> There’s something to that, but it captures the central conceit of a dangerous assumption we seem to have made as a culture these days: that being right is a license to be a total, unrepentant asshole.

I don't think this is true. I think politeness and civility have degraded over time and this is a symptom of a deeper decay of cultural mores.

It's normal behavior among human beings for the strong to exert dominance over the weak, and not all cultures reject this. Western culture is one that does, and civility is one way we've traditionally done so.

> Anti-intellectualism is also a real problem. We should be worried about the death of expertise.

This is also a symptom. Imagine if large numbers of people were getting food poisoning, you'd see "anti-agriculturalism" because people would fear that the institution of farming was in crisis.

Elitism isn't simply a belief, it's a process whereby an institution maintains its elite status by enforcing high standards. Populism is what you get when people percieve that the elite aren't maintaining their standards, and in the modern context, it's often the perception that objectivity is sacrificed to a narrow political agenda.

> Yet, no amount of yelling or condescension or trolling is going to fix any of this. It never has and never will.

My reading of history is that politics has been far worse in the past and then people have behaved better. I don't know what mechanism causes this. Perhaps nastiness does level out like some kind of repeated prisoners' dilemma[1]. It could be because human beings can't maintain a high level of arousal indefinitely. It could be that the most incendiary individuals have to burn their bridges so that the more reasonable people are the only ones left standing.

But I think that generally the voices calling for civility and moderation can only establish a civil norm after a certain amount of incivility has run its course, so I'd argue that's how yelling / condescension / etc does, in fact, fix it.

> There is a great clip of Joe Rogan talking during the immigration crisis last year. ... The clip has been seen millions of times now and undoubtedly has changed more minds than a government shutdown, than the squabbles and fights on CNN, than the endless op-eds and think-tank reports.

I think this gets at the heart of my problem with the kindness mantra.

When you're speaking on a subject persuasively, you absolutely need empathy to be effective. You need to recognize how you might cause a person to lose face or feel shame. You want to figure out how to make that human connection.

None of this is inherently morally good, and I think labelling it as "kind" is falsely suggesting that. After all, a conman does the exact same thing, "con" stands for "confidence", gaining the mark's trust.

Yes, if I'm going to push your buttons, I'd like to be nice about it, but I'm ultimately pushing your buttons. My problem with claiming this is about "kindness" is that I'm still pushing my agenda.

That agenda still needs to be justified.

> Some say there’s no reason to care about other people’s feelings if the facts are on your side.

Ben Shapiro specifically says "facts don't care about your feelings," and this neatly demonstrates casual defamation is presented with language about kindness and empathy.

Shapiro's point is that for an agenda to align with "team humanity" it has to work in practice, that good intentions are not enough. He's generally responding to the charge that he's only against welfare / minimum wage / etc because he doesn't care about poor people / sick people / is racist / etc.

And vile accusations dressed up as heart-warming platitudes are so common that he's made his counter to them a slogan. I know I've heard them consistently my entire adult life.

And that's why if you're a liberal who wants to empathize with conservatives, you need to understand that when you start talking about empathy and kindness, it comes across as utterly insincere. Is it fair to you individually? Sorry, your peers have been poisoning the well for decades.

So my advice: if you think it's the right thing to do or that it's more persuasive, spare us the sermon and just do it.

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/iterated-prisoners-dile...