We are enduring unprecedented levels of political polarization. For years, even decades, the reality shared across party lines — the only space for good faith conversations — has been shrinking. As things come to a head in the 2020 Presidential election, one common complaint from Trump supporters is that a large segment of the population no longer tolerates their political views. They beg for decorum.
Let’s not fall under any illusions that Republicans and Democrats are on equal and opposites sides of this game of tug of war.
As I wrote in my post explaining why we must vote for Joe Biden, who you vote for in this election is not an expression of mere preference. A vote for Trump reveals that you tolerate (or actively condone) a wannabe fascist dictator that daily exemplifies virtually all forms of bigotry and that you permit (or celebrate) exceptionally cruel policies like separating children from their parents at the border and never reuniting them. A vote for Biden is simply not a vote for something equally preposterous — as much as FOX News and the Trump campaign would like you to believe electing him would put Antifa and Black Lives Matter in the White House, the political distance between those groups and Biden is several times as large as that between Biden and Trump (more on that below).
In whining about politeness, let us not forget the role Trump himself has played in creating our current political climate. While growing political polarization helped put him in office in the first place, he has stoked the flames pretty much every chance he gets. Just look at what he’s been tweeting about Joe Biden as of late. Look at his statements on QAnon, the most unhinged conspiracy theory in recent memory — one that plainly targets Democrats. This past weekend, Trump cheered on a group of armed supporters who surrounded the Biden-Harris bus and tried to run it off the road. If you’re a Trump voter complaining about a lack of decorum, take a sober look at who you put in the highest office of the land.
If you believe Democratic politicians engage in behavior at all comparable to this, you are either deluded or lying to yourself.
And as much as Republicans may claim not to like it, Trump is the face of the party. Few Republicans disapprove of what he’s doing. So even if it were the case that Trump is some aberration of Republicanism, let’s not forget about their longstanding tendencies to oppose science, to promote conspiracy theories targeting Democrats, and to fall for pseudoscience — as well as how these play into political polarization. Some examples: taking evolution out of school curricula, promoting climate change conspiracy theories, believing Barack Obama was born in Kenya, imposing on others the religious belief that life begins at conception, promoting abstinence-only sex education, opposing masks, promoting hydroxychloroquine after it was determined to not be effective against COVID-19, QAnon, and so much more. Being on the opposite side of these matters — as Democrats are — is to promote not political polarization, but a politics informed by reason, rationality, and scientific progress.
And then there’s the whole right-wing terrorism problem — including a recent incident in which Trump supporters plotted to kidnap the Michigan governor, who Trump criticized for instituting COVID-19 mitigation policies. (No, Antifa is not anywhere near as violent.)
If you believe your average rank-and-file Democrat engages in behavior just as corrosive to a healthy democracy as the above, you are either deluded or lying to yourself.
There is a paradox of tolerance: acting as if Trump’s ideas and policies are not preposterous in relation to the other ideas on offer provides the former an air of legitimacy that risks allowing such attitudes to dominate. This is how tolerating intolerance can produce a horrifically intolerant society, one that crushes decent, tolerant people. To be actively intolerant of Trumpism’s intolerance is basic collective self-defense. We should call out family, friends, and others close to us who plan to vote for Trump.
Anyone that claims they’d never let politics interfere with their personal relationships is mistaken — as invoking an individual with the initials ‘AH’ makes clear. Fascism doesn’t warrant decorum.
One thing to clear up: this is not about left versus right, it’s actually about Republicans versus Democrats. If you don’t know the difference, acquaint yourself with just how right-leaning American politics is. When we are talking about Republicans and Democrats, we’re really talking about the far-right versus the center-right. The only left-leaning candidate that even stood a chance to become the Democratic nominee was Bernie Sanders — and the Democratic Party would probably have preferred handing the election to Trump than have Bernie win the nomination.
I suspect that the extreme right benefits the most from discussions of political polarization that suggest a sort of symmetry between the parties. While Democrats painstakingly distance themselves from the left (think Biden assuring everyone during the debate that he would not ban fracking, and Harris laughing at the suggestion that she’s a progressive), Republicans need not separate themselves from the extreme right. This provides avenues for the extreme right to inject their ideas (think QAnon) into mainstream Republicanism. As Democrats (the center-right) negotiate and compromise with Republicans (the far-right), and as Republicans move further rightward, so too do the “compromises” struck between the parties. Thus, the political landscape depicted above.
Calls for a return to politeness across the political spectrum that neglect to account for the disproportionate hate and drivel spewing from one end of said spectrum endanger us all by justifying and legitimizing a corrosive political disposition. Moreover, insofar as these complaints fail to recognize a red line of intolerance that healthy societies cannot afford to cross, they provide cover for such intolerance to grow.
In sum, pleas for decorum are a form of tone policing that effectively gaslight well-adjusted people into allowing hateful ideas to enter the political discourse. Political polarization is a two-way street, but it’s one with wildly different speed limits depending on what direction you’re traveling.
We’re no longer engaging with politics as usual, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.
Evan Anderson 