On civic responsibility

"You want it to be one way, but its the other way" - Marlo

Robert Farley tore a strip off some LGM commenters for expressing glee about FAFO among Trump voters (https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/03/an-elaboration) and he was right to do that. It is indeed shameful to find joy in the misery of some red areas (Dearborn, Kentucky, Ohio, Florida; public service workers across the map). It is, moreover, disgraceful to call names--Farley cites the expression "moonshinin' hillbillies" as a form of biased caricature, a close relation of straight-up racism. "Hillbilly" and its variants are as bad as many other expressions that we all know and for the same moral reason: they're dehumanizing. The political reason not to call names is, as Farley writes, that progressives cannot build a successful political coalition by making war on part of the electorate¹. That MAGA has built its coalition on precisely that—demonizing women and people of color—is the wrong model for progressives to copy and credit to Farley for saying that.

Beyond his two irrefutable points, Farley loses the thread on civic responsibility. Consider a fact which bears a heavier load than randos losing their temper on social media--name calling online does not excuse the ignorance and malice of the majority of the white people of Kentucky, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Wyoming, usw. Millions refuse to listen or to learn, habits which are the basis of democracy, even at the cost of their own lives as we see with COVID morbidity and mortality (and as we will soon see with the evolving measles outbreak). Please do not start with any rubbish about how these good people are "too busy putting food on the table to follow politics”. Joe Rogan has millions of listeners to podcast that typically exceed 120 minutes; people chose to commute in a metal box listening to Rush Limbaugh; driving an SUV means wasting money that could be spent on books, or on your local online newspaper, or on paying someone to do housework while you read those books and newspapers; and the decline in church attendance is not a secret.

I admit to being one of those coastal elites who is not well-informed about much of our great country.

• I don’t know anything about the accents of North Carolinians and I don't think the citizens of Asheville should get shorted on their FEMA entitlements, but could they at least do something about the theft of a state court seat in broad daylight ?

• I don't know about accents or tobacco or whatever makes Texans what they are, but could they at least connect to the national electricity grid, or regulate fugitive methane emissions, and save us all some GHGs ?

• I do sympathize with the plight of those Nebraska farmers, who, by their own admissions--admissions made on mobile devices designed with federally-subsidized science and fabricated in China--knew what would happen under Trump II and voted for him anyway.

• I do know something about how much water (stolen, by the way, from Native Americans) we subsidize to grow alfalfa in the desert, but I suppose I shouldn’t say anything about that because it would be elitist to lecture people to eat less meat and drink less milk.

• I know (hope ?) everyone is sensitive to those who have lost people to COVID, but is it too much to ask MAGA to read simple press summaries about COVID killing more people in red counties than in blue and about the widening of the red minus blue death gap after the vaccines went into general use ?

This is what the red states have been doing for decades:

• Using blue state money to fund their schools, their scientists, and their bank bailouts;

• Promoting the destruction of our common environment;

• Swallowing the "thoughts and prayers" cynicism of their vile politicians after every school shooting;

• Accepting passively (when they did not exult in) vote theft and suppression;

• Not knowing that the ACA and Obamacare are the same; and

• Gleefully lying about Dem candidates because they were women or people of color.

I hope it offends no one to remind our fellow citizens that without progressives:

• Fewer people would have health care;

• There would be more gun deaths;

• More kids would have been squashed by SUVs while going to school (where federal money pays for labs, buses, and special ed);

• More grandmothers would be dying of sepsis in deregulated nursing homes; and

• A certain wealthy family would still be selling drugs.

The violent civic irresponsibility of the red states has been going on since Reconstruction and it would not take much at the margin today to end what can only be called terrorism. As recently as 2000 Al Gore would have been President if 41,000 people in Tennessee had switched votes or if 1,000 Floridians had been able to read a ballot or if 21,000 people had switched votes in Arkansas. With Gore as President, we would not have had the glorious war in Iraq, we would have better climate policy, we might have kept the assault weapons ban, and we would have had less of the wasteful Bush/Trump tax cuts for which the blue states will be paying forever. I hope no one thinks it uncivil to repeat that red state media would have been the first to howl about the 2000 result had Gore won the EC while losing the popular vote². VP Harris lost by some 234,000 votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, a gap that could have been filled by people who were too busy to follow politics because they were watching “Mama June”.

The red states have had it both ways -- the benefits of federalism (fiscal transfers, a stable currency, an expensive defense, elite science and education³ with only some of the costs — for more than a century. This has to stop and it is not only the progressive side that has to make it stop. I understand that progressives shouldn't use racist or quasi-racist language—and this is always true even if such language generates votes, as it does for MAGA--but that does not mean that we should not ask that our esteemed fellow citizens to do their jobs and read a paper from time to time.

It's peculiar that Farley, of all people, should trip over Murc's Law⁴, but here we are.

1. I will try not to heckle Farley in these footnotes but to imply, as he does, that a career criminal like Mitch McConnell is somehow not so bad because he's “more human and more moral” than J. D. Vance is not responsible.

2. Junior Bush's owners, handlers, and paid clergy had a media campaign ready if that had happened.

3. Senator Cassidy (R-LA), who voted to confirm Bobby Jr, of course did his medical residency at UCLA, where he apparently missed the rotation on vaccines.

4. Murc’s Law states that only Democrats have agency and hence only Democrats are responsible for their actions.