in highly charged political environments it's a status game. if you say nothing, you're implicitly on the wrong side for each listener (Backfires, like tfa disc

in highly charged political environments it's a status game. if you say nothing, you're implicitly on the wrong side for each listener (Backfires, like tfa discusses). If you hold up the virtues and tear down the corruption of each side, everybody only listens to the parts they want to hear. So you're on their side, or at least could be converted. Also, the comment was kind of a joke. The original speech in the wiki article is pretty darn funny.