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Former Obama speechwriter David Litt penned an opinion piece for the New York Times recently in which he posed the insufferably smug question to his fellow progressives, “Is It Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family?” Even before reading the article, I wanted to shout the obvious answer: It was never time to snub your right-wing family.
Litt, 38, whose article coincidentally ties in with his recently published book It’s Only Drowning: A True Story of Learning to Surf and the Search for Common Ground, writes in a very, self-satisfied tone about his own journey from self-righteously shunning his brother-in-law – a Right-wing, COVID vaccine skeptic – to patting himself on the back for engaging in an “unlikely friendship” with him. The piece fairly reeks of Left-wing elitism:
I met Matt Kappler in 2012, and it was immediately clear we had nothing in common. He lifted weights to death metal; I jogged to Sondheim. I was one of President Barack Obama’s speechwriters and had an Ivy League degree; he was a huge Joe Rogan fan and went on to get his electrician’s license.
My God, how did Litt tolerate being in the same family as this embarrassing rube Matt? It’s a testament to his progressive inclusiveness that he didn’t hurl a glass of Chablis at the knuckle-dragging Neanderthal, who probably doesn’t even have his own personal pronouns.
“Then the pandemic hit,” Litt explains,
and our preferences began to feel like more than differences in taste. We were on opposite sides of a cultural civil war. The deepest divide was vaccination. I wasn’t shocked when Matt didn’t get the Covid shot. But I was baffled. Turning down a vaccine during a pandemic seemed like a rejection of science and self-preservation. It felt like he was tearing up the social contract that, until that point, I’d imagined we shared.
“Had Matt been a friend rather than a family member, I probably would have cut off contact completely,” Litt admits [emphasis added]. So Litt turned frosty with Matt – for strategic, not personal reasons, mind you: “Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways?”
This is so typically progressive: the condescending compulsion to engineer a shift in their political opponents’ morality, not by compelling them through rational debate, but by publicly and privately shaming them.
Litt then goes on to cite, as support for his strategy, articles in USA Today and the Los Angeles Times cruelly calling for shunning the “vaccine hesitant” and even mocking their deaths.
Shunning as a form of accountability goes back millenniums [sic]. In ancient Athens, a citizen deemed a threat to state stability could be “ostracized” — cast out of society for a decade. For much of history, banishment was considered so severe that it substituted for capital punishment. The whole point of Hester Prynne’s scarlet letter was to show she had violated norms — and to discourage others from doing so.
Litt then claims falsely that the Right-wingers he helped exile from society turned to “an alternate universe full of grievance peddlers and conspiracy theorists who thrived on stories of victimized conservatives.” In fact, it was conservatives who clung to the truth about the vaccine and the pandemic lockdowns in the face of overwhelming totalitarian abuse, not only from power-mad politicians but from bullying, conformist toadies in their own families like David Litt.
Slowly, Litt began to wonder if the self-righteous banishing he participated in might have been ineffective and counterproductive – not wrong, just not working. He began to feel that the downside was that “ostracism might just hurt the ostracizer more than the ostracizee.”
What changed his mind was that he took up surfing and reluctantly began hanging out with Matt because he was the only other surfer Litt knew. Gradually Litt discovered that in tiny ways they had some common ground; Matt was even surprisingly congenial – for a Nazi who probably doesn’t even believe in climate change.
“Matt and I remain very different,” Litt writes, “yet we’ve reached what is, in today’s America, a radical conclusion: We don’t always approve of each other’s choices, but we like each other.” Sorry to burst your bubble, David, but that radical conclusion is a conservative position: that Americans don’t have to agree on everything and that politics doesn’t have to divide us. We can all just get along. It’s not the Right that demands absolute ideological conformity; it’s your party.
Litt takes credit for helping Matt become more open-minded; it doesn’t occur to him that Matt was already more open-minded than Litt, who didn’t believe that was possible in conservatives until he got to know one.
“When I share stories about surfing with my brother-in-law,” Litt continues, some of his fellow progressives confess they’re searching for a way to repair friendships “in the Trump era.”
“My advice is always the same,” Litt concludes – keep the door open:
Our differences are meaningful, but allowing them to mean everything is part of how we ended up here. When we cut off contacts, or let algorithms sort us into warring factions, we forget that not so long ago, we used to have things to talk about that didn’t involve politics. Shunning plays into the hands of demagogues, making it easier for them to divide us and even, in some cases, to incite violence.
As you can see, throughout the article Litt’s worldview remains progressive: that it was Trump and Right-wingers who forced this state of affairs; that they are the ones who are close-minded and in the wrong; that they are the grievance peddlers, conspiracy theorists, and demagogues inciting violence; that Trump is the demagogue dividing us and inciting violence.
Pure projection. In fact, as the Left demonstrates every day, the opposite is true on every count. It was progressives who politicized every facet of our lives in order to divide us into warring camps. It was progressives – who never let a crisis go to waste – that seized upon the pandemic as an opportunity to marginalize the vaccine skeptics and lock down the population (except for BLM rioters, Antifa thugs, and Gavin Newsom’s winery guests) with totalitarian measures; it is progressives who cling with a death grip to their reality-denying ideology; it is progressives who relentlessly peddle victimhood and dismiss inconvenient truths as conspiracy theories; and it was and continues to be progressive leaders who rabble-rouse and incite their followers to political violence, justifying it as “resistance.”
Your condescending gesture of reconciliation is too little, too late, New York Times. Throughout the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations you Leftists demonized us and encouraged our own family members to cut us out of their lives. To this day you don’t regret it, much less apologize for it. Reconciliation begins with sincerely seeking forgiveness, and progressives are incapable of that. You showed your true colors, and we don’t need or want you back.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior
To hell with the Davis Litts of the world! (And I mean that sincerely.)
So by Litt’s own admission, the only reason he continued the labored contact with his B-i-L was that he needed something from him, surfing lessons. I don’t know Litt’s B-i-L, but still feel disappointed that he didn’t tell Litt to pound sand.
I am old enough to remember when it was perfectly acceptable for differences of opinion(!) to exist between friends and family members. What changed? While the Republicans in government were busy playing reach-around with their “good friends across the aisle,” the Left was quietly assuming every single important lever of power.
I am tempted to ramble into a discussion of the FCC eliminating the Fairness Doctrine during the Clinton years (that stipulated that broadcast news had to offer equal time for rebuttal by public figures if they were criticized in a segment, among other things); Obama quietly revising the Smith-Mundt Act (which allowed U.S. intelligence agencies such as the CIA to propagandize our foreign adversaries, but not on American soil) to the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act (which literally legalized propagandizing U.S. citizens in our own country!).
For those unfamiliar with the above examples (FCC Fairness Doctrine, and Smith-Mundt Modernization Act), I encourage anyone interested to examine them, as they were significant regulatory and legal changes leading directly to the discord we are trying to free ourselves from now. The Patriot Act, social media, and COVID didn’t help either.
COVID and politics went into a blender and what came out was pure poison. I lost around 90% of my friends and family over that sh*t and unlike Litt and his brother-in-law, I have no interest in maintaining uneasy relationships with those cheerleading for authoritarianism.
So to hell with the Davis Litts of the world! (And I mean that sincerely.)
I didn’t lose any friendships or familial relationships, but I have noticed some of my leftist friends who bought into the plandemic at first are furious at how they were played. It’s caused them to be extremely skeptical of, and start to question what their own party, the msm, and the ‘experts’ say.
Most are in the private sector and were too busy living their lives to pay much attention to politics, The scamdemic and great reset hit them hard socially, and financially, and they’ve learned they have to. Bad news for those that made them.
It’s nice you didn’t lose anyone but unusual, in my experience.
I can tolerate spending time with leftists but not if they bring up politics.
Many leftists start conflict in conversations. I guess their media encourages them to behave that way. They often have targeted hatreds they feel free to express loudly.
I notice that leftists assume I agree with them politically and agree on who is a victim and who is an enemy or oppressor. If they discern I have other views they become nasty and distant. For many, we are not seen as human but as holding all the negative characteristics they deny are really in them. Its quite sick, actually,
The New York Slimes(Times) has been covering up for the left since the late Walter Duranty did for his good buddy Joe Stalin they have also covered up for Castro the Vietcong and are behind this whole 1619 Project
Litt writes, “Our differences are meaningful, but allowing them to mean everything is part of how we ended up here. When we cut off contacts, or let algorithms sort us into warring factions, we forget that not so long ago, we used to have things to talk about that didn’t involve politics. Shunning plays into the hands of demagogues, making it easier for them to divide us and even, in some cases, to incite violence.”
And who, pray tell, controls and programs these algorithms he speaks of? It sure as hell isn’t conservatives. Conservatives don’t control Facebook or YouTube.
I have an aunt and uncle who followed every Covid-related diktat from the Biden administration. They refused to get the “Trump vaccine” because “That Man” said it was safe and there was no way they were going to believe a word he uttered. But when Biden said the SAME EXACT VACCINE was safe, they proudly showed off their band-aid embossed shoulders on their social media feeds.
Piss on this guy and every other one who thinks like he does. I found the last several Thanksgivings to be refreshing and enjoyable because my tolerant and benevolent progressive relatives have shunned the rest of the family. Good riddance and don’t ask to come back.
The luny leftists in my family(a cousin’s kids), grew up by their late 20s. Some of yours might too. Some obviously never do, but if they learn to gather with the family and enjoy each other’s company without drama, especially over politics, it’s good to welcome them back.
Vaccine, hahahahahahahaha that’s a laugh
Shot, lol. If you have to redefine the word “Vaccine,” to call it one…
Funny I saw an article by another leftist who trashed him for failing to continue the shunning. She was very self-righteous and sickening as she went on and on. I imagine she is a college professor, or aspires to be.
The Right largely wants to be left alone, to enjoy the fruits of their labors, and be free to pursue their own prosperity.
The Left wants to steal the prosperity of some and give it to themselves and others, and to control everything and everybody.
They are incompatible. If you have Leftists in your family, they want nothing more than to stab you in the back. Do not trust them or give them any comfort. They are thieves.
Agree. True acceptance, is recognizing things for “how they are,” not necessarily “for how we want to believe they ARE!” I also accept that there are people that I am related too, that may stab me in the back. Sad, but TRUTH.
Making everything from vaccines to facemasks mandatory is just one of the things that finished off Bidens Dictatorship his war on Fossil Fuels is another
Who is surprised by this semi-educated half wit’s confession?
Even when a dumbass admits they are wrong they must be assured they are smart.
Usually their definition of smart is more like our definition of smartass.
The word insufferable was invented for those associated with the New York Times and their clones.
You say “right wing”; we say “sane”.
During the COVID mass hysteria I questioned the efficacy of masks, social distancing, lock downs etc. The response from many of my enlightened progressive friends was to mock and belittle me while wishing for my death. Needless to say I have no desire to be in their presence nor be their friends.
Can’t blame you, especially with those who actually wished you ill. My friends didn’t do that to me, it was strangers, and I dished it right back in equal degree when they did. The facts, the actual science, was on our side all along.
I have to add my odd man out opinion.
Many bragging about “pure blood” were divisive. If they wanted to call someone wrong or stupid they used the word “vaccinated.” And vaccines came to mean a vaccine for anything, for pneumonia, for shingles etc. (THAT is stupid).
The entire focus on COVID vaccines and on avoiding them (avoiding turned out to be a good idea) became a distraction from the fraudulent election. Many conservative influencers only talked about vaccines and never mentioned “stolen election.” and in doing so kept their TV or media jobs. As if avoiding a COVID vaccine fixed all problems in America. IT DIDN’T.
So, who benefitted from this focus? Those who committed the election fraud.
Litt is a Stalinist, just like most of the Progressive Democrat Party members. True to form, the NYT promotes Stalinists and their tyranny.
The NYT,s was one of Joe Stalin #1 Supporters covered up for his War Crimes
I never heard of Former Obama speechwriter David Litt before this article and I wonder why nit-picking the degenerates out of the basket of deplorable and in most cases demonically possessed or hypnotized leftards is worth my time – no it is not.
Being focused on goals and naysayers can go run up a tree.
You know what I say to naysayers if I say anything at all?
“Here’s a banana, go run up a tree.” And you know what naysayers say to me if they say anything at all?
“woo hoo hoo hoo” like monkeys do as they run up the tree with that banana
” lock down the population (except for BLM rioters, Antifa thugs, and Gavin Newsom’s winery guests)” You can add attendees to Saint George Floyd’s funeral and Barack Hussein Obama’s birthday party.
Leftism is nothing if not smug. They excel at navel gazing and believing their opinion is very insightful and meaningful. They are liars. They may write something that seems conciliatory but it has a smear in it couched in prettier words.
There’s a whole fake school of thought in academia where lefties pretend to want to dialogue with those who do not agree with them. But it has the same tone of “I am on Mars to view the Martians and understand them so I can change them. Jonathan Hait is an example starting with an essay entitled “What makes people vote Republican?” again he’s on Mars viewing Martians. He pretends to have changed now but is obviously being so very generous by condescending to even get to know those so repugnant to him. It is all phony. There is something seriously amiss with those who believe propaganda and propaganda that changes rapidly (“me too” then quickly it changed to no one knows what a woman even is). What is amiss is in them.
They are insufferable, sad to say.
Smug is the word that defines them. I’ll wager that Mr. Litt is a first-generation Ivy-Leaguer. Genuinely well-bred people neither harbor not express self-aggrandizing notions such as his.