Comment by dkarl
How are those two situations remotely similar? A criticism of the Democratic Party should not be seen as a morally reprehensible "joke" that you have to walk back like "ha ha, just kidding, I would never criticize the party."
The idea that the Democratic Party is a flawed, mundane institution full of fallible people who make mistakes is not a toxic idea that we need to keep out of the discourse lest it "sink in and actually stick." It's more like medicine that the party is trying to administer to itself with one hand while the other hand tries to bat it away.
> The idea that the Democratic Party is a flawed, mundane institution full of fallible people who make mistakes is not a toxic idea
It's not about the idea which, as you say, is entirely reasonable.
It's about when you're interacting with someone—a stranger on the Internet—and they say something, you're both taking in their idea and also trying to guess at who they are and what their larger agenda is. And for better or worse, we've all spent the past decade or so living in a giant digital commons surrounded by strangers some of whom do have toxic hidden agendas that they are trying to get other people to believe, or at least to not fight back against.
In that environment, when someone criticizes your tribe, it's reasonable to wonder if that person trying to make the tribe stronger by pointing out its fixable flaws or if they are trying to make covert psychological inroads to eventually get you to believe something awful.
This is a real thing that does happen. Years ago, I watched one of my closest, dearest friends, get slowly radicalized by a white supremacist. My friend went from being a totally normal non-racist person to a full-on white supremacist that I had to cut ties with completely.
If the person who radicalized him had said, "Hey, I'm gonna try to get you to hate black people" on day one, my friend would have kicked him to the curb. But he didn't. He was friendly, charismatic. Asking rhetorical questions like, "Affirmative action to lift people up seems like a good idea, but what about poor white people? Who helps them?" That kind of stuff. A tiny step at a time over and over again until one day my friend was no longer my friend.
If you find yourself talking to a person who's ultimate goal is to get you to violate your values, there is no good faith discussion to be had and the best recourse is to identify it as soon as possible and get the fuck out.