Teddy Roosevelt once said, “profanity is the parlance of the fool.” Democrats appear to be increasingly finding relief from both reality and sanity in profanity. Democratic members have been complaining that left-wing groups have been targeting them to be more aggressive and “fight harder” in the face of the fast-paced actions of President Donald Trump. Their response appears to be ratcheting up “rage rhetoric” with profanity and violent language. Last week, Rep. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) captured the new norm by yelling at a rally that “I don’t swear in public very well, but we have to f**k Trump. Please don’t tell my children that I just did that.”
The key, it appears, is for her constituents to hear it. She is not alone. (Warning: profane language)
Politicians and pundits have seemingly tried to outdo each other in proving their bona fides to the far left. MSNBC host and former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki pledged on Jon Stewart’s “The Weekly Show” podcast that she has “retired from the world of Democratic messaging” and ” speaking in a manner that was so academic and Ivory Tower.” She promised to drop “the disconnected academic Ivory Tower elite language that is too often used by Democrats, sometimes on cable television.” Instead, Psaki called on the left to “break some s–t.”
This is not a new trend. Law professors and legal pundits have long struggled to maintain a certain decorum and professionalism. However, during the Trump years, there was a similar race to the bottom as figures like Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe regularly engaging in name calling and profanity.
Just last week, a professor was restored to his teaching duties after being suspended for profane attacks on Trump. It is now considered required virtue signaling to use violent or profane language to show that you are no milquetoast moderate.
Many on the far left like former CNN anchor Don Lemon have turned the same profanity of members of the media who are not sufficiently aggressive and open in opposing Trump.
What is most striking about this race to the bottom is that it is a concession to the far left that writes off any effort to appeal to moderate and independent voters who supported Trump. The Democrats found their party captured by the most extreme elements of their base and alienated most of the country. Now, politicians and pundits are rushing to protect themselves by joining the mob.
In some cases, the effort is painfully awkward like Schumer’s effort to become a rabble-rousing populist. Even CNN has been unable to hold back:
When Democrats are not stringing together lines of profanity, they appear to be creating a new unintelligible language:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Rbo48MOibo
George Washington once referred to cursing and swearing as a “foolish and wicked practice” and a “vice so mean and low” that no self-respecting politician would stoop to use such language.
The rise of rage rhetoric is a measure of how politicians are now surrendering to the most extreme voices in their party. It is a matter of simple survival. These politicians believe that they cannot stay in office if they allow anyone to move to the left of their positions. To maintain their power, they are willing to join the mob before it turns on them.
We saw the same pandering with members embracing the violent group Antifa. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump.
It will not work. Today revolutionaries often become tomorrow’s reactionaries. As rage and violent rhetoric become normalized, the expectations of the far left simply shift to demand greater demonstrations of fealty. As figures like Psaki call for Democrats to “break some sh*t,” the ruin and rampage is unlikely to end with a marginal increase in ratings at MSNBC. At some point, breaking stuff becomes insatiable and uncontrollable.
That is the point, discussed in my new book, where rage rhetoric becomes state rage where free speech is often the first casualty.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”