![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmc8htEYvCcNrcEaCbBfXbUf5e7gyqmd6ioKCSYo3KHVev/image.png)

It's because a lot of Democrats have this idea in their head that sometimes evil actions are necessary but meanness never is, and that first bit gives them space to make excuses where the second bit really doesn't.

That's why they can be ambivalent about Obama bombing Somalia but unequivocally indignant about Trump calling it a "shithole."

Abandoning that weird set of standards would require them to condemn their political leaders in such massive terms that I think partisanship prevents it.

Ironically it's what Tucker Carlson is doing with Kim Jong Un right now, with that whole "leading a country means killing people" thing. Tucker is rightly being crucified by the left for that, but I can't tell you how many times people defended Obama or Hillary to me on *exactly* those terms.

They've convinced themselves that imprisoning, torturing, and killing people is "just what presidents do," but using mean rhetoric in furtherance of it is beyond the pale.

I thought in the past that showing them all the world leaders who actually don't kill people might convince them to rethink, but that's when the American exceptionalism and its circular reasoning rears its ugly head.