Want to hold Trump supporters accountable? It doesn’t have to be complicated. by Alyssa Rosenberg



Want to hold Trump supporters accountable? It doesn’t have to be complicated. by Alyssa Rosenberg

washingtonpost.com

February 8, 2021 12:54 PM

Progressives who want to hold Trump enablers accountable have a clear message available to them. The past four years were a disaster for the country and for democracy. Anyone who played a part in that catastrophe should face consequences.

So why is it so hard for progressives to stick to this simple argument?

Take the way gun-control advocate David Hogg announced that he was planning to start a company to compete with Mike Lindell, the Trump-supporting founder of MyPillow who has hawked bogus covid-19 cures and election disinformation, as well as head and neck support. “@williamlegate and I are going to prove that progressives can make a better pillow, run a better business and help make the world a better place while doing it,” Hogg tweeted Thursday.

It’s just silly to suggest that “progressives can make a better pillow.” There’s no relationship between support for universal health care and the ability to cut up memory foam or calculate the optimal down density to deliver a good night’s sleep.

But more than that, what difference does it make how good MyPillow’s products are? It is completely insane that a guy who hawks pillows on infomercials was hanging around the White House pitching President Donald Trump on imposing martial law. It doesn’t matter if Lindell sells the finest pillows in all the land! This scenario, and Lindell’s continued efforts to cast doubt on the 2020 election, are repulsive and crazy, and should be rejected regardless. Starting a competing pillow company, when consumers already have plenty of other alternatives, is an awfully complex response to a simple moral problem.

One young activist’s plans might not seem worth dwelling on, but this is something of a recurring pattern. The impulse toward needlessly complex means of sending a message is also apparent in the ongoing debate over whether outstanding pitcher and careless conservative loudmouth Curt Schilling deserves a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

As a liberal Red Sox fan who watched Schilling pitch during the Red Sox 2004 World Series campaign, it’s heartbreaking to watch him post ugly sentiments about transgender people and call Adam Jones, who is Black, a liar for saying he experienced racist abuse from Boston fans while playing at Fenway Park. ESPN was well within its rights to fire him in 2016.

But Schilling’s political beliefs don’t change his statistics as a pitcher or the role he played in winning World Series titles. If professional excellence is what the Hall of Fame recognizes, then that and his conduct as a player, not stances he embraced after his career ended, should determine how voters cast their ballots.

Mashing up a qualitative assessment of Schilling’s accomplishments with a moral indictment of his politics may allow members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to feel like they’re taking a stand. Unfortunately, however, the bitterness of the debate muddles both the arguments about the impact of his politics and the quality of his career. It would send a far clearer message to offer an up-or-down vote on Schilling’s career, and then lock him out of mainstream commentating gigs on grounds that no amount of professional greatness makes his rancor acceptable.

A similar dynamic is at work in the liberal Mommyworld uproar over the discovery that popular baby sleep consultant Cara Dumaplin and her husband were Trump donors.

As Claire Lempen wrote in the Cut, it’s apparently not enough to cut ties with Dumaplin over her donations; instead, her critics seem to need to enhance the charges against her by suggesting that she’s not just a conservative but an exploitative hypocrite. But whether Dumaplin’s politics are “a difficult position to square. Not particularly ‘on-brand,’” isn’t really necessary to the argument.

It’s reasonable not to want to give money to someone who might give it to a political candidate you abhor — especially when you have other options. There are plenty of sleep gurus and pillow manufacturers whose politics won’t keep progressives up at night.

But liberals should be honest with themselves: Either support for Trump is reason enough to stop doing business with someone, or it’s not. Arguments about pillow quality, pitching lines and branding hypocrisy are beside the point.

Read more: