Is hate speech illegal?

It doesn’t seem to be….

The political polarization in America and across the world’s democratic nations is a stunning phenomenon. Each side distrusts, dislikes and dismisses the other.

The MAGA tribe has decided not to be embarrassed about sounding racist. They’ve concluded that ultimately it’s more important to say it than worry about the media calling you names. I can see some wisdom in that, even if I don’t agree with all of it.

Let’s talk about Democrats though. These are the tribe that has presented itself as the good people, the ones fighting evil, protecting humanity from racism, misogyny, homophobia, climate calamity and plastic mountains in our oceans. Their holy mission has allowed them to believe they are right. One hundred percent right. And therefore it would be immoral for anyone to disagree with the d-party’s agenda. Therefore anyone who fails to get in step with the holy mission to save humanity from evil must be, in fact, evil.

At street level, the defection from the blue tent has been spectacular. Latinos, blacks, union workers, small business owners, first-gen immigrants, white men, young men, mothers of schoolchildren, they all left. It was quiet, unannounced, and invisible until the Nov 2024 election, then some intellectuals were shocked. The shocked people resorted to a predictable explanation: ‘those people’ are uneducated and low IQ, therefore susceptible to idiotic politics and indoctrination. “They’re not as smart as we are”, they will say.

At a higher and more visible level, the tech bros and other wealthy entrepreneurs — all formerly loyal democrats — defected en masse toward an independent place in the hallway, or all the way over to MAGA land.

Democrats hate both of these defector groups. Hate hate hate. It seems that it’s legal and legitimate to spew vitriol at your political adversaries, even for the purported ‘good people’ over in the holy mission hosted by the Democrats. Hate is not illegal, immoral or undesirable, as long as you’re hating white people, religious people, cops or rich people.

I don’t believe anyone is calling for a correction to this reality. Not by legislation, and not by cultural peer pressure. Democrats are comfortable and feel justified because their holy mission is to fight evil, and they see their target as deserving of vitriolic attack.

The problem for Democrats is electability. They seem to have forgotten the simple mathematics of ballot counts and majority. This simple idea requires one candidate to get more likes than the others.

Perhaps the holy mission in its infinite wisdom is also able to create a world where we can be forced to vote for people we no longer like or trust.