A couple weeks ago, one of the writers from Fault Lines told me that he heard from another, ending in the salutation, “fuck you.” He said nothing to the potty-mouthed pal. Not just nothing to justify such a foul reaction. He said nothing to him at all. Rather, he was expressing some thoughts that were middle of the road, which means they weren’t progressive and failed to include that Trump was literally Hitler.

This was enough to cause a colleague to respond, out of the blue, with outrage and venom.

On the twitters, insanely stupid replies from random twitterers is the norm. The nature of the beast is that some will understand a twit and others will react with outrage. For me, it’s usually outrage from either right or left, as I constantly disappoint them both. The alt-right has a simple message, that America is and should be a white Christian country, to the flagrant exclusion of others. It’s an easy message to reject, so it needs no Gertruding to reject.

Yet, failure to respond in kind to insanity breeds insanity. If you are not sufficiently dedicated to howling epithets, you are complicit.

In a New Yorker interview, which was actually more of a debate, between Columbia prof Mark Lilla, who has either become the embodiment of old school liberalism or a racist academic pariah, and David Remnick, the issue was revealed:

LILLA: To give you an example, I’m not a black motorist. I will never be a black motorist. I don’t know what it’s like to look in the rearview mirror of a car and see the lights flashing and feel my stomach churn. But I am a citizen. And that person is a fellow-citizen. And, if we can make the case that there are citizens in this country who can’t just go for a drive without being worried about this, and they won’t be equally protected by the law, I think I can make the case to people who aren’t black that that’s a terrible thing, right? And so I want to frame the issue in terms of basic values and principles that we share in order to establish sympathy and empathy and identification with someone else.

REMNICK: But, Mark, what are you asking African-Americans to do? Be a little less specific? More polite, somehow? You’re asking them to be less aggressive in their demand for justice, whether it’s on the road or on the street? I understand the over-all yearning for a more generalized rhetoric of “us,” of liberal values, of civil rights. I’m not sure why you have the disdain you do, the suspicion that you do, for a group like Black Lives Matter. You’re saying that they’re going about it in all the wrong ways, unless I’m misunderstanding.

LILLA: Well, to read the full passage of what I said about Black Lives Matter, I said, “Black Lives Matter is a textbook example of how not to build solidarity. There’s no denying that by publicizing and protesting police mistreatment of African-Americans, the movement mobilized supporters and delivered a wake-up call to every American with a conscience.” I’m totally onboard with that.

REMNICK: So what did Black Lives Matter do that you’re, at best, ambivalent about—and very critical, really?

Is Lilla “very critical” of Black Lives Matter? Does he lack recognition or concern for racism? Or is the problem that he challenges whether the myriad demands of BLM have gone beyond eradicating racism to the point where the only good ally is the one who shuts up and does what he’s told? Is that the way to build consensus and solidarity, or the way to alienate those who would be your allies? Lilla replies:

LILLA: And then I say, “But there’s no denying that the movement’s decision to use this mistreatment to build a general indictment of American society and its law-enforcement institutions and to use Mau Mau tactics to put down dissent and demand a confession of sins and public penitence played into the hands of the Republican right.”

His reference to “Mau Mau tactics” was deliberately provocative, a throwback to Tom Wolfe almost 50 years ago. It was a poor choice of words, unless one is a hard-core lover of Lenny Bruce. Manipulating white liberal guilt has always been a potent force, but to what end?

At Leoweekly, BLM leader Chanelle Helm provides a list of ten things white people can do to prove they’re good allies. It includes:

White people, if you can afford to downsize, give up the home you own to a black or brown family. Preferably a family from generational poverty.

And if one doesn’t plan to give one’s home to a black or brown family, does that make one a Trumpkin white supremacist Naxo? Granted, this list is merely the brainchild of Helm, who doesn’t speak for a race. Less militant voices inform white people that they would do well to merely stop talking, listen to the marginalized and do as you’re told. Hardly as extreme as an expectation of handing over the house keys to a black family, but similarly untenable.

The alt-right nutjobs call us traitors to our race, which accomplishes nothing since it’s both insane and unpersuasive to anyone who fails to share their peculiar psychosis. But the alternative is to hear we’re “complicit” in white supremacy because we aren’t as woke as we’re told to be. And if this doesn’t make us collapse into a social justice ball of jello, the final response is “fuck you.”

Elie Mystal and I had this discussion before Trump was elected president. There is a self-reinforcing bubble within social media of mindless fury that serves only to divide people along racial lines by forcing compliance at the expense of consensus. Elie argued that blacks don’t need the white man’s permission, which is true. But minorities still need majority support to accomplish their goals. And most of us would, and do, support them, but not necessarily the way, and to the extent, it’s demanded.

For those of us who have spent our careers trying to stop cops from tossing black kids against brick walls, or worse, in real life, your screaming inanities is not going to get us to give up our fight or give you our house keys. If your reply is “fuck you,” because we’re “complicit,” so what?

I’m not surprised by what happened between the two Fault Lines writers, but I’m saddened that two colleagues, two friends, ended up this way. Neither wanted Trump to be the president, but one didn’t want Hillary either. The outcome speaks for itself. There was nothing the alt-right could possibly say that would make any of us want to be a part of it. There is plenty the left can say to make us not want to be a part of it either, even though we have so much in common.