Up From The Dregs

The juxtaposition of Dana Milbank's column today - Trump Brings Bigots Out of Hiding next to thoughtful piece by Danielle Allen on "We the Politically Correct People" inadvertently have some symmetry. The dark side of the technological communications revolution in recent years is the online growth of subcultures filled with seething, bigoted, often uneducated people. They are fed a steady diet of resentment, fear and conspiracy theories by the likes of Alex Jones and his ilk and are predisposed to this recruitment because they lack any basic foundation in principled civics (I have long believed that the greatest failure in this country is in our high school civics instructors). They sit in their basements and fume over the "others" who are "taking their country" whether they are Muslims, bankers, bureaucrats or Democrats, and commune with one another in a bubble of wild unhinged fantasies. Now they are taking to the streets and the public square in large, organized and bitter mobs. Most of us in decent society and in the so-called mass media have ignored or dismissed this phenomenon as a marginal fringe. But the Republican campaign has demonstrated that it is a virus that is infecting and growing not only in the party, but the body politic. It threatens informed, educated discourse and even our national integrity. That is the ugly bigotry that Dana Milbank now sees bubbling to the surface. Obviously we can't restrict or confine the free speech of these charlatans, but we can expose them. The best inoculation to this illness is to shine a bright light on these hate peddlers with forceful and authoritative truth. As Danielle Allen concludes, 'we, the people, can cure ourselves of our incipient barbarism only as we have done it before: by calling it out, contesting it and working hard for alternatives.'