Why Did Rahm Attack Chick-fil-A?

WC Varones, Word Warrior, Left Coast Rebel, SarahB, Mut and Dean have all posted excellent pieces on the total success of Chick-fil-A (CFA) Appreciation Day as well as the fascist nature of the original attack on CFA. I won't recapitulate that here. Instead, I'm fascinated by the decision made by the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, to get involved in this in the first place.

First off, I have total respect for Rahm Emmanuel as a professional. I think he has risen to the top of his profession through a ruthless ambition that honed his natural political talents into a sophisticated and expert set of marketing skills. Rahm is a pro's pro. So why did he go after CFA over traditional marriage? From the outside, it seems like a pointless, unforced error.

For starters, let's do away with the notion that his threat to use government power to enforce moral orthodoxy was an aberration. The modern Democratic Party has become the American Fascist Party. From Nanny Bloomberg in New York regulating cola sizes to California's insanity du jour, they no longer recognize any restraints on government and react to suggestions that limits might exist with genuine shock.

That right there is the answer of a fascist. So exploiting CFA to further expand government authority isn't the answer. The CFA attack was just a reasonable exercise of power they feel they already possess.

Some have suggested that Rahm was just energizing the progressive base. I'm not buying that one, either. The Democrats went on to endorse gay marriage in their 2012 party platform so there was hardly a need to create a sideshow over CFA.

The Explanation: Life In The Bubble

Rahm did it because everyone he knows thinks the same way. As far as he can tell, all rational, open-minded, moral people believe in gay marriage. Opponents are nothing more than crazed bigots and everyone knows it.

A photo circulated on Twitter by the fascists.

Rahm's decision to attack CFA was a dramatic example of the bubble that most  progressives live in. There's no question that the bubble exists. Most progressives simply don't understand conservative positions, hence the endless accusations of racism and homophobia.

But Haidt’s research went one step further, asking self-indentified conservatives to answer those questionnaires as if they were liberals and for liberals to do the opposite. What Haidt found is that conservatives understand liberals’ moral values better than liberals understand where conservatives are coming from. Worse yet, liberals don’t know what they don’t know; they don’t understand how limited their knowledge of conservative values is. If anyone is close-minded here it’s not conservatives.

When Rahm publicly went after CFA, he was just articulating what he thinks all normal, rational people believe. CFA values weren't Chicago Values. They were the beliefs of closed-minded bigots. His decision to attack CFA naturally fell out of his analysis of the situation. After all, when confronted with blatant bigotry, who wouldn't have summoned the press and unleashed a broadside?

Secondary Evidence

Progressives have organized a gay kiss-in at Chick-fil-A restaurants for today to bring attention to what they think it the anti-gay hate of CFA. I can't imagine an event that could better exhibit the total ignorance of the progressives. The owner of CFA doesn't discriminate against gays in any way, shape or form as employees or customers. He just doesn't equate traditional marriage and gay marriage. Our understanding of biology, that mixing two sperm or two eggs will not produce a baby, indicates that there might be a non-bigoted reason to differentiate between the two types of couples. The gay kiss-in is the product of mind-blowing blindness to the conservative position. It's the bubble on display.