She really said this.
The comment was specifically referring to the issue of abortion:
Farah Griffin tried to interject and say that kind of rhetoric was insulting to the voter, but Hostin shouted over her:
They're voting against their own self-interest. Do they want to live in Gilead?
Gilead in this instance is a reference to "The Handmaid's Tale," as opposed to the biblical land east of the Jordan River.
Conservatives were quick to denounce Hostin and call for her to be fired:
This latest derogatory statement just adds to the litany of other incendiary remarks Hostin has made, including attacking Republicans of color. For example, she called Nikki Haley a "chameleon" hiding behind her Indian heritage.
Paradoxically, Hostin claims that she's pro-life and anti-abortion, but also believes in pro-choice laws:
"I don't believe in abortion at any time. I don't believe in any exception to it," Hostin said in late June. "That's considered very radical for many people, and it's because I'm Catholic… so this has always been a very difficult discussion for me, but what is not difficult for me is the fact that this is an activist Supreme Court, and they should not be deciding the law based on their faith."
Don't do the math on that one.
Abortion arguments aside, the dehumanizing and othering of one's political opponents is always a bad sign: The Nazis called the Jews rats, the Hutus called the Tutsis cockroaches, and Europeans justified the African slave trade by saying Black people were at least 2/5 apes.
David Livingston Smith, in his book Less than Human, says that dehumanization is what opens the door for cruelty and genocide. It is difficult to kill a human or commit an atrocity against them, but if the opposition is regulated to animals or vermin, people are capable of horrible acts.
The Left has been moving this dehumanizing rhetoric into high gear for years now; Hillary Clinton called Conservative voters "deplorables." Biden calls them "extremists." As the pejoratives skew more animalistic and vermin related, we can expect violence and atrocity to increase.
The only remedy for this oh-so-common human malady is to remember that we are all made in the image of God.
Christ died for us and for those politically opposed to us. Pray for your enemies.
