The left can be combative, that’s fine. But what turned many moderates against it, other than just straight up bad policy positions on wokeness and immigration, was condescension and thought policing. People care less that you’re a lying asshole than if you hold them in contempt and try and control what they’re allowed the think. The latter is perceived as a greater threat than the former. So fight all you want, but stop doing it with an air of smug moral and intellectual superiority. It’s a fast way to make everyone hate you.
We may agree in practice, but this seems like a contrived distinction in theory. Can you give examples of sentences that do one or the other?
To me, smugness is one thing, condescension and thought policing is another. What does it mean to "try to control what they're allowed to think," other than to cast judgment on the thoughts? And do you agree that's justified sometimes but not others, and the left got a reputation for thought policing primarily because they did it *too often,* not because it is always in principle bad?
If you think some ideas are morally abhorrent and intellectually indefensible, then almost by definition, you think that your ideas are morally and intellectually superior. Appealing to their superiority is the heart of political debate, on both sides; and yes: that is hard to do without condescension, on both sides. There exists something higher that we should hold in esteem, and something base and evil that we should speak as if it is lesser, because it is.
The distinction in framing is this: it’s okay to make arguments of the form ‘I think X is right, you think Y is right, I think Y is wrong and here’s why’. It is *not* okay to make arguments of the form ‘I think X is right and anyone who disagrees with that is a bad person’. In the latter framing you’re presuming that you don’t even have to make an argument which implies a complete lack of respect for your interlocutor. So to give a concrete example it’s fine to say ‘I think we should have levels of immigration and that concerns about cultural change are overblown’, it would not be okay to say ‘if you oppose increased immigration you must be a racist and a xenophobe’. Because again, in the latter framing you’re not even bothering to make an argument, you’re simply presuming moral superiority and castigating as morally deficient anyone who disagrees with you.
Sure. But I'm saying there exist some forms of Y where it's okay to say:
"I think Y is wrong, and here's why. Also, Y is so wrong that supporting it is reprehensible, and people who support it should feel ashamed."
Support for stricter immigration policies than I prefer is fine. Support for deporting migrants back to their home country is fine. Support for torturing peaceful migrants for life without trial is not fine, it's reveling in cruelty. And yes, other things equal, reveling in cruelty makes you a worse person.
So yes, there do exist positions/beliefs that are reprehensible enough that condemning people who hold them is in order, and that is normal and good. We’re under no obligation to have reasoned debates with literal Nazis. What this really is is a conversation about the Overton window. You can disagree respectfully with people whose views are inside it, you can condemn or at least ignore people whose views are outside of it. This is all very normal. But in the last decade the left has made the huge mistake of positing an extremely narrow and constantly moving Overton window on hot button issues like immigration, race, and trans issues and haughtily dismissing people with what are in fact very mainstream views accordingly.
I think a lot of the issue has been keyboard leftists being obnoxiously smug and condescending—like “it’s not my job to educate you!!” or weird gatekeeping like “you’re a cis het white male so your opinion is invalid!”
If someone has a good argument against someone else’s argument, I feel like you should just argue against the argument rather than explain, explaining why you don’t even have an obligation to address the argument
That said, making jokes in Internet arguments that go off the rails (like the person is clearly not interested in having a conversation and is posting wildly inaccurate things or resorting to ad hominem against you) is totally fine
As someone trained in argument, I think a lot of of extremely online liberals alienated normie voters by feeling compelled to virtue signal how smart they believe themselves to be. They also relied on self executing arguments of moral superiority rather than explaining why their argument is correct
Nobody likes a moral scold. Nobody likes someone who lets you know they think they are better than you.
But the criteria for drawing this line are quite vague, which is concerning if you agree that the left has done a poor job of drawing it in the right place.
I propose drawing the line practically rather than morally. Heap scorn on the abhorrent fringe, but understand the problem with heaping it on the general public. It actually does matter what percentage of the population you are numbing to shame. The median viewpoint is within the Overton window whether you like it or not, and you don't have to agree with it but you do have to assume people who hold that position could be among the reasonable, persuadable portion of the public.
The problem is you guys are so completely out of touch with reality that normal people just view you as insane.
For instance, your presidential candidate said she wanted to use taxpayer money for illegal immigrants sex change surgeries, and when given the chance, doubled down.
Your shining star mayor has said he’s modeling NYC on South Africa, a country engaging in white genocide. His staff are calling for the end of private property, hopefully harming white people disproportionately.
Your current pet issue is “weakly enforcing laws that have existed since Bill Clinton was president makes Trump a fascist.”
I could go on.
You keep your smarmy condescension. You’re only making yourself look more insane.
I'm more in touch with reality than you are. For example, South Africa is not engaging in white genocide, outside of your niche internet echo chamber's imagination. Normal people don't give a shit about that! The people who froth at the mouth about white genocide are the ones who are out of touch.
Nothing about deploying the national guard and harassing liberal cities for months is "weak" enforcement. When normal people see what ICE is doing more broadly, about 60% of them disapprove, think it has "gone to far," and oppose expanding its funding. Here are three polls confirming this from July, even before this week's shooting: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/23/politics/ice-unpopularity-trump-analysis
When normal people see Renee Good get shot that quickly, probably two-thirds of them think "that is awful, I don't want cops to be that trigger-happy, I may not agree with her but she didn't deserve to die."
Your side won by 1.5 points because of inflation, Biden's age, and a global incumbency penalty, and it's fed into your delusion about what the median voter believes on many other issues.
Your side wants you dead. They are importing millions of people to vote for them because their ideals are anti-American.
NYC decided to allow illegal immigrants to vote (lol) and now they have a communist government that is setting out to abolish private property. That is the plan. That is what you are fighting for.
>For instance, your presidential candidate said she wanted to use taxpayer money for illegal immigrants sex change surgeries, and when given the chance, doubled down.
This makes perfect sense if you accept the following two premises:
1. The state should pay for medically necessary procedures of people that it is imprisoning.
2. Sex change surgeries are sometimes medically necessary
I don't think point 1 is controversial at all. I probably wouldn't say 2, but I recognize that I (a manual labor approaching middle age) am not the best judge of what is medically necessary so would defer to an organization like the AMA. Since they do believe that those surgeries can be medically necessary, Kamala's conclusion seems reasonable enough.
Since you don't agree with it, I'm guessing you don't agree with point 2? If so, then what organization should decide what is medically necessary for prisoners?
I think the issue is that the reasonable stance of "i want illegal immigrants deported and a secure border" gets intentionally conflated with "i hate brown people".
Sometimes, yes. I explicitly listed disagreements on immigration policy as an example of where the left can overuse shame and mockery. There are understandable reasons to want to restrict immigration that do not reflect racial prejudice, and those should remain the subject of civil debate and reciprocal compromise.
Other times, the person will literally tell you "Thank god those 40 IQ nigger monkeys are going back to die in their shithole, get fucked libcuck." In 2026, this is not rare! You've likely seen these people on Substack. They're all over X. And far from an irrelevant fringe, they are echoed and egged on by the President of the United States, and by his senior-most officials.
The leaders of our government use the bully pulpit to say immigrants are eating the dogs, and raping the women, and to blame for every single problem in our country. They are dishonestly demonizing these very normal people to an extent that simply isn't compatible with the measured, understandable reasons to restrict immigration.
Racism exists in degrees, and the rot of racism in your party may not include you. But it does include the President of the United States, so we have to keep talking about it, no matter how defensive it makes people like you.
1. I agreed, in my post, that Democrats have used scorn too much over the past decade. Even if that were to blame for their electoral underperformance, it's compatible with my thesis that the optimal amount of scorn is above zero.
2. Besides, it's not clear - and begging the question - that Dems overusing scorn "caused them to lose" 2 of the last 3 elections. Both sides have used scorn extensively for each of the past 3 elections, and I don't think Democrats used any less of it in the run up to their 2020 victory than they did in 2016 or 2024. That suggests that elections are decided by other factors.
3. My main point is not that scorn is helpful to win elections. It could be in some circumstances, but I'm not confident about that. I think it's mostly irrelevant to elections. Rather, I think it's socially important that some conduct be shamed, so I need a compelling reason to silence my disgust towards that conduct. I don't need evidence that it's electorally helpful, because that's not the argument I'm making; where is the evidence that it's harmful, when directed towards the conduct I've described?
I probably should have said something more like "FOCUSING on scorn caused democrats to underperform". This is a little different than saying that scorn caused them to lose. And seems pretty aligned with your belief that it's mostly irrelevant to elections. Why should a political party continue to direct resources towards something irrelevant?
Ironically, I think that Hillary Clinton expressed this sort of sentiment well. Back in 2014, she gave an interview where she said "Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” That's a great criticism of how Obama described his foreign policy. Unfortunately, "don't do stupid shit" and other scornful criticisms of republicans seems like the main thing the democrats are running on now. Using scorn to stand in for an organizing principle, rather than scorn itself, is what I'd say caused the poor performances.
But since you're not really referring to elections or political strategy, that doesn't address your main point. I've never really bought into shame as an effective tool for changing behavior. But I'll admit that's based on things like Teach for America training, a half-remembered chapter from a pop science book and other wishy-washy milquetoast SJW stuff and that doesn't amount to a counterargument. I'll probably continue to not shame people though, while not thinking it's bad unless it distracts from more productive behavior.
Scorn and mockery absolutely works if you are antiestablishment and people see you as in rebellion against the people with the power advantage: in fact that's how a lot of progressive movements (feminist, black, LGBTQ+) gained steam in the first place. But if you become the establishment (as in you gain actual political/economic/social power to enforce your viewpoint), scorn and mockery stop looking like bottom-up rebellion and start looking like top-down oppression (which is hated in a low-trust society cynical of top-down social engineering).
What happened in the 2020s is that "woke" liberal-progressive social movements like LGBTQ+ and anti-climate change were so successful they managed to penetrate the entire mainstream, and completely capture the economic elite. The moment big companies started putting pride flags everywhere and people started actually facing political/economic/social consequences for "hate speech" (as opposed to just scorn and mockery), liberals started to look extremely oppressive to the average person, and this resulted in an antiestablishment reactionary movement from the right.
"The narrative that liberals drove voters into Republicans’ arms because of their tone is most obviously undercut by Republicans’ tone, which has been even sharper for just as long. The right uses scorn and mockery all the time, and that does not stop them from picking up swing votes."
It's been a while since I've felt like the right had any power to shame me, but I do remember the days of the moral majority and the post-9/11 "patriotism." But the problem with drawing an equivalence is that this misses that the two sides purport to be offering different things in the first place. You do have to be better than the other guys at what is supposed to be your selling point in the first place.
When the left implicitly understands its position as the dominant culture that can pressure everyone to give lip service to the superiority of its values, this undercuts the basic premises of the leftist worldview in a way it does not when the shoe is on the other foot. Conservative's appeal never came from not being "The Man." The cultural left exists to offer liberation from stifling conformity to the dominant culture. When the left is stifling and conformist, when it is led by overzealous missionaries who think everyone should adopt their precise values or rot in hell, its appeal is much narrower.
There is a mirror image problem on the right, where they have decided that anyone who lets principles stand in their way is a cuck fighting with one hand behind their back. Conservatives are supposed to offer Mom and apple pie at the church potluck and everything good and right and beautiful about our glorious culture. If instead they seem crass and immoral and ugly, that is a bigger problem for them than it is for the left. They should stand for a culture most people want to conserve; they need to be the people we want to be a society with, and right now they don't look that way.
The left isn't supposed to be the dominant culture and the right isn't supposed to not be, and neither side really knows how to handle this situation. So both sides of the culture war are each terrible in the specific way that is supposed to be their comparative advantage. Granted, the culture war should not be so central to our politics. There are more important things going on.
As someone that is probably 65/35 right/left I come to substack to find my blindspots and do my best not to bet pulled into the swamp of yelling and labeling. I honestly want to know why I'm wrong on things I've been thinking and reading about forever. I've done my fair share of reactionary dunks or attempted dunks because it's a dopamine hit, but following left and left leaning serious publications to get to the lynchpin disagreements between two hypothetical rational people on a hot button issue and making a conclusion is the goal. I also keep in mind that even the best economists and physicists can be in full disagreement on much more quantifiable issues than how to run a country of 350mm people reminds me that even with the same hard evidence in front of us we can diagnose problems differently and suggest different strategies to solve problems.
What seems like a horrific injustice to me may not seem like a big deal or even just a "cost of doing business" as a means to a greater end to someone on the left, and vice versa. There are so many examples of this. What I've found is that even with hard facts it's nearly impossible to change someone's mind because of values, worldview, and god only knows what else. It seems now we aren't really even able to properly diagnose societal problems let alone fix them.
It's true. Facts needs a compelling warrant to link claims and evidence. Rhetoric has been dealing with the limitations of logos for 2,500 years. It's worth reading Aristotle's treatise on the subject, though you should avoid some of the lesser translations. Honestly studying rhetoric seriously changed my life. Book 2 of "Rhetoric," on emotions, is the bee's knees.
That's cool that you use it with such discipline - I admire that. I agree with you about human psychology and the complexity of these issues, and how that makes politics really messy to think through. If everyone shared our mindfulness of that challenge and our earnest curiosity about blind spots, the world would be a much better place.
People like you are not among those I think liberals should scorn or mock. I went to great lengths to clarify that, to the point of writing a 4500 word preface piece clarifying all the many people I am NOT talking about. When you read both of my pieces in conjunction, I hope you can see and feel the distinction I'm drawing.
I also hope you will allow me to say a second thing, in the next breath, to a different of group of people, which is: *fuck everything about that evil dishonest bullshit you're cheering.* I hope you can see that some evil dishonest bullshit is going on, which the complexity of politics cannot justify; and how important it is to me that I say so, lest I burst at the rage of containing it. And I hope you will extend me the emotional grace to forgive any glancing, accidental blows percieved by you who are merely 65-35 conservative, without cheering on the evil dishonest bullshit.
At the risk of pissing you off I honestly have no problem with Trump other than his general demeanor and punchable face. His rhetoric is awful and he's a disgusting person but I voted for pretty much everything he's doing as president. Of course there are things like the Iran strike and Venezuela that I had no idea about, however I didn't vote for Obama so he could execute endless drone strikes or take out Khadafi.
Skimmed and simply don’t agree. Yesterday my Canadian liberal friend went on a tirade about how the Democrats’ great reanimated corpse strategy of ‘24 was itself virtually undemocratic. That’s the tiiiip of the iceberg in why I, an Obama, Romney, Clinton, Biden, Abstain voter am never dealing with the Dems again until there’s real evidence of reform. Your party, both parties, have got real fucking problems and approaching this moment in history from the vantage of one being the singular party of democratic legitimacy is going to yield vacuous nonsense for strategy.
EDIT - Nevermind. I see this “the problem with our democracy is the other half of the country” bit is your whole… thing.
But unwisely choosing to run for a second term is wildly different than, for example, trying to run for a third term, or ignoring Congress and the courts, etc. One is a selfish strategic error, and the other flouts the Constitution. The threats those things pose to democratic legitimacy are not proportional.
I am a reluctant Democratic voter myself. Of course the Democrats have real problems! They're just much smaller and better-intended than the Republicans' problems.
See we just can’t indulge that last claim anymore. Not least because their worst instincts are provoking the Republicans’ worst. A dilemma is a choice between similarly bad outcomes. You can’t beat a dilemma scenario by claiming one of the similarly bad outcomes is preferable - you have to reframe it so you get less bad options.
The Democratic Party’s presumption that only they have the holy covenant with the god of democracy is what enables their worst impulses. They won’t be disabused if swing voters who are conscious of the game theory dynamics keep signaling they’ll vote Blue No Matter Who or whatever.
But it's not a dilemma. It's not similarly bad. The Democrats' worst impulses have never approached the level of naked corruption and state-backed illiberalism the Trump administration has carried out in its first year, whether you want to see that or not. Whether you want to see the distinction or not, Biden running again despite most people not wanting him to is just categorically different than that.
You and I may differ on exactly how much the US government needs to comport itself by the liberals’ end of history fantasy to remain legitimate. We were sold a bill of goods that I say has been exposed as a completely toothless, ideologically deranged project that China and Russia were, mercifully, defeating anyway.
And I repeat “[Democrats in ‘24] were virtually undemocratic.” My model, for better or worse, is that being more subtle doesn’t make it at all better. Trump is stress testing an unconstitutional third term; Democrats unconstitutionally ran the executive branch with an unelected committee of party grandees and literally tried to insinuate this was the reason no one should be concerned about Biden’s age. They nakedly stated their comfort with this principle, so color me a bullshit-caller on the claim Republicans are worse.
Liberalism and democracy have always needed to balance each other out. Completely ignoring liberal internationalism’s imminent defeat by China, all of us have the prerogative to reject a liberal fundamentalism that tries to box democratic oversight as a performative function that can’t actually change the liberal agenda. This MAGA movement may very well over correct but I disagree with your opinion that this is worse than the liberal fundamentalism it’s lashing out against.
Yeah, I was thinking about that with how we had for perhaps a year, if not more, an unknown unelected committee of Democrat partisans run the executive branch and lied to the American public about who was using Presidential authority.
Talk about corruption, the day before leaving office having someone give a blanket Presidential pardon to everyone involved in scandal and political prosecutions within their own admin, party, (and family) is fucking wild. I fully expect Trump to do it this time now and I'm not going to give a shit when people crow over it after I was denied the closure from the last admin.
We had Trump getting politically prosecuted in Democrat run courts across the country. States changing laws to be allowed to prosecute him with people running entire campaigns to prosecute. We had courts willing to suspend elections as they determined him an illegitimate candidate like we were in some Banana Republic.
I am still not sure how much of our foreign policy was even overseen by Biden. Was he making calls with the escalations in the war in Ukraine? Israel? Or was he kind of just giving a speech every here and there with everyone else handling the executive orders and deployment of weapons?
It was the most bizarre feeling of oligarchy I've had with US politics so far.
Right? What was it like in the last two months of Biden's term, a $6 billion EPA grant walked out the door to a non-profit that had only been incorporated six months earlier? I think you have to be bubbled in the lib echo chamber not to see how batshit sideways the Biden admin was.
Which, I go back to, makes it a dilemma. We don't have good options and that will only change if we can punish the partisans for not holding their side to account. So far the only thing I've worked up is you have to stiff arm anyone that says we have to practically treat one party as the only problem.
You'd have to have clout for that though. You don't.
Your coalition no longer contains enough of the center to have any real impact outside enclaves already under your control: this is fine, but stop trying to forcibly export ideas no one else wants.
The anti-Trump coalition currently contains the median voter. It was only 1.5 points from the median voter in 2024, and Trump has grown less popular since. I am not a far left progressive, and the particular New Right accounts I'm referring to on Substack are more out of touch with how ordinary people think than I am.
There is a vast partisan disparity with regard to your "List B", with Democrats being worse on all points. There is extraordinary self-delusion in believing otherwise.
Your brilliant strategy is doomed by horrid introspection.
Interesting article with a lot to think about, but a footnote jumped out at me.
Munoz's distinction between drawing and policing is about whose behavior you are commenting on. Drawing is about limiting your own behavior while policing is about limiting the behavior(using shame or moral criticism)of other people within your ingroup that you believe have broadly the same goal. He doesn't reference limiting behaviors of people you don't identify with and you don't believe share your goals.
I don't think this contradicts you all since you are focused on shaming the outgroup who don't share your goals or values. Maybe he would disagree with you about which people fit that description. That would involve discussing Trump's goals which is orthogonal to whether shaming is an effective way to reach your own goals.
For example, Biden drew a line when he refused to go on Rogan, but he policed a line when he told a political ally to refuse to go on Rogan. Bernie isn't transphobic (relative to the general population) so Biden's shaming of the Rogan interview was trading political advantage (since the rogan interview increased the chances of a nontransphobic president)for moral purity. You're arguing that democrats should be shaming transphobes (assuming you believe Rogan's beliefs on gender are shameful).
Another thing that jumps out at me is your use of "Big Lie". Why do you use that term?
As I'm sure you know, this originates with Hitler who accused Jews of intentionally creating a massive lie to trick the public, since that's easier to do than to perpetuate a small lie. Specifically, he called the idea that a German general was responsible for the loss of wwi (rather than the Jews themselves).
I always thought that this was an odd etymology for a term used by liberals. After all, if the 2020 stolen election theory is the Big Lie, then that's analagous to the "lie" that the German military lost the war. And Trump(spreading thr big lie) is analagous to the Jews and you (who are able to see through the Big Lie) are Hitler?
That's obviously an uncharitable way to describe the current use of the term, but it's bizarre to me that mainstream democrats intentionally mirrored vocabulary from Mein Kampf. Even if someone instead accuses Hitler of practicing the Big Lie, rather than the Jews, it is still treating Mein Kampf as a good resource for political strategy or understanding society.
The "shaming within my ingroup" vs. "shaming outside my ingroup" distinction is not one I picked up from Munoz, but an interesting idea that I'll have to think more about.
I actually did not know about the origins of the "Big Lie" term. I had no idea it related to Hitler at all, and I bet most on the left don't either. And I actually suspect it originated independently of that history.
Trump lies constantly, all the time, for 12 years now at the forefront of American politics. But there was one lie he told that was uniquely, norm-breakingly toxic to the legitimacy and civility of America's democratic system. That lie - that he rightfully won the 2020 election - was morally and politically BIGGER than all the rest. And even with your historical context, I think that meaning is reasonable, and is something most readers intuitively understand, without any association with Hitler required.
They're all intentionally using Hitler's words, although are more consciously referencing the people who accused Hitler of describing his own behavior. It then caught on enough that the origin was no longer mentioned, probably due to the impeachment trial and the frequent repetition of the term.
Just to clarify more, I don't think Biden is trying to do some sort of nazi dog-whistle when he uses a term from Mein Kampf to describe his enemies. I just think it's odd. This is the first time I read the phrase outside of a newspaper so thought I'd ask. I don't see a need for a proper noun phrase for this, so I've never considered using it myself.
After a bit of time digesting this, I think I have the same reaction as if I only read the headline.
Why should liberals continue to do something that cause them to lose 2 elections against a game show host? Would Hillary have won if she said that half of Trump's voters were deplorables? Would Harris win if she was willing to call Trump a fascist? No, since those things happened and then they lost.
I think you make a good case why it's morally permissible to use scorn, but not why it would be effective. The last 3 democratic campaigns were built around scorning Trump and none of them did as well as they should have. What evidence is there that scorn is a politically useful strategy for democrats?
And it's tangential to this, but what do you think of substacks like Jeff Tiedrich's? He's an immensely popular substacker and I don't think he writes much besides scorn.
What you believe is moral imperative is what I voted for. In many cases Trump has the law (passed before 2015) on our side, for example immigration law.
Having witnessed progressive "outreach" over the latest decade, I have no confidence in their ability to not shoot themselves in the foot. As soon as their sensibilities are challenged, they reflexively attack.
The best argument for conservatism is a 2 minute conversation with your average leftist.
Scorn and mockery of the opposition, cancelling etc sure seem to have worked out well for the Democrats and the rest of the American leftist political establishment over the last few years.
Continuing to use the same tactics would be....a bold strategy in my view. I'm sure that those on the right who read your article are delighted though. Never interrupt your enemy while he's making a mistake, and all that.
The left can be combative, that’s fine. But what turned many moderates against it, other than just straight up bad policy positions on wokeness and immigration, was condescension and thought policing. People care less that you’re a lying asshole than if you hold them in contempt and try and control what they’re allowed the think. The latter is perceived as a greater threat than the former. So fight all you want, but stop doing it with an air of smug moral and intellectual superiority. It’s a fast way to make everyone hate you.
We may agree in practice, but this seems like a contrived distinction in theory. Can you give examples of sentences that do one or the other?
To me, smugness is one thing, condescension and thought policing is another. What does it mean to "try to control what they're allowed to think," other than to cast judgment on the thoughts? And do you agree that's justified sometimes but not others, and the left got a reputation for thought policing primarily because they did it *too often,* not because it is always in principle bad?
If you think some ideas are morally abhorrent and intellectually indefensible, then almost by definition, you think that your ideas are morally and intellectually superior. Appealing to their superiority is the heart of political debate, on both sides; and yes: that is hard to do without condescension, on both sides. There exists something higher that we should hold in esteem, and something base and evil that we should speak as if it is lesser, because it is.
The distinction in framing is this: it’s okay to make arguments of the form ‘I think X is right, you think Y is right, I think Y is wrong and here’s why’. It is *not* okay to make arguments of the form ‘I think X is right and anyone who disagrees with that is a bad person’. In the latter framing you’re presuming that you don’t even have to make an argument which implies a complete lack of respect for your interlocutor. So to give a concrete example it’s fine to say ‘I think we should have levels of immigration and that concerns about cultural change are overblown’, it would not be okay to say ‘if you oppose increased immigration you must be a racist and a xenophobe’. Because again, in the latter framing you’re not even bothering to make an argument, you’re simply presuming moral superiority and castigating as morally deficient anyone who disagrees with you.
Sure. But I'm saying there exist some forms of Y where it's okay to say:
"I think Y is wrong, and here's why. Also, Y is so wrong that supporting it is reprehensible, and people who support it should feel ashamed."
Support for stricter immigration policies than I prefer is fine. Support for deporting migrants back to their home country is fine. Support for torturing peaceful migrants for life without trial is not fine, it's reveling in cruelty. And yes, other things equal, reveling in cruelty makes you a worse person.
So yes, there do exist positions/beliefs that are reprehensible enough that condemning people who hold them is in order, and that is normal and good. We’re under no obligation to have reasoned debates with literal Nazis. What this really is is a conversation about the Overton window. You can disagree respectfully with people whose views are inside it, you can condemn or at least ignore people whose views are outside of it. This is all very normal. But in the last decade the left has made the huge mistake of positing an extremely narrow and constantly moving Overton window on hot button issues like immigration, race, and trans issues and haughtily dismissing people with what are in fact very mainstream views accordingly.
I think a lot of the issue has been keyboard leftists being obnoxiously smug and condescending—like “it’s not my job to educate you!!” or weird gatekeeping like “you’re a cis het white male so your opinion is invalid!”
If someone has a good argument against someone else’s argument, I feel like you should just argue against the argument rather than explain, explaining why you don’t even have an obligation to address the argument
That said, making jokes in Internet arguments that go off the rails (like the person is clearly not interested in having a conversation and is posting wildly inaccurate things or resorting to ad hominem against you) is totally fine
As someone trained in argument, I think a lot of of extremely online liberals alienated normie voters by feeling compelled to virtue signal how smart they believe themselves to be. They also relied on self executing arguments of moral superiority rather than explaining why their argument is correct
Nobody likes a moral scold. Nobody likes someone who lets you know they think they are better than you.
But the criteria for drawing this line are quite vague, which is concerning if you agree that the left has done a poor job of drawing it in the right place.
I propose drawing the line practically rather than morally. Heap scorn on the abhorrent fringe, but understand the problem with heaping it on the general public. It actually does matter what percentage of the population you are numbing to shame. The median viewpoint is within the Overton window whether you like it or not, and you don't have to agree with it but you do have to assume people who hold that position could be among the reasonable, persuadable portion of the public.
The problem is you guys are so completely out of touch with reality that normal people just view you as insane.
For instance, your presidential candidate said she wanted to use taxpayer money for illegal immigrants sex change surgeries, and when given the chance, doubled down.
Your shining star mayor has said he’s modeling NYC on South Africa, a country engaging in white genocide. His staff are calling for the end of private property, hopefully harming white people disproportionately.
Your current pet issue is “weakly enforcing laws that have existed since Bill Clinton was president makes Trump a fascist.”
I could go on.
You keep your smarmy condescension. You’re only making yourself look more insane.
I'm more in touch with reality than you are. For example, South Africa is not engaging in white genocide, outside of your niche internet echo chamber's imagination. Normal people don't give a shit about that! The people who froth at the mouth about white genocide are the ones who are out of touch.
Nothing about deploying the national guard and harassing liberal cities for months is "weak" enforcement. When normal people see what ICE is doing more broadly, about 60% of them disapprove, think it has "gone to far," and oppose expanding its funding. Here are three polls confirming this from July, even before this week's shooting: https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/23/politics/ice-unpopularity-trump-analysis
When normal people see Renee Good get shot that quickly, probably two-thirds of them think "that is awful, I don't want cops to be that trigger-happy, I may not agree with her but she didn't deserve to die."
Your side won by 1.5 points because of inflation, Biden's age, and a global incumbency penalty, and it's fed into your delusion about what the median voter believes on many other issues.
Yeah, keep doing that.
Your side wants you dead. They are importing millions of people to vote for them because their ideals are anti-American.
NYC decided to allow illegal immigrants to vote (lol) and now they have a communist government that is setting out to abolish private property. That is the plan. That is what you are fighting for.
Good luck.
>For instance, your presidential candidate said she wanted to use taxpayer money for illegal immigrants sex change surgeries, and when given the chance, doubled down.
This makes perfect sense if you accept the following two premises:
1. The state should pay for medically necessary procedures of people that it is imprisoning.
2. Sex change surgeries are sometimes medically necessary
I don't think point 1 is controversial at all. I probably wouldn't say 2, but I recognize that I (a manual labor approaching middle age) am not the best judge of what is medically necessary so would defer to an organization like the AMA. Since they do believe that those surgeries can be medically necessary, Kamala's conclusion seems reasonable enough.
Since you don't agree with it, I'm guessing you don't agree with point 2? If so, then what organization should decide what is medically necessary for prisoners?
The state has no duty to illegal immigrants. It’s like saying you have to feed someone dinner and give them a bed when they break into your house.
The inability to acknowledge simple obvious realities is destroying civilization.
I think the issue is that the reasonable stance of "i want illegal immigrants deported and a secure border" gets intentionally conflated with "i hate brown people".
Which is just disingenuous
Sometimes, yes. I explicitly listed disagreements on immigration policy as an example of where the left can overuse shame and mockery. There are understandable reasons to want to restrict immigration that do not reflect racial prejudice, and those should remain the subject of civil debate and reciprocal compromise.
Other times, the person will literally tell you "Thank god those 40 IQ nigger monkeys are going back to die in their shithole, get fucked libcuck." In 2026, this is not rare! You've likely seen these people on Substack. They're all over X. And far from an irrelevant fringe, they are echoed and egged on by the President of the United States, and by his senior-most officials.
The leaders of our government use the bully pulpit to say immigrants are eating the dogs, and raping the women, and to blame for every single problem in our country. They are dishonestly demonizing these very normal people to an extent that simply isn't compatible with the measured, understandable reasons to restrict immigration.
Racism exists in degrees, and the rot of racism in your party may not include you. But it does include the President of the United States, so we have to keep talking about it, no matter how defensive it makes people like you.
It's not discomfort. It's being completely over the reflexive cries of racism over the last 20 years. Donald Trump is a response to that.
Bro you are so far up your ass you for a citation for people not liking groups who insult them.
Touch grass.
I've been quite specific about who I'm insulting, it's a small minority of groyper edgelords, and I don't care if they don't like me.
100%.
1. I agreed, in my post, that Democrats have used scorn too much over the past decade. Even if that were to blame for their electoral underperformance, it's compatible with my thesis that the optimal amount of scorn is above zero.
2. Besides, it's not clear - and begging the question - that Dems overusing scorn "caused them to lose" 2 of the last 3 elections. Both sides have used scorn extensively for each of the past 3 elections, and I don't think Democrats used any less of it in the run up to their 2020 victory than they did in 2016 or 2024. That suggests that elections are decided by other factors.
3. My main point is not that scorn is helpful to win elections. It could be in some circumstances, but I'm not confident about that. I think it's mostly irrelevant to elections. Rather, I think it's socially important that some conduct be shamed, so I need a compelling reason to silence my disgust towards that conduct. I don't need evidence that it's electorally helpful, because that's not the argument I'm making; where is the evidence that it's harmful, when directed towards the conduct I've described?
I probably should have said something more like "FOCUSING on scorn caused democrats to underperform". This is a little different than saying that scorn caused them to lose. And seems pretty aligned with your belief that it's mostly irrelevant to elections. Why should a political party continue to direct resources towards something irrelevant?
Ironically, I think that Hillary Clinton expressed this sort of sentiment well. Back in 2014, she gave an interview where she said "Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.” That's a great criticism of how Obama described his foreign policy. Unfortunately, "don't do stupid shit" and other scornful criticisms of republicans seems like the main thing the democrats are running on now. Using scorn to stand in for an organizing principle, rather than scorn itself, is what I'd say caused the poor performances.
But since you're not really referring to elections or political strategy, that doesn't address your main point. I've never really bought into shame as an effective tool for changing behavior. But I'll admit that's based on things like Teach for America training, a half-remembered chapter from a pop science book and other wishy-washy milquetoast SJW stuff and that doesn't amount to a counterargument. I'll probably continue to not shame people though, while not thinking it's bad unless it distracts from more productive behavior.
Scorn and mockery absolutely works if you are antiestablishment and people see you as in rebellion against the people with the power advantage: in fact that's how a lot of progressive movements (feminist, black, LGBTQ+) gained steam in the first place. But if you become the establishment (as in you gain actual political/economic/social power to enforce your viewpoint), scorn and mockery stop looking like bottom-up rebellion and start looking like top-down oppression (which is hated in a low-trust society cynical of top-down social engineering).
What happened in the 2020s is that "woke" liberal-progressive social movements like LGBTQ+ and anti-climate change were so successful they managed to penetrate the entire mainstream, and completely capture the economic elite. The moment big companies started putting pride flags everywhere and people started actually facing political/economic/social consequences for "hate speech" (as opposed to just scorn and mockery), liberals started to look extremely oppressive to the average person, and this resulted in an antiestablishment reactionary movement from the right.
I do want to push back on this part:
"The narrative that liberals drove voters into Republicans’ arms because of their tone is most obviously undercut by Republicans’ tone, which has been even sharper for just as long. The right uses scorn and mockery all the time, and that does not stop them from picking up swing votes."
It's been a while since I've felt like the right had any power to shame me, but I do remember the days of the moral majority and the post-9/11 "patriotism." But the problem with drawing an equivalence is that this misses that the two sides purport to be offering different things in the first place. You do have to be better than the other guys at what is supposed to be your selling point in the first place.
When the left implicitly understands its position as the dominant culture that can pressure everyone to give lip service to the superiority of its values, this undercuts the basic premises of the leftist worldview in a way it does not when the shoe is on the other foot. Conservative's appeal never came from not being "The Man." The cultural left exists to offer liberation from stifling conformity to the dominant culture. When the left is stifling and conformist, when it is led by overzealous missionaries who think everyone should adopt their precise values or rot in hell, its appeal is much narrower.
There is a mirror image problem on the right, where they have decided that anyone who lets principles stand in their way is a cuck fighting with one hand behind their back. Conservatives are supposed to offer Mom and apple pie at the church potluck and everything good and right and beautiful about our glorious culture. If instead they seem crass and immoral and ugly, that is a bigger problem for them than it is for the left. They should stand for a culture most people want to conserve; they need to be the people we want to be a society with, and right now they don't look that way.
The left isn't supposed to be the dominant culture and the right isn't supposed to not be, and neither side really knows how to handle this situation. So both sides of the culture war are each terrible in the specific way that is supposed to be their comparative advantage. Granted, the culture war should not be so central to our politics. There are more important things going on.
As someone that is probably 65/35 right/left I come to substack to find my blindspots and do my best not to bet pulled into the swamp of yelling and labeling. I honestly want to know why I'm wrong on things I've been thinking and reading about forever. I've done my fair share of reactionary dunks or attempted dunks because it's a dopamine hit, but following left and left leaning serious publications to get to the lynchpin disagreements between two hypothetical rational people on a hot button issue and making a conclusion is the goal. I also keep in mind that even the best economists and physicists can be in full disagreement on much more quantifiable issues than how to run a country of 350mm people reminds me that even with the same hard evidence in front of us we can diagnose problems differently and suggest different strategies to solve problems.
What seems like a horrific injustice to me may not seem like a big deal or even just a "cost of doing business" as a means to a greater end to someone on the left, and vice versa. There are so many examples of this. What I've found is that even with hard facts it's nearly impossible to change someone's mind because of values, worldview, and god only knows what else. It seems now we aren't really even able to properly diagnose societal problems let alone fix them.
It's true. Facts needs a compelling warrant to link claims and evidence. Rhetoric has been dealing with the limitations of logos for 2,500 years. It's worth reading Aristotle's treatise on the subject, though you should avoid some of the lesser translations. Honestly studying rhetoric seriously changed my life. Book 2 of "Rhetoric," on emotions, is the bee's knees.
That's cool that you use it with such discipline - I admire that. I agree with you about human psychology and the complexity of these issues, and how that makes politics really messy to think through. If everyone shared our mindfulness of that challenge and our earnest curiosity about blind spots, the world would be a much better place.
People like you are not among those I think liberals should scorn or mock. I went to great lengths to clarify that, to the point of writing a 4500 word preface piece clarifying all the many people I am NOT talking about. When you read both of my pieces in conjunction, I hope you can see and feel the distinction I'm drawing.
Three Types of Trump Supporters - by Andrew Doris https://share.google/2B983vtqjkknD6JLf
I also hope you will allow me to say a second thing, in the next breath, to a different of group of people, which is: *fuck everything about that evil dishonest bullshit you're cheering.* I hope you can see that some evil dishonest bullshit is going on, which the complexity of politics cannot justify; and how important it is to me that I say so, lest I burst at the rage of containing it. And I hope you will extend me the emotional grace to forgive any glancing, accidental blows percieved by you who are merely 65-35 conservative, without cheering on the evil dishonest bullshit.
At the risk of pissing you off I honestly have no problem with Trump other than his general demeanor and punchable face. His rhetoric is awful and he's a disgusting person but I voted for pretty much everything he's doing as president. Of course there are things like the Iran strike and Venezuela that I had no idea about, however I didn't vote for Obama so he could execute endless drone strikes or take out Khadafi.
tl;dr
Skimmed and simply don’t agree. Yesterday my Canadian liberal friend went on a tirade about how the Democrats’ great reanimated corpse strategy of ‘24 was itself virtually undemocratic. That’s the tiiiip of the iceberg in why I, an Obama, Romney, Clinton, Biden, Abstain voter am never dealing with the Dems again until there’s real evidence of reform. Your party, both parties, have got real fucking problems and approaching this moment in history from the vantage of one being the singular party of democratic legitimacy is going to yield vacuous nonsense for strategy.
EDIT - Nevermind. I see this “the problem with our democracy is the other half of the country” bit is your whole… thing.
I agree with your Canadian liberal friend and wrote about it at the time: https://exasperatedalien.substack.com/p/bidens-appeal-to-democracy-is-an.
But unwisely choosing to run for a second term is wildly different than, for example, trying to run for a third term, or ignoring Congress and the courts, etc. One is a selfish strategic error, and the other flouts the Constitution. The threats those things pose to democratic legitimacy are not proportional.
I am a reluctant Democratic voter myself. Of course the Democrats have real problems! They're just much smaller and better-intended than the Republicans' problems.
See we just can’t indulge that last claim anymore. Not least because their worst instincts are provoking the Republicans’ worst. A dilemma is a choice between similarly bad outcomes. You can’t beat a dilemma scenario by claiming one of the similarly bad outcomes is preferable - you have to reframe it so you get less bad options.
The Democratic Party’s presumption that only they have the holy covenant with the god of democracy is what enables their worst impulses. They won’t be disabused if swing voters who are conscious of the game theory dynamics keep signaling they’ll vote Blue No Matter Who or whatever.
But it's not a dilemma. It's not similarly bad. The Democrats' worst impulses have never approached the level of naked corruption and state-backed illiberalism the Trump administration has carried out in its first year, whether you want to see that or not. Whether you want to see the distinction or not, Biden running again despite most people not wanting him to is just categorically different than that.
You and I may differ on exactly how much the US government needs to comport itself by the liberals’ end of history fantasy to remain legitimate. We were sold a bill of goods that I say has been exposed as a completely toothless, ideologically deranged project that China and Russia were, mercifully, defeating anyway.
And I repeat “[Democrats in ‘24] were virtually undemocratic.” My model, for better or worse, is that being more subtle doesn’t make it at all better. Trump is stress testing an unconstitutional third term; Democrats unconstitutionally ran the executive branch with an unelected committee of party grandees and literally tried to insinuate this was the reason no one should be concerned about Biden’s age. They nakedly stated their comfort with this principle, so color me a bullshit-caller on the claim Republicans are worse.
Liberalism and democracy have always needed to balance each other out. Completely ignoring liberal internationalism’s imminent defeat by China, all of us have the prerogative to reject a liberal fundamentalism that tries to box democratic oversight as a performative function that can’t actually change the liberal agenda. This MAGA movement may very well over correct but I disagree with your opinion that this is worse than the liberal fundamentalism it’s lashing out against.
Yeah, I was thinking about that with how we had for perhaps a year, if not more, an unknown unelected committee of Democrat partisans run the executive branch and lied to the American public about who was using Presidential authority.
Talk about corruption, the day before leaving office having someone give a blanket Presidential pardon to everyone involved in scandal and political prosecutions within their own admin, party, (and family) is fucking wild. I fully expect Trump to do it this time now and I'm not going to give a shit when people crow over it after I was denied the closure from the last admin.
We had Trump getting politically prosecuted in Democrat run courts across the country. States changing laws to be allowed to prosecute him with people running entire campaigns to prosecute. We had courts willing to suspend elections as they determined him an illegitimate candidate like we were in some Banana Republic.
I am still not sure how much of our foreign policy was even overseen by Biden. Was he making calls with the escalations in the war in Ukraine? Israel? Or was he kind of just giving a speech every here and there with everyone else handling the executive orders and deployment of weapons?
It was the most bizarre feeling of oligarchy I've had with US politics so far.
Right? What was it like in the last two months of Biden's term, a $6 billion EPA grant walked out the door to a non-profit that had only been incorporated six months earlier? I think you have to be bubbled in the lib echo chamber not to see how batshit sideways the Biden admin was.
Which, I go back to, makes it a dilemma. We don't have good options and that will only change if we can punish the partisans for not holding their side to account. So far the only thing I've worked up is you have to stiff arm anyone that says we have to practically treat one party as the only problem.
Well said. This guy seems to think it's still 2020.
You'd have to have clout for that though. You don't.
Your coalition no longer contains enough of the center to have any real impact outside enclaves already under your control: this is fine, but stop trying to forcibly export ideas no one else wants.
The anti-Trump coalition currently contains the median voter. It was only 1.5 points from the median voter in 2024, and Trump has grown less popular since. I am not a far left progressive, and the particular New Right accounts I'm referring to on Substack are more out of touch with how ordinary people think than I am.
🤣 because everyone is so swayed by the scorn and mockery of Liberals.
No one gives a shit about left wing scorn anymore.
There is a vast partisan disparity with regard to your "List B", with Democrats being worse on all points. There is extraordinary self-delusion in believing otherwise.
Your brilliant strategy is doomed by horrid introspection.
Well, we agree there is extraordinary self-delusion going on.
Could you expand on democrats doing the following?
Naked corruption and criminal activity
White supremacy (ex: Nick Fuentes) or white Christian nationalism
Performative cruelty (ex: CECOT) against outgroups
Attempts to overturn an election, or believing/propagating the Big Lie
Intentional, habitual lying about the very basics of what’s going on
That he put pointing out that the most brazenly fraudulent election in American history was indeed fraudulent on his B List, is not a good sign.
Interesting article with a lot to think about, but a footnote jumped out at me.
Munoz's distinction between drawing and policing is about whose behavior you are commenting on. Drawing is about limiting your own behavior while policing is about limiting the behavior(using shame or moral criticism)of other people within your ingroup that you believe have broadly the same goal. He doesn't reference limiting behaviors of people you don't identify with and you don't believe share your goals.
I don't think this contradicts you all since you are focused on shaming the outgroup who don't share your goals or values. Maybe he would disagree with you about which people fit that description. That would involve discussing Trump's goals which is orthogonal to whether shaming is an effective way to reach your own goals.
For example, Biden drew a line when he refused to go on Rogan, but he policed a line when he told a political ally to refuse to go on Rogan. Bernie isn't transphobic (relative to the general population) so Biden's shaming of the Rogan interview was trading political advantage (since the rogan interview increased the chances of a nontransphobic president)for moral purity. You're arguing that democrats should be shaming transphobes (assuming you believe Rogan's beliefs on gender are shameful).
Another thing that jumps out at me is your use of "Big Lie". Why do you use that term?
As I'm sure you know, this originates with Hitler who accused Jews of intentionally creating a massive lie to trick the public, since that's easier to do than to perpetuate a small lie. Specifically, he called the idea that a German general was responsible for the loss of wwi (rather than the Jews themselves).
I always thought that this was an odd etymology for a term used by liberals. After all, if the 2020 stolen election theory is the Big Lie, then that's analagous to the "lie" that the German military lost the war. And Trump(spreading thr big lie) is analagous to the Jews and you (who are able to see through the Big Lie) are Hitler?
That's obviously an uncharitable way to describe the current use of the term, but it's bizarre to me that mainstream democrats intentionally mirrored vocabulary from Mein Kampf. Even if someone instead accuses Hitler of practicing the Big Lie, rather than the Jews, it is still treating Mein Kampf as a good resource for political strategy or understanding society.
The "shaming within my ingroup" vs. "shaming outside my ingroup" distinction is not one I picked up from Munoz, but an interesting idea that I'll have to think more about.
I actually did not know about the origins of the "Big Lie" term. I had no idea it related to Hitler at all, and I bet most on the left don't either. And I actually suspect it originated independently of that history.
Trump lies constantly, all the time, for 12 years now at the forefront of American politics. But there was one lie he told that was uniquely, norm-breakingly toxic to the legitimacy and civility of America's democratic system. That lie - that he rightfully won the 2020 election - was morally and politically BIGGER than all the rest. And even with your historical context, I think that meaning is reasonable, and is something most readers intuitively understand, without any association with Hitler required.
The earliest usage of the term(in this context) that I could find is a Biden speech on Jan 8th, where he specifically mentions the Nazi origin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HbI5nXQRKQ
I frequently saw media outlets refer to Hitler while defining it, such as Professor Snyder in this NPR story.
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/15/957141129/can-the-forces-unleashed-by-trumps-big-election-lie-be-undone
Or this NYT editorial which quotes Mein Kampf:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/world/europe/trump-truth-lies-power.html
They're all intentionally using Hitler's words, although are more consciously referencing the people who accused Hitler of describing his own behavior. It then caught on enough that the origin was no longer mentioned, probably due to the impeachment trial and the frequent repetition of the term.
Just to clarify more, I don't think Biden is trying to do some sort of nazi dog-whistle when he uses a term from Mein Kampf to describe his enemies. I just think it's odd. This is the first time I read the phrase outside of a newspaper so thought I'd ask. I don't see a need for a proper noun phrase for this, so I've never considered using it myself.
After a bit of time digesting this, I think I have the same reaction as if I only read the headline.
Why should liberals continue to do something that cause them to lose 2 elections against a game show host? Would Hillary have won if she said that half of Trump's voters were deplorables? Would Harris win if she was willing to call Trump a fascist? No, since those things happened and then they lost.
I think you make a good case why it's morally permissible to use scorn, but not why it would be effective. The last 3 democratic campaigns were built around scorning Trump and none of them did as well as they should have. What evidence is there that scorn is a politically useful strategy for democrats?
And it's tangential to this, but what do you think of substacks like Jeff Tiedrich's? He's an immensely popular substacker and I don't think he writes much besides scorn.
What you believe is moral imperative is what I voted for. In many cases Trump has the law (passed before 2015) on our side, for example immigration law.
Having witnessed progressive "outreach" over the latest decade, I have no confidence in their ability to not shoot themselves in the foot. As soon as their sensibilities are challenged, they reflexively attack.
The best argument for conservatism is a 2 minute conversation with your average leftist.
What portion of people who voted for Kamala Harris do you think "reflexively attacks" as soon as any of their sensibilities are challenged?
This take is retarded.
Making fun of people for thinking men can't have babies is going to work out great
This literally one of the things I said people should not be made fun of for.
Scorn and mockery of the opposition, cancelling etc sure seem to have worked out well for the Democrats and the rest of the American leftist political establishment over the last few years.
Continuing to use the same tactics would be....a bold strategy in my view. I'm sure that those on the right who read your article are delighted though. Never interrupt your enemy while he's making a mistake, and all that.