This morning I heard Cokie Roberts describing her impending appointment to deliver a eulogy for Betty Ford. Apparently Betty Ford had requested that, when the opportunity came, she speak about the time when Gerry Ford and Hale Boggs (Cokie Roberts' father) were House Minority Leader and Majority Leader, respectively, and House members were collegial and even friends, irrespective of party (united, perhaps, by their common loathing of the Senate). Later on I read an article in The Nation extolling the courage and civic virtue of "...all those gay couples who were willing to weaponize their lives...'you're either with me, or you're with the haters - but you can't have it both ways'".
That's it, of course. You (we) can't have it both ways. When Boggs and Ford were friends, discourse in the Congress was about compromise and continuity. Change was gradual, what we might call "adiabatic". Everyone's position was respectable. Then there was the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights Movement. It was my side, the Left, that saw that gradual change meant more lynchings and more body bags. It was we who said the other side's argument was totally bankrupt. And it worked. Great googlymoogly, it worked a treat!
Of course, THEY were watching. They saw that it worked. And whose fault is it that they're even better at it than we are? So here we are. There is no middle ground. An argument is either right or wrong and if it's wrong, what's respectable about that? You can't have it both ways.
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