One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

by Omar El Akkad

And yet there is a deranged honesty about the cult to which the likes of Pence—and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, who signed her own message, “Finish them!,” to similar bombs—belong. American liberalism demands a rhetorical politeness from which the fascistic iteration of the modern Republican Party is fully free. There is something stomach-churning about watching a parade of Biden administration press secretaries offer insincere expressions of concern for Palestinians as the same administration bankrolls their butcher. It is a reminder that the Democratic Party’s relationship with progressivism so often ends at the lawn sign: Proclaim support for this minority group or that. Hang a rainbow flag one month a year from some White House window. Most important, remind everyone at every turn of how much worse the alternative would be.