Was talking again with my colleague who I wrote about the other day; this time the topic was, from my point of view, the GOP letting Trump skate on serious offenses and from his point of view, the Democrats trying to impeach him just because he’s a Republican. The danger, from my point of view, is that a President can now get away with murder as long as his own party is complicit; the danger, from his point of view, is that any President can be impeached just because the opposite party controls Congress.
We’ve heard a lot about “partisan” impeachment, and how the fact that not a single House (or Senate) Republican voted for it, but a couple of things get lost in that conversation. First, the GOP’s lockstep opposition to impeachment is no less “partisan” than the Democrats’ unanimous drive for impeachment — maybe even more so (more on that presently). I can’t count the number of times I had to make that point during the Affordable Care Act “debate”; reflexive, automatic, unbending opposition is no less “partisan," and no more principled, than reflexive, automatic, unbending support.
Then the topic turned to how, in his view, “Democrats have been saying ‘impeach the m**f**er!’ since day one,” which (a.) is not true, and (b.) pales in comparison to all that “Lock Her Up” nonsense from 2016, as well as the “Impeach Obama” websites that started to appear around May 2008. So, naturally, this is where the conversation typically breaks down and descends into Both Siderism.
But I had to remind my colleague again: If one side uses shovels to plant trees, and the other side uses shovels to bash people’s brains in, if all you can draw from that (and all you can say about it) is, “Both sides use shovels!” then you’re looking at it the wrong way. And if that’s your best defense of the brain-bashers then you’re really looking at it the wrong way. (Remarkable, really, how “Both sides use shovels!” is only ever deployed in defense of the brain-bashers, never the tree-planters, but I digress.) Obviously, the fact that “Both sides use shovels!” doesn’t make brain-bashing equivalent to tree-planting, or vice-versa; nor does it make the tree-planters “just as bad” as the brain-bashers.
Simply put, I told him, in order to understand what’s going on here you have to first recognize and acknowledge your own biases, then look past all the shovel-using, get your mind off that, and figure out if what the shovel-users are doing is planting trees, or bashing in brains; who the tree-planters are, and who the brain-bashers are. Who is acting pragmatically and altruistically, and who is acting ideologically and cynically. Who is acting in good faith, and who is acting in bad faith. Who is right, and who is wrong. Who is pursuing truth and justice, and who is pursuing partisan gain.
In the case of current events, you’d have to be willfully blind to not be able to distinguish the brain-bashers from the tree-planters, let alone to think and talk only about all the shovel-using on Both Sides.
I hear all the time that, essentially, Both Sides do use shovels, so it’s not wrong to point out that “Both sides use shovels!” which is “technically true.” Sure. But if one side uses shovels to plant trees, and the other side uses shovels to bash people’s brains in, what could possibly be the point, purpose or utility of saying “Both Sides use shovels!” except to encourage and enable more brain-bashing, and discourage tree-planting?