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De Tocqueville said, “If men are to remain civilized, the art of associating together must grow and improve.” Calling the other side a bunch of Losers might, I admit, go against the spirit of artful association, as de Tocqueville intended.
I think about that a lot. I’m not an internet troll (at least I don’t aspire to be). I also don’t love attacking another person’s being, particularly if I don’t know them personally. But even when I do know them personally, I don’t like tearing someone down.
We can’t know all of the internal workings of literally anyone else. We can’t know the experiences, the genetics, the journey that brought someone to the point of, say, staging a crime scene in Central Park involving a bear carcass.
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Even very public people with very public families and very public heritage — we can’t know what lies at their white hot center or how it got there.
But de Tocqueville also said, Democracy broadens the space for individual freedom, but without strong character it can also invite new forms of soft despotism and control.
While we can’t understand the inner workings of the people I write about in this column, we can very clearly see their actions and the terrible outcomes of those actions. We know their character, at least as much as it pertains to their actions. It doesn’t matter what brought them to Central Park; all we really need to know is that they drove there with a dead bear in their trunk.
Maybe calling them Losers is kinda juvenile. But again, I defer to de Tocqueville: Stupid is as stupid does.
The wildfire spreading over our Democratic norms, public services, economy, scientific community, and over all things we hold dear was lit by people.
I could say these people suffer from poor character. Or I could just call them a bunch of Losers. Either way — and I’m being serious now — we have to know who these people are, and we have to call them out. That is why I write this column. Not to troll. But to document. ...

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