Beyond blood allies and nemeses By Tony Russo

Based on How Long Can We Sustain Permanent Outrage Culture? on Medium.
Transcription:
Hi. I’m Tony Russo and this is A Bagel Manifesto, where I share stories about coming to terms with belief, culture, and the profound sense of loss that no one really cares about bagels anymore. In this episode, I want to talk about allies, or the weird lack thereof. Sometimes I worry that people of good conscience let tribalism limit the number of people they count among their friends because they confuse what could be a desire to be around like-minded people with the desperate need to be around same-minded people.
I’m a reporter by trade, so I’m used to strangers calling me an ignorant liar. What I will live and die and never, never understand, though, is why we get so much glee from attacking people we otherwise agree with on matters of culture or politics. I know it happens a lot, but I want to tell a quick story and take it apart.
I have a Substack newsletter where I try and write something short every(ish) week and link to other stories I’ve written or podcasts I’ve been a guest on or whatever. Recently I wrote this:
Increasingly I want to grab friends and shake them and tell them that I pretty intentionally don’t watch Rachel Maddow and certainly don’t want to hear a recap from them. This isn’t a dig at her in particular, but polemicists aren’t good for politics. Listening to them is a step below reading the headlines and feeling as if you’re informed.
It was part of what I thought was a larger point about what politics is for. Some people think it is and should be a way of forcing people to do what you want. I think it should be for finding a better way to live together. In fact, when people say, “I don’t want to get political,” they’re actually doing politics, negotiating to keep the peace rather than igniting a screaming match.
I chose Maddow because my readership skews liberal and I hate television news and political commentary. It runs on the kind of permanent outrage that I think is counterproductive at best.
Also, I was being a little polemical myself, trying to provoke an emotional response from my readers. Writing that I don’t need to hear people rehashing, say, Sean Hannity would have just gotten nods of agreement. If I’m trying to do anything with this Bagel manifesto it is to take seriously that I am on the wrong side of things or at least, get a better understanding of why people believe I’m on the wrong side of things.
My aim with the Maddow crack was to undermine scorched-earth thinking. Still, I was surprised by an angry email.
This is how the email started:
“When we call Rachel a polemicist on a par with liars like Tucker Carlson, we do the truth and ourselves a terrible disservice.”
First off: “Rachel?”  It wasn’t as if the writer was a friend of hers, but if you’re among the people who got a little sore when I said Rachel Maddow doesn’t say anything worth hearing, think about what made you sore. If it is because you think she’s your friend, like first-name basis, monthly-brunch friend, I’m sorry to break the news.
If you’re mad because I am wrong, imagine how my wife feels, she thinks I’m wrong a lot too.
It’s important to add here that I don’t respect anything about the failed project that is cable infotainment. I don’t value it, and I remember that before we had Facebook to blame, cable news and the 24-hours news cycle were candidates for the greatest threat to democracy. The point is, I don’t have any skin in the game when it comes to who is doing infotainment “right.”
Second: it was weird that the correspondent thought I was comparing their pal rach to Tucker Carlson. Tucker wasn’t mentioned anywhere in my story. It made me wonder whether those the only two lenses for viewing American politics on television.
I guess they are if you watch infotainment, and I think we’d be happier if we just didn’t do that. I don’t want to participate in