Political Toddlers (Including The Voters)

After ten years of Trump's juvenile name-calling and schoolyard taunts, why would we be surprised that Governor Jim Pillen would resort to an insult that's a portmanteau of "liberal" and "retard", a word that is widely regarded as a slur against the disabled?

"Retard", or "retarded" was once a clinical term applied to those with intellectual disabilities, as was "idiot" and "moron", "imbecile" and "cretin". All of those terms devolved into insults or slurs. "To retard" still has legitimate uses outside of a clinical description of developmental disability. (E.g. "flame retardant")

In some ways we have become inured to this kind of language, this coarseness from our elected officials, but I believe it goes well beyond just the simple offensiveness of the word that Pillen used. 

"Elections have consequences". I don't know if President Obama was the first one to publicly make that statement, but it's true. Those who win elections have the power to make changes, although it used to be that the winners of close contests at least made the attempt to reach out to the other side. There was a recognition that the next election could undo their work; it was those electoral "mandates", i.e. huge wins, where the winners rolled over the the losers. The election(s) of Donald Trump have turned  wins into the electoral equivalent of a conquering and occupying army, complete with "othering" everyone who didn't vote the "right" way, and labeling them as enemies. 

The last several federal elections have been close, within one percentage point, but that hasn't stopped Trump and his supporters from claiming that it was an historic, landslide win, a mandate. Governor Pillen, after his election win with around 60% of the vote (a pretty big margin of victory) claimed that Nebraskans "spoke with one voice". ( ⁶/₁₀ of one voice maybe)

It's no surprise then that Governor Pillen, who has been steadily transforming himself from a typical Nebraska Republican into a full-on MAGA Trumper, used the slur that I referenced in the first paragraph, using it to demean, insult, and "other" fellow Nebraskans who disagree with him and his party politically. It got our attention and made headlines mainly due to the "tard" part of the epithet, yet it's an escalation, not really anything new. And it's not just the politicians, it's our neighbors and coworkers who are more and more comfortable engaging in this kind of behavior. 

It's no surprise that the pseudo-anonymity of social media escalates the disrespect and attack mode conversing of political discourse among non-office holders, echoing the vitriol from the "leaders". This isn't news.  Paired with the tendency to jump immediately to insults is the tendency for many partisans to "support the team", i.e. presume that their party loves America and knows best, and the other guys are communists, Nazis, pedophiles or demons. Yes, some people literally believe that the people they disagree with are demons. 

I don't know if a significant percentage of voters ever were educated regarding the details and nuances of the politicians they voted for, but in the last ten years it feels like it has gotten worse. The comments that I read on social media indicate that many people are completely uninterested in the policy positions of the candidates, but form opinions based on an exaggerated caricature of what they believe that the candidate is like based on...not much. 

Yesterday I was reading the comments to an article about Lynn Walz's announcement that she was running for Nebraska governor as a Democrat.  Ms. Walz is a former Nebraska State Senator. Very few of the commenters seemed to have any knowledge of how she would govern, but boy, were there opinions. Most of them were based on her surname. She is related by marriage to Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. The "reasoning" behind the opposition to her was based almost entirely on the fact that she was named Walz. Governor Walz appears to inspire revulsion among Nebraska Republicans...I don't know why. Maybe because he ran for Vice President in 2024, maybe because he is standing up to ICE, maybe because his DHHS missed huge amounts of fraud. It could be anything. What it isn't is a rational, logical objection to any policies. This is not an isolated incident. Nebraska voters in particular, especially rural or small town voters, seem to believe that anyone running as a Democrat is really a Communist out to take their guns, force their children to transition to a different gender, and...well you get the picture. My own comments were met with repeats of Pillen's slur (pus one "silly goose"). 

I have no expectation that internet trolls, whether anonymous or not, interact politely. They aren't being entrusted with the state's budget, or the nation's nuclear codes. But our elected officials, no matter what level in which they serve, should be held to a higher standard. A standard which Governor Pillen and President Trump fail to meet.