Joy Reid accused Florida Governor Ron DeSantis of ‘retro politics’ claiming he is ‘whipping up a mob’. Their strange rant began with mask mandates and carried on to actual lynchings.
“Yelling at kids because they have masks on to protect themselves. Suing cruise lines because they would dare to try to stop COVID from getting on the ships with the passengers. The things that he does don’t have policy priorities. They definitely to me feel more like sort of 1960s-era whipping up a mob at the University of Mississippi because James Meredith was coming and then cheering it on as four people are killed in that mob. It does feel like he’s that kind of retro politician. My question is, what does it say about our country that that’s so effective?” she cried.
Reid brought in Atlantic writer Adam Serwer to bounce off her crazy claims. His response was equally ignorant. Serwer backed up her claim that DeSantis is somehow causing violence by not requiring masks and standing against Biden’s policies. ” I think it says that we have a system that is kind of majoritarian, and it rewards a specific coalition that has ideally, geographically distributed to exploit the — to win the electoral college or to control the Senate,” He said.
Adding, “And because of that it is very important for the party that represents this coalition to make sure that they always feel like they are on the verge of apocalypse, that they are being threatened by these people who are different from them. When you’re in that kind of situation, you think your back’s to the wall, your back is to the wall. You think the apocalypse is nigh. Then you are willing to do crazy things, or cruel things because you’re thinking, well I’m doing this to defend myself, this is for my survival.”
Serwer suggested that MAGA supporters were going to start killing people because they believe it was for the greater good. “That gives you license to be cruel in this particular way,” he said.
Watch
Transcript
JOY REID: Yelling at kids because they have masks on to protect themselves. Suing cruise lines because they would dare to try to stop COVID from getting on the ships with the passengers. The things that he does don’t have policy priorities. They definitely to me feel more like sort of 1960s-era whipping up a mob at the University of Mississippi because James Meredith was coming and then cheering it on as four people are killed in that mob. It does feel like he’s that kind of retro politician. My question is, what does it say about our country that that’s so effective?
ADAM SERWER: I think it says that we have a system that is kind of majoritarian, and it rewards a specific coalition that has ideally, geographically distributed to exploit the — to win the electoral college or to control the Senate. And because of that it is very important for the party that represents this coalition to make sure that they always feel like they are on the verge of apocalypse, that they are being threatened by these people who are different from them. When you’re in that kind of situation, you think your back’s to the wall, your back is to the wall. You think the apocalypse is nigh. Then you are willing to do crazy things, or cruel things because you’re thinking, well I’m doing this to defend myself, this is for my survival.
I’m trying to save the country. And that gives you license. That gives you license to be cruel in this particular way. And I think that’s why, when you see these Donald Trump or DeSantis giving these sort of outlandish speeches, where like the liberals are doing this, the liberals are doing that, and it’s some sort of crazy insane conspiracy, the point is to make these people afraid so that they are willing to justify cruel acts towards people that they see as threatening them even if all those people are trying to do is come to this country and try to have a better life.
REID: You’re right about this. And you talk about this, the fact that lynchings were like a party and it was the act of being cruel together. It wasn’t just doing the violence, but it was the license to do violence, and the license to do violence together. So there is this horrible American tradition of this and I just wonder if there’s a way to counter politics that somehow mitigates it.