"Bring it."
Those are the senator's words, not mine.
In the midst of a social media firestorm that has brought more views and angry emojis to his page than anything as far back as I cared to scroll, Mississippi state Senator Chris McDaniel, a Republican representing the state's 42nd district, had elected to throw another gasoline can in to the conflagration, beating his chest at the horde of "radicals" that had descended upon him.
"I'm not going anywhere. The more you push, the more I will resist. Even if I have to stand alone."
And why, you might ask, is this Custer of Conservatism having to hold the desperate line against such an onslaught? Because on the afternoon of January 22nd, Sen. McDaniel decided to share, both on his verified government Facebook page and later to his own personal account, the following hypothetical question:
And now here he stood, the helpless and beleaguered straight, white, Christian majority male, in a seat of inscrutable political power, in a pitched battle against the teeming masses of women demanding such unreasonable things as health care ("Abortions!" the conservative masses cry), cancer screenings ("Abortions!" they yell again) and so many other basic women's services ("Abortions!" the refrain continues, a Pavlovian response to any mention of Planned Parenthood).
At first blush, one might assume that this was a tragic misstep from a man who does not understand the ebb and flow of social media and has, as so many before him, inadvertently summoned the great internet hate machine down upon himself. What perhaps began as a whisper in to his familiar confirmation bubble of core constituents, unexpectedly burst through as a shout in to the halls of larger, darker places. But in the responses of support from people claiming to be within his district, and in his own braggadocios replies, a darker, more cynical possibility presents itself.
"I'll give you radicals some credit; you have a large number of angry instigators ready for social media action. You've really swarmed this page. Thankfully, 95% of you live outside of MS."
There is a self-awareness at work here. Perhaps emboldened by the concessions granted to certain behaviors in the recent presidential election, this is a man who appears to be taking Trump's America out for a test drive. It does not take much creative Googling to find press releases and statements from Sen. McDaniel that make the basic outline of his platform apparent. Establishment bad. Abortion bad. Sanctuary cities bad, and by proxy, immigrants who run them, or seek shelter in them, bad. This should sound very familiar to anyone whose general election fatigue has not worn off yet. As he is fond of saying in many of these statements, "Now is the time."
And he is not wrong; if it is a calculated gamble, the odds are in his favor. Whatever collateral hatred the blood in the water may bring from the nation at large, the raw meat of his assertion, of his self-proclaimed stand against no one in a position to do him any harm, sits right in the wheelhouse of the people who will be voting for him in the next election. All Sen. McDaniel has to do is convince a bright red voter base in a swath of land north of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, that he has their best interests in mind. Everything else is, for electoral purposes, white noise. He gets to play the hero to the people who decide if he keeps his job, by standing up for conservative values against the liberals trying to dictate how they should think and feel. The more people "attack" him, the more pronounced this effect.
So let's set aside the senator's political aspirations for a moment, and let's talk about the effect this strategy, which we see playing out more and more, has on us as people. It's an effect I call trickle down hate-o-nomics.
The president was elected on a campaign of bullying, divisiveness, and an invocation of the worst us-against-them nationalism in recent memory. He mocked the mentally disabled, minorities, war heroes, and fallen soldiers. He was caught on tape making comments about sexual assault and unwanted advances towards women that he felt entitled to, comments so bad that the man simply listening and laughing along was deemed unworthy to be a daytime talk show host. Yet the one whose skull these words came spilling out of was fit to be president.
The harder the conventional wisdom shouted that each subsequent misstep must surely be the end, the louder his followers shouted back, and the more they rallied to him. The angrier people outside of Trump's base got at him, the easier it was to paint himself as the voice of reason in a maelstrom of social justice bawling and safe-spaced millennials.
This was, to many, a revelation. The undercurrent of fear and disenfranchisement in white middle America had become so deep that the typical niceties of the establishment no longer held court. The rules had changed. You no longer had to be correct. You no longer had to be factual. You no longer had to be polite. You just had to be louder.
So it trickled down, to politicians at every level, these spiritual successors to the Tea Party, their leashes removed, their ire fixed squarely on the conservative buzzwords du jour -- millennial, freeloader, entitlement, snowflake, abortion. Right down to the likes of Senator McDaniel, for whom the Women's Marches represented a perfect intersection of all the above.
This is the crux of all his posts, all his rebuttals, all his statements, all his links to single or un-sourced right wing blogs. He frames the entire event as nothing more than a cash grab by entitled millennials who feel like their birth control and abortions ("Abortions!") should be free, at the expense of the moral majority's wallet. He perpetuates in this a persistent, and still inherently false, conservative myth that federal funds are even diverted to abortion services in all but the most extreme of cases.
To say that the Women's March was solely about the myth of tax-payer funded abortions would be akin to saying that the Million Man March was about getting better seats on Alabama buses. Especially to do so after claiming to have read the Unity Principles behind the Women's March, which cover, quite eloquently, the broad and sweeping and complex issues that we, as a country, need to address in regards to gender equality.
But in this gross over-simplification ("Abortions!"), he hits all the notes he needs to with his voter base. He has created his own Trump-flavored controversy, endured the slings and arrows of a wrathful internet, and in the minds of his constituents -- the only people whose opinion his paycheck rests upon -- proceeded to bathe in sweet liberal tears.
So it trickled down, down to Trump's followers, down to McDaniel's followers. Everyone who disagreed was now a libtard. A cuck. A snowflake, if you were lucky. The political atmosphere of Facebook and Twitter turned darker, meaner, if such a thing were possible. All the while actually incited and egged on by people who were ostensibly elected to be leaders. Examples.
Amidst the torrent of dissenting voices flooding his page, Senator McDaniel went out of his way to call out a specific individual, whose comment was not even posted on either of his pages, but on her own, personal Facebook. What ensued was a campaign of harassment from his supporters, across social media and even via texts from unrecognized numbers, intense enough that in this and other outlets that have interviewed or shared her story, she has asked for all identifying information to be redacted.
This is trickle down hate-o-nomics. This is what happens when people in leadership positions give their minions the idea that everyone is fair game. That fear and abuse are weapons that can be used to silence opposition. And it is a symptom of a democracy in peril, a grass roots effort to erode the free speech all else is predicated upon.
So what does one do in the face of such reckless hate? First and foremost, do not give in and let them silence you. Silence is consent in times like these. But do not stoop to their level, either, because to do so is simply to contribute to their narrative, of the screeching crybaby liberal that can't handle that they've "lost," while their ilk act as though they have a mandate, despite only 26% of the registered voting population having put their commander-in-grief in to office.
If you must respond, you may be biting, but when they go low, you go high. People like this are bullies. They know how to handle baseless name calling and mud-slinging. They aren't so good with facts. Sources. Well-constructed arguments. Eloquence. Or, for that matter, big words.
Senator McDaniel himself demonstrated this principle, when several of the people with high-visibility opposition responses from the original thread advised me that their comments had been deleted before they could be screen capped for use in this article. In the spirit of full disclosure, I took part in this thread as well, posting the following to the original discussion.
It lived for about a day and a half, garnering close to 1000 likes before that, presumably, pushed it too near the top of the comments thread, and it was summarily deleted. The thread, as of this writing, appears to be highly-curated now, an artificial echo chamber, singing his praises for standing up for American values (see also, "Abortion!").
For someone inviting everyone to bring it, he seems decidedly unsure what to do with it once it has been brought.
Social media is a battleground of instant gratification, however, and more practical solutions are required in the long run, especially as he continues to revel in the attention this scandal has brought him.
He is not wrong in his assertions that the vast majority of the people upset with him can't vote him out of office. But you can support those who can. If you'd like to make a donation to build the war chest of the Mississippi Democratic Party, who may in turn be able to mount a meaningful opposition, you may do so here:
If you would like to participate in a Change.org petition calling for his resignation over these remarks, you may sign and promote this petition here, but be aware that he is already brandishing this as more evidence that the left is incapable of moving on:
And of course, if you prefer the good old fashioned method, you may contact the senator and his staff directly at their office, using the following information:
If you would like scripting or assistance in knowing who to call on any important issues in your area, I also cannot stress enough the usefulness of 5calls.org
Senator McDaniel is up for re-election in 2019. If we want this kind of behavior to have real consequences, we have to stay informed, stay active, and try to make that mean something. So you heard the man.
Bring it.
This is the first part in what I sincerely hope will not become a weekly series, where we explore the attitudes that some elected officials hold towards women, how willing they are to share those views publicly and unapologetically, and how these attitudes may have become emboldened by the election of the current administration. I say that I hope this will not become a weekly series, because I don’t want to have that much material to work with. I do, however, already have the next two weeks mapped out, so here’s to wishful thinking.
This is not an attempt to bully anyone. This is not a device to focus the collective will of the internet hate machine on an individual. The entire purpose of this exercise is information, and accountability. If you didn’t want to have to address it, you shouldn’t have put it on social media. Much less on your official verified government page. Your personal views are your prerogative, but as an elected official, anything posted to your official online media presence becomes a topic, perhaps even a requirement, for public discussion.