It’s a good thing we have MSNBC to tell us just how reprehensible we, the American people are capable of being. At least, that was certainly the way things were portrayed in a discussion Wednesday night on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour hosted by Stephanie Ruhle, and featuring former GOP congressman David Jolly, Washington Post columnist Philip Bump, and Business Week writer Max Chafkin. The group bemoaned the current political tide as though the world had all but come to an end, but at least there was a note of optimism, in their security about their own moral and intellectual superiority.
The discussion was dripping with contempt not merely for Trump himself, but for all the millions of average, everyday Americans who voted for him, and for any exceptions they may have taken to the previous administration, for any reason.
Take DEI, for example. Ruhle plaintively asked if one single CEO in America had ever lamented that DEI was “standing in the way of productivity,” (as though that was even the sole imaginable consideration). Chafkin blithely assured her “No, and for like a decade they’ve been arguing the exact opposite,” which in his view made the policy’s recent demise “stunning.”
Never mind polls showing large numbers of people’s discomfort with DEI programs, and perception that they actually tend to aggravate or even create feelings of racial tension, distrust, grievance, and victimhood rather than solve them. Never mind that some of the largest corporations in the world have indeed taken an enormous hit from public backlash against such policies.
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