more extreme. If you are a Jew today you know that there are many organizations of the left where you are no longer welcome unless you are willing to call for the end of Israel. Organizations whose most fundamental purposes were anathema in Hamas’ Gaza. So why will we never learn.
I grew up in a conservative evangelical community in the 90s, and as a secular liberal adult, I feel like I’m living in a Twilight Zone episode. I specifically left my hometown culture because of their stupid Disney boycotts, it’s so on the nose that it feels personal 🫠 If I took a political policy quiz, I come out fairly far left, but I feel myself so turned off by the too-familiar fundamentalism and hypocrisy of the culture. What happened to the live-and-let-live vibe of 2008 Democrats?
Kimmel's statement, as you quoted above, does not assert that Robinson is MAGA, although you can read that implication into it if you want. It truthfully points out that MAGA immediately and forcefully asserted that the assassin's ideology was antifa/trans/insert-leftist-bogeyman before there was substantial evidence either way.
It doesn't assert, but it certainly implies. If Kimmel wanted to say that "MAGA jumped to the conclusion they wanted before the body was cold", he could've said that and his meaning would've been clear. Maybe that was what he was going for and he and his writers just failed to craft a good sentence; it didn't even seem like a laugh line or a set up for one. IMO it's a good examples of the burgeoning echo chamber Nate is talking about.
(That aside, in the context of the FCC's actions, scrutinizing this wording is a pointless side-show.)
Ok, but everyone has said stupid things. Saying a single stupid thing should never end a show. Repeatedly saying boring things should
Obviously. Did you think anything I said implied different?
no
FWIW, I don’t think Kimmel’s comment implies any such thing. This is the first time I have seen the comment. I had to re-read Nate’s subsequent characterization of it (and re-read the comment) to understand why he characterized it as he did. I still don’t see it.
Same here, pal. Admittedly, I’m German, so I might not be the average American benchmark. Still, when our media reported about this and printed his words in the original and in German, I did not understand what was so controversial about it.
Thank you. I've been frustrated by everyone repeatedly misinterpreting Kimmel. I was pretty surprised to see Nate perpetuating that take.
Kind of logic chopping Kimmel's statement isn't useful. The thrust was to tie the shooter to the right, which was fucking dumb. Given the dearth of information at the time, the sober move was to not say anything or Occam's razor it, which would mean assuming he was on the left.
The mthrfckn President himself did not hesitate one nano second to blame it on the left.
So?
So one can hardly complain when Trump despite not having any information about the assassin’s identity at the time is trying to tie him to the left. And like many others here: I did not for one second read the comment from Kimmel like you did (I’m German though, so I’m not you average ABC audience).
Nate's point, though, is that it actually hurts the left to engage in cancel culture. Yes, the president is a hypocrite. I don't see how that changes anything.
I wholeheartedly agree with Nate’s assessment of the left excess CC. I was kinda cancelled myself by some lefty women from a politics class where I taught law. My point is: Trump and lots of other MAGA folks tie the killer untruthfully to the left. Kimmel’s remark is by the most ill meaning standard a “thrust”, as you said (I really don’t read it that way but for the sake of the argument let’s do it). So even if Kimmel does the same thing, how would that be cancel worthy?
Starting to think ol Donnie may not be who I should model my behavior off of
While I agree, Kimmel's remark was a terribly worded sentence which left it open to that interpretation.
There a # of ways to say what you pointed out more clearly, but, what was said was sloppy enough to allow the statement to heard as"Robinson is MAGA". Heck, I had to read it 2-3x to figure out what Kimmel actually meant..& the MAGA folks looking for red-meat aren't going to even go that far.
& yes, the fact they didn't think of the above is a sign of an "echo chamber".
Kimmel's comments were not about MAGAs immediate reactions, but rather MAGA comments that reached "new lows over the weekend." Such comments that the shooter was not MAGA were not baseless speculation about some unknown assassin but rather based on early data about the shooters beliefs, which as noted by Nate point towards someone who didn't like MAGA elements of Kirk's.
By calling out MAGAs who assert that the shooter was not a MAGA as engaging in a "new low" Kimmel is functionally saying that the reporting is misinformation.
This.
I don't know it certainly can be read the way you are suggesting but that seems to be the most charitable interpretation. It's hard to think that would be the reasonable inference to the average person especially with the claims that Robinson was a groyper that are also prevalent out there.
“[...] the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them.”
So you genuinely think Kimmel agreed with "the MAGA gang" that Robinson was not MAGA?
Correct, Kimmel never actually said Robinson was a MAGA guy. I can see why MAGA people would interpret it that way, and you can reasonably argue that it was implied, but we should be accurate that he never actually said it. He is making a comment about the right-wing political reaction, not the shooter himself.
David Frum was on CNN the other day arguing that this isn't cancel culture because it isn't culture, it's state repression. When the government orders someone be fired for making jokes at the president's expense, that's very different from the company firing someone because of angry viewers or advertiser pressure.
It almost doesn't matter what the content of the jokes are. Sure Kimmel got some facts wrong. Even so, the chair of the FCC can't threaten to revoke a broadcast license over jokes about the president. Doing that is simply incompatible with a free society.
But certainly you agree that the pressure from the Biden administration upon the media during the period of Covid in particular was much more aggressive thian this attempt.
That is not remotely true. When was the Biden administration threatening to take away operating licenses?
No, we didn’t see media personalities losing their job en masse from the government directly pressuring their employers. Maybe due to a Twitter storm, but that was from influencers online and not directly from the government of the United States.
I don't recall any senior officials of the Biden administration making direct threats to any media outlet during covid in the same format as this one, which was, explicitly, "Remove this person or we will use the power of the state to crush your business"
Certainly many businesses were crushed due to lockdowns, is that what you're referring to? However no business was singled out, and it had nothing to do with the speech of the owners/employees.
"Every business meeting criteria X must close for period Y because of the risk of spreading disease" is not remotely equivalent to "That one specific person mocked the president, so you must remove him or we'll shut down your one specific business"
As a fairly liberal guy, I have been put off by how a lot of the people I follow jumped on the narrative that the shooter was a far right person. I kept reading the information that was public, and couldn't find my way to that conclusion. Just like you said, it seems like his motivation was somewhat muddled. I think that even highly respected people like Richardson can make mistakes, she human like the rest of us, but I would hope that she comes clean about possibly getting a little caught up in the frenzy of activity following the assassination.
Unfortunately she is too totally partisan to admit that her biases were in play.
The incredible success of her Substack seems to have increased her willingness to be openly partisan without regard to the lack of facts supporting her assertions, it was one of the first,Substacks that I encountered and subscribed to when I became an active participant here. Now a great deal of the time I now often. find it to be charitable what I would discrihe as a partisan screed rather than the insights and perspective of an historian.
I dunno. I dislike the cancel culture excesses of 2020 as much as you, but given the Trump admin’s whole-hearted attack on the institutions of liberal democracy from the fed to the department of health to the electoral system and on and on, I don’t think we needed 2020 to happen for him to step on major networks. I just think he’s an instinctual autocrat and he would have leaned on the networks anyway. In times like this, the only consolation I can give is that at least we aren’t starting a war based on bullshit and murdering hundreds of thousands.
My key concern with Trump from the beginning is bad behavior begets more bad behavior. He broke the seal on respect and decorum and you had to expect the left to have an equal and opposite reaction. It took a while but we are seeing it now.
My wish is reasonable people of all political leanings would call out bad behavior regardless of who is doing it. Appreciate Nate for having this approach from the beginning.
After 9/11 the country was legitimately afraid of the outside threat from Islamic Fundamentalists. Three thousand people died. And it was not the last action.
But Bush did not engage in collective blame as MAGA is doing now. Bush made sure to differentiate the terrorists from Islam in general and was especially vocal about protecting Americans who practiced islam.
The situation then and the situation now feel very differently to me. I was 39, married with three children when 9/11 happened. I think to compare the two atmospheres––now and then––it helps to have been a full fledged adult during both.
My post tomorrow will address collective blame.
Was hoping someone would say this. Nate is a bit crazy to think the Bush Jr years and the current moment feel similar.
Kimmel clearly misinformed his audience and/or made a stupid joke. He should at least apologize for that.... He didn't deserve to be fired or censored. Carr deserves to be impeached or fired. The station affiliate owners are the real enemy here.... but they own the stations and have the upper hand.
If I scrapped somebody’s car with my cars door and they responded by taking a baseball bat to my side mirror, I would also be disinclined to apologize for the initial wrong.
I appreciate the calls back to the Bush era, Nate. I lived through it and honestly I'd sort of forgotten how careful you had to be in the early 2000s to even hint at critisism of US foreign policy lest you commit the carnal sin of not "supporting the troops." Political discourse these days seems to not be capable of remembering much of anything before the 2016 election and everything that happens is the first time its ever happened in American history.
That's not to excuse what is happening here - a lot of what this admin is doing is fucked. But someone who lived through the America of the 60s, or the 40s, or the 1910s, lived through worse examples of political violence and/or government censorship of the press.
Would you please define what you mean by "old as hell?" It may surprise you, but even people "old as hell" often read and consume media from diverse outlets.
Network primetime viewer's average age is 64.6, compared to the average american's age is around 38 (there are different numbers for both of these flying around, but these seem to be in range). Maybe it's not a nice way to phrase it by Nate but he's not wrong in saying these networks are reaching a MUCH older demographic
The underlying point is that network TV is dying. Nate is using short hand for a long term business trend, not making an insult.
The network TV audience is shrinking and aging. Older person are less influenced by advertising, so the revenue stream is shrinking.
It isn't about reading and consuming media, it is about paying the $xx million salaries of the execs, and old people are practically useless for that.
Once sports finishes the move to 100% streaming availability, network TV will become a corpse.
Eventually the broadcast spectrum will be turned over to 7th generation WiFi, and nothing of value will be lost.
I understand what he meant, but was remarking on how it was phrased.
But for us all who get a license there is still CW.
The oldest demo that advertisers like is 25-54. After that age, advertisers aren't interested. They figure your brand habits are cast in stone and your mad money is locked down or kind of slim.
Hi Nate:
Actually, betraying my age, it feels much more like the Nixon Watergate era where the White House -- Nixon and uber paranoid crew -- used Hoover and many even more dubious bedfellows to as he put "fuck the blacks and hippies." Kent State the shooting of 6 students by the FBI should certainly ring a bell now. The gloves were far further off then than now. So was the resistance. In those days folks didn't fart around with internet protests and late night comedy. They took to the streets. I am in no way condoning their behaviors -- or many of them, but they were were far more serious about a far more serious threat. We could be headed back there, and maybe we should be at least from a dialectic point of view. History tells us these things always start with the Camel or in this case Kimmel's nose under the tent.
I am a free-speech hardliner--if you don't like speech, refute it or ignore it, don't suppress it or punish the speaker. But I wish people could see that political speech is the least important speech, not the most important.
Yes, Brendan Carr abused his discretion, but the problem is that he has that discretion in the first place. And suspending Jimmy Kimmel does not suppress his speech, it's has amplified it. And Kimmel is hardly the unpopular, helpless victim for whom we should be most diligent in protecting rights.
The FCC and other government censors have much more malign influence on non-political speech--the Motion Picture Production Code that ruled movies for half a century under similar threats of government pressure, the actions directed against comedians like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, FCC regulation of television content. These things shape cultural attitudes and encourage racism, sexism, anti-homosexuality, authoritarianism and other ills.
I would hope the outcome of this is pushback against all government censorship, and a reduction of discretion of unelected officials to the minimum necessary.
Tipper Gore's "Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)" took advantage of political connections and arranged a congressional hearing on explicit content in rock music and a proposed labeling system. The "Filthy Fifteen" included Prince- Darling Nikki; Sheena Easton-Sugar Walls; and Judas Priest-Eat Me Alive.
Agreed, although this particular censorship attempt failed, and amplified the target content.
A college friend of mine remembered the local sheriff in West Virginia in the 1960s going door-to-door to collect rock records by Black musicians (she lost her beloved Louie Louie--although she had the famous version by the all-White Kingsmen from Portland, Oregon, not the (Black) Richard Berry original). I asked if the forbidden list included Black jazz, ragtime or classical musicians, and she said no. Hard to understand the logic of government censors.
Nate, you misconstrue the nature of the conflict. This is not about liberal v. conservative, or Republican v. Democrat. The struggle is between liberal democracy and totalitarianism. Republicans can be liberal democrats who believe in elections, freedom of expression, tolerance, creative competition, due process, all liberal democratic values, and Democrats can embrace election cynicism, suppression of diversity, revenge politics, and violence as a means of eliminating opposition. Trumpism is totalitarianism and the actions of Kirk's assassin are that of a totalitarianism mindset. I think Kimmel was insightful in that he recognized that liberal democrats do not favor assassination, but that trumpism foments violence regardless of political belief. You make the connection with MAGA.
Sorry to be such a slavering fan-girl, but this is just BRILLIANT.
Thank you.
I read Kimmel’s comment differently. To me he wasn’t saying Robinson is MAGA, he was pointing out that MAGA figures are eager to attack anything that isn’t them. The point is they don’t care about defining Robinson’s politics accurately, only that he’s ‘not one of us,’ which is enough for a scattershot attack. They are attacking anything and everything “other than one of them”.
What goes around comes around but each round is more extreme. If you are a Jew today you know that there are many organizations of the left where you are no longer welcome unless you are willing to call for the end of Israel. Organizations whose most fundamental purposes were anathema in Hamas’ Gaza. So why will we never learn.
I grew up in a conservative evangelical community in the 90s, and as a secular liberal adult, I feel like I’m living in a Twilight Zone episode. I specifically left my hometown culture because of their stupid Disney boycotts, it’s so on the nose that it feels personal 🫠 If I took a political policy quiz, I come out fairly far left, but I feel myself so turned off by the too-familiar fundamentalism and hypocrisy of the culture. What happened to the live-and-let-live vibe of 2008 Democrats?