“Whataboutism,” Here We Go Again. . .
The Real Issue is the Dangerous Precedent for Future Impeachment Trials
Like monkeys tossing poo at zoo visitors, the Senate impeachment trial inevitably descended into practically non-stop accusations, from both sides, of “whataboutism,” although most were thrown at the former President’s impeachment managers. If we were to do a word count of whataboutism in the Congresional Record during the trial, and especially in social media, it might reach the level of our federal debt (around $28 trillion and counting).
Why? Because the House impeachment managers, having set a low bar for Trump’s alleged “incitement” of the events of January 6th saw it used against them and a few US Senators sitting as “jurors” (and victims, but I digress). Trump’s counsel shared a video of language used by Democratic officials, including around last summer’s 543 violent riots in some 200 cities across the US, including lots of examples from now-Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris and even some staffers for then-candidate Joe Biden contributed to a fund to bail out rioters from last summer’s protests. More about this later.
If you dared mention the reaction to last summer’s 500 or so violent incidents in relative proximity to the violence at the US Capitol on January 6th, you got a response like this.
Kudos to the estimable Jonah Goldberg - an anti-Trump conservative and terrific author - for his pristine example of the accusation. However, there is a very blurry line between “whataboutism” and political hypocrisy. I will resist the temptation to parse Jonah’s tweet, but this is a good time to revisit a terrific post by William Voegeli in the City Journal from a few weeks entitled, “About Whataboutism.” If we’re going to be entreated to - or accused of - such poo tossing, we should at least define our terms and understand what’s going on here.
With assistance from a dictionary, Voegeli expertly defines whataboutism for us here:
”What exactly is this whataboutism which conservatives have committed so flagrantly? The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as, ‘The practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.’ Also, ‘the practice of raising a supposedly analogous issue in response to a perceived hypocrisy or inconsistency.’ The term came into use in the twentieth century, often to describe a rhetorical gambit wherein any criticism or question about the Soviet Union’s human rights violations elicited an objection about the West’s transgressions. In 2001, my Murray Hill neighbor was the comedian ‘Professor’ Irwin Corey, then an 87-year-old unreconstructed Marxist. On the afternoon of 9/11, after both towers of the World Trade Center had collapsed, I walked past Corey, outside his townhouse in mid-harangue: ‘Well, what about what our country did to the Indians?’
The key is whether the events being compared are analogous. Voegeli’ s example of Mr. Corey is clearly “whataboutism.” Is the Trump defense team’s use of multiple examples of language that could be deemed “incitement” qualify as whataboutism or is it a fair example of political hyprocrisy?
It is important to get the analogy right. If you are comparing the violent breach of the US Capitol with the 500 or so riots across the US this past summer, prompted by the tragic death of George Floyd, then yes, that is whataboutism. However, if your analogy, as highlighted above, is to the reaction of officials and the media to the violence that emerged from those different events, then your case for exposing political hypocrisy is stronger. If you condemn the violence at the Capitol, as I have repeatedly, and want to see the perps fully prosecuted, as I do, then why not condemn political violence in all its forms?
But Jonah’s exhortation regarding the violence at the Capitol versus “looting in Portland” (Andy Ngo, call your office) introduces a very slippery slope - that somehow the cause of the aggrieved depends on which violence is worse than the others. Tell that to the thousands of business owners and the families of 26 people - including police officers - who were killed in last summer’s riots. In all, $2 billion in property damage resulted from last summer’s violence.
Again, Voegeli outlines a real issue behind much of the whataboutism tossing:
“The whataboutism indictments mean that we, who wield this cultural power, can deliver crazy and dangerous pronouncements during one historical circumstance, and then a few months later use that power to decree that the earlier pronouncements are irrelevant to whatever points we’re making today. Cultural power means never having to say you’re sorry and never having to feel you’re constrained. Go ahead: take outrageous positions or issue preposterous formulations today, confident that if they make you or us look bad in the future, we, the culturally powerful, will join together to manufacture a consensus that even alluding to those embarrassments is now impermissible. It will be as if they never happened. Kant’s categorical imperative about committing or defending only those actions you would uphold as universal principles is ground down to a speed bump. Cultural power demolishes universality with situational assertions of relativity: That was then; this is now. If some annoying troll complains about our inconsistency or hypocrisy, we’ll respond with accusations of whataboutism, an update of the credo voiced by Eric Stratton in Animal House: You f---ed up. You took us seriously.”
So I have two concerns, three actually. First, the new fashion of quickly hurtling whataboutism accusations from all sides. Like the hideous fad of lifeless, gray-colored walls and bland home decor, I hope it fades into the sunset, and quickly. It is has become an easy, cheap and dangerous rhetorical device that seems more designed to silence than engender real discussion and debate (remember, it first advanced by Soviet propagandists). Second, we’re ignoring the real issues of the impeachment, and there are two. First, did the House, acting in haste, actually miss the real issue of Trump’s behavior on the day of January 6th - “dereliction of duty” - and second, by the Senate’s vote to declare the impeachment trial of a former public official, a private citizen, do we open the door to all manner of future impeachments?
I hope we have not cheapened impeachment so much that it now becomes a standard device used by malign, punitive political majorities to exact political punishment. And perhaps worse, to advance cancel culture by convicting past officials for ancient actions based on the latest cultural norms and fads to rewrite or erase history. If we can now impeach and convict private citizens, why not dead ones? It has already been suggested. Don’t laugh.
So can we stop acting like zoo monkeys every time someone suggests that, maybe, there’s a reasonable analogy worthy of introspection and discussion? If we’re to have a “9/ll type” commission to investigate the Capitol violence, which I’m all for, why not include, or have a second commission look at the violence from last summer’s riots? After all, the reactions to those events are important. Why did many local governors and mayors spurn offers from President Trump for National Guard troops to help quell violence? How did Speaker Pelosi respond to offer of reinforcements at the Capitol, if such offers were made? Were 11,000 or so arrested (only 900 were apparently charged) from last summer’s riots treated differently than the more than 150 arrested and charged thus far from the Capitol riots? Inquiring minds, at least this one, would like to know. Justice demands it.