Civility [no-bullshit]: Penn Jillette

As the frustration with Trump boils with many accross the country, a touch of perspective is needed lest the outrage defeat the purpose of opposing Trump’s agenda.

But how to communicate that to those who have gone so far as to brand all opponents (and sometimes those who aren’t oppesed enough for their tastes) as “evil”? How does one demonstrate that showing compassion for Muslim refugees and others who may fall victim of Trump’s policies is consistent with not demonizing Trump and his supporters?

I think Penn Jillette does the job as well as anyone can in his latest podcast, Penn’s Sunday School: There’s No Such Thing As Evil.

Direct link to the mp3 file. Begin at 26:42.

Warning: by 44:35, he’ll be done making his point and start to make references to jokes made earlier in the podcast that… well, they’ll make no sense and may come accross as disgusting without having heard the earlier part of the podcast. So given that, you may want to listen from the start.

(It’ll probably still be disgusting, but it will be funny with context)


UPDATE:

August 27, 2019:

I’ve added a title to what had just been a title-less post. The “Civility [non-bullshit]” portion is a little bit inspired by Penn & Teller’s documentary series Bullshit, but mostly by an ongoing series of posts by Ann Althouse about the disingenuous use of calls for civility that are actually politically motivated calls for people to shut up, which she posts under the tag “Civility Bullshit”.

In my attempts to highlight genuine attempts at promoting peaceful coexistence among political rivals, I’ll be tagging such posts “Civility, No Bullshit”