Oct.15

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

Young Republicans Love Hitler

Or at least some of them do, it would seem. And note that we didn't say it... they did.

Yesterday, Politico published an exclusive about thousands of text messages sent by leaders of several different "Young Republicans" organizations in New York, Kansas, Arizona and Vermont. The text messages were sent using Telegram, which is supposed to be extra-secure, but apparently isn't quite secure enough.

It is possible that we set a record yesterday for the most readers forwarding a specific story to us within 4 hours of its publication. If you want the gory details, you can click through the link and read the excerpts yourself. Basically, any racist thing you can think to say about Black people, one of the young Republican leaders probably said it. Same thing with just about any cruel or antisemitic thing that might be said about Jewish people, or any sexist thing that might be said about women, or any phobic thing that might be said about LGBTQ people. The participants also joked regularly about perpetrating violence against their political enemies.

We have five thoughts in response to this news:

• It is hardly a secret that people often say things in private conversations that they don't really mean. There are whole fields of communication theory devoted to this phenomenon, and there are dozens of theories as to what exactly it means. So, one must proceed cautiously when passing judgment based on this particular sort of evidence.
  
  
• That said, tolerance can only be extended so far here. One of the leaked messages is "If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked." There were several others like that. Clearly, at least some of the participants knew they were pushing their luck. There is, for example, no such thing as "gas chamber humor." Even if you like your comedy very dark, that particular subject is never, ever funny.
  
  
• A lot of media outlets, and a lot of people online, are taking the position "See what Donald Trump has wrought? He's to blame for this!" We basically disagree. There is no time in American history that there weren't lots and lots of people who had these exact same vile thoughts. All Trump did was make it more OK to express them to other people.
  
  
• The person who predicted they will be "cooked" if the messages got out is clearly wrong. They will suffer no real consequences from this, and will surely be allowed to continue as young Republican "influencers." The lack of meaningful consequences, THAT you can blame Trump for.
  
  
• After this incident, Republicans really need to refrain from wagging their fingers at Virginia AG candidate Jay Jones (D). What he wrote in his text messages was not one-tenth as bad as the messages from the young Republican leaders.

There's a lesson here, we'd say. To adapt an old adage, don't say anything via text message that you wouldn't want to see up in lights on Broadway. (Z)