@gigantos @georgetakei I’m not personally offended; I’m not American, so I have no real skin in the game.

I’m just generally infuriated because this is something I keep seeing repeated over and over, and not only does it stink of defeatism, it undermines all efforts by sensible and progressive elements to actually get anything good accomplished. You can never hope to defeat the forces of stupidity if you keep saying the sensible side is stupid too, just in a different way.

Over and over I see people saying there are extremists on both sides, to which I always have to ask… WHO?! Who are the “other side” extremists? Who can even REMOTELY be held up in comparison to some of the howler monkeys in the Republican Party? Who can possibly be offered as a counter-example to some of the Republican ELECTED OFFICIALS, including major players like governors and senators, who push wacko conspiracies like Jewish space lasers, or that Hilary Clinton is a demon who drinks the blood of children while somehow simultaneously having sex with them in secret tunnels under a pizza parlour? Who among the Democrats has kidnapped a planeload of innocent people and human-trafficked them across the country, leaving them stranded and presumably to die—or at least be arrested—in the Massachusetts winter?

I mean, obviously, if you look far enough afield you can certainly find SOME wacko Democrat supporters. But you have to keep balance in mind. While you can find loony Dems on TikTok or Twitter or whatever… the crazies in the Republican Party are ELECTED OFFICIALS, SENATORS, AND GOVERNORS! Don’t waste peoples’ time comparing the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Ron DeSantis to some fringe kook on the Internet. Find me a COMPARABLE kook in the Democratic party. Find me a howler monkey Dem GOVERNOR. Find me a shit-smearing Dem SENATOR. Find me balance.

I’ve read right-wing media to find out exactly what kind of “extremism” they think exists on the other side, and they just keep repeating the names Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and a few others, sometimes including Bernie Sanders. THESE are the “extremists” on the Democrats side? Are you kidding me? Right-wingers claim these are “extremists” because they want “socialism”, but 1) no, they really don’t, none of them are actually socialists, they are, at best, social democrats; and 2) socialism isn’t “extreme”, anyway, except from the view of the extreme right. I see no right-wing media even TRYING to claim that there are Democrats who are seriously calling for anything even remotely equivalent to a genocide of trans people (which, of course, some GOP representatives have actually done, and is even being implied by some party platforms).

Without that balance, any pretense that there is fanaticism on both sides is dishonest. And dishonesty only helps the party of lies… which, spoiler alert, is the GOP.

And to be clear, I say all this despite DETESTING the Democratic Party. Sorry to George Takei, but I find his obsequious dedication to the Democratic Party to be embarrassing. The Dems are TERRIBLE. They are only slightly more appealing than used toilet paper on the best of days, and only warrant any consideration at all because their opposition is actual, literal shit. I don’t even expect anything good from them; at best I expect “not the apocalypse, at least not right away”. They’re barely better than useless: the recurring pattern is that the Republicans come to power and create problems, then the Democrats come to power and… do nothing… then the Republicans come to power and the downward spiral into the sewer for the USA continues. I don’t hold any hope that the Democrats will FIX anything, but they will at least STALL the decline, hopefully long enough for a new generation to bring positive change.

The tl;dr here is this:

• There is simply no comparison between the extremism in the Republican Party, and the “extremism” in the Democratic Party.
• Saying that there is extremism on both sides without HUGE amounts of context and hand-waving is straight-up dishonest, because it implies some kind of parity.
• Every time you give even the SLIGHTEST amount of credence to the idea that the Democrat extremists are even remotely comparable to the Republican extremists, you ALWAYS help the Republicans.
• You may THINK you’re being even-handed, thoughtful, and inclusive by admitting that there are problems on your side, too… but really all you’re doing is helping the crazies, because THEY have no interest in being balanced or reasonable.

So, anyone out there reading this, unless you WANT to help the Republican lunatic howler monkeys, STOP WITH THIS “BOTH SIDES” BULLSHIT. It is lazy thinking. It is factually untrue. And it is unhelpful to the discourse.