Note: This article was originally published in the West Virginia Independent Observer on September 9, 2017.
The times you and I are living in now as Americans, whether we’re on the left, as I am, or the right, are increasingly polarized. This is one of the few “facts” on which the two sides can agree. I and most others on the left, who are on the outside of political power looking in, see the polarization as a phenomenon pushing the country inevitably off of its democratic footing into an authoritarian quicksand. I suppose those on the right see it as returning us back to solid ground. So why the agreement on the phenomenon, but disagreement on the trajectory and the end result?
Our polarization has its roots in opposing ideologies, as probably most polarization does, but it has infected our politics to an extent not seen since the Civil War. It might be a little simplistic, but today’s polarization seems rooted in how the opposing sides see the proper role for operating the levers of government. Do we press on the levers heavily; say, to promote and enforce regulations to achieve more and equal opportunity for everyone, or do we use a light touch; say, to free our corporate elite to do right by everyone (hypothetically)?
People still not at either of the opposing poles find more and more pressure to commit to one or the other side, to sandpaper their self-image, to eliminate the fuzziness around the edges of the beliefs that define them as individuals. As their perspectives narrow, they find their minds, as mine already is, becoming less and less accommodating to dissenting views. They forego nuanced opinions, become unforgiving of the opposition, and reject compromise. And so, polarization becomes our reality.
Americans are forcing themselves to fit into ideological cages. For many, the fit into the cage can be a little uncomfortable at first. Paraphrasing Goldilocks: too loose or too tight. Our ideals might be too big and far reaching for the cage, so that we feel confined and squeezed up against the bars. Or they might be too scrawny and timid so that those who share the cage with us squeeze us out between the bars.
The longer we stay in these cages, the more likely we’ll get used to them and see them as part of how we identify ourselves, giving them high symbolic value. They become our Statue of Liberty or our Flag, and they endure. Consider how the cages of the Civil War: one protecting the institution of slavery and one seeking to dismantle it. Those cages endure to this day. I think of Robert E. Lee, living in Arlington, VA literally right across the river from the capital of the Union in Washington, joining up on the side of the Confederacy. A weighty decision, regarded as bravely patriotic by one side and treasonous by the other. And some 150 years later, it’s still the same judgments you hear from the two camps.
The pro-slavery cage has been redecorated in the robes of White supremacy, but it’s the same old ideology of racism that spurs on its occupants. The abolitionist cage got a major rejolt during the 1960’s with the drive for expanding civil rights and eliminating Jim Crow, but it’s been pretty much neglected since.
The issue of the proper level of involvement of government in our daily lives generates strong arguments from both poles. It becomes confusing to tease out the arguments and plot a consensus path to the better future that both sides idealize but never agree on. Without polarization there would be honest viewpoints to be had and shared from both sides. With polarization, there are no bridges from the “truth” of one side to the “truth” of the other side. They’ve been burned. No bending, no deviating, no compromising.
So, OK, whatever. That’s the way it is. You’ve got your opinions; I’ve got mine. You’re wrong; and I’m right. Period. Case closed.
But it doesn’t stop there in some mutually declared DMZ, because power and money hang in the balance. The facts, the supports, the rationales behind the positions are juggled and hedged, and contrary positions are dismissed or contorted. But, again, all of this is OK since we can leave the messy work of compromise to the politicians. Oh, wait! God help us! The politicians are polarized too!
In an unpolarized government, proponents on opposing sides of an issue engage in issue-oriented explanations, though often with barbs attached. They characterize the positions of the opposition as misguided, unclear, or unrealistic. They debate. But this initial comity too easily escalates to trash talk, to labeling the members of the opposition themselves as stupid and evil and hateful and fat and horse-faced and unclean and predatory. We leave the realm of civil discourse and resort to name calling, a practice that plays to those already committed to their cage. It fires up the base.
But then it gets worse when those in power begin to abuse their position. They propose punitive actions and circumvent protocol. For the opposition’s “crimes” of dereliction of duty, treachery, treason, murder even, they must: Go to jail (Lock ‘er up!); Be roughed up (Get those protesters outta here!); Be shunned (I don’t take questions from CNN!); Be crippled (Revoke their license!); Be thwarted (The President’s SCOTUS nominee will not be considered!).
All of the foregoing is preamble for the real concern here. Where do the sober minded go during these our polarized times? Do they pray in their churches, mosques, and synagogues? Do they somehow hover between the warring camps, striving for balance and equanimity? Do they convert to their best worst choice and themselves become activists? Or do they just walk away?
Which role, peace-maker, arbitrator, belligerent, or disengaged to take properly depends on how weakly or strongly your sense of ethics and morality feels challenged. For your future better self, the hotter you feel, the hotter you should react. You don’t want to face later the sad reality that you didn’t try hard enough or that you betrayed your ideals.
Those hot on the radical right have made their case loudly and insistently, backed by a Scrooge’s fortune of dark money. The left, often characterized as loopy and vacillating, has only recently begun to heat up. Here are some reasons why, from one previously lukewarm about politics, but now hotly on the left.
Government in the United States seems less and less like a fairly played game. Its deliberations and moves, which importantly determine who do and who do not win the game, strongly favor the richest and most privileged of our people. Our politics, acting contrary to our Constitution, reinforces this disparity. We have a Congress, a Judicial branch, and an Executive branch that demographically comprise the privileged. These people more reliably represent their own kind than they do the poor, the uneducated, the jobless, the sick, and the threatened. The Supreme Court by christening corporations as persons and blessing them with Constitutional rights, declining to remedy red state jerrymandering, hobbling trade unions, and condoning attempts to purge voter rolls of minorities has tilted the game even more in favor of the already privileged.
Meanwhile, the Executive and Legislative Branches, under President Trump and the Republican Congress oppose universal health care, treat refugee seekers (including children) as criminals, kiss polluters, regard women as men’s chattel, and legitimize racist ideologies. To do the dirty work of these policies, they have appointed misanthropes, religious zealots, and flat-earthers who take their science from books predating Copernicus. And that includes especially the Bible.
State legislatures under Republican administrations have yoked graduates of public, post-secondary education to a lifetime of debt. They’ve sold out our natural resources to those that take and take and put nothing back. They shamefully and cynically buy into the lie that guns don’t kill people. They jealously guard access to the American Dream and grant it only reluctantly to those who are under-privileged — women, minorities, LGBTs, refugees.
I guess if you choose to be one of Christ’s peacemakers and aspire to be become His child, you should engage mildly and stay out of the food fights. But even Jesus at one point in his young life saw the justice and morality of throwing out the bums from the temple. It’s that side of the Christ legend (or reality, if you prefer) that should motivate those progressively inclined to go head to toe with the moneyed forces in the conservative camp. We could hope that it would be enough to expose today’s money changers for who they are, describe their agenda as uncaring, expose the bricks of their tactics fired in racism and hate, and send them packing out of our local and state governments, out of Congress, out of the courts, and especially out of the White House. It is, of course, too much to hope for.
And anyway, we can’t hope to be 100% successful because there are still too many millions in the radical right cage now, many of whom ironically are themselves underserved. Moreover, democracy doesn’t thrive in a totally homogeneous cultural environment. We need people at both poles, because democracy, like economic opportunity, thrives when there’s a chance to hear and weigh contrary, even crazy ideas. But our counterbalance to the hard, radical right agenda, pushed on us by the rich, is much weaker than it was in the progressive heyday of mid-20th century America. Our center has moved considerably to the right since those days and this current center cannot hold, nor should it.
The near remedy is not to destroy the radical right, but to radicalize the progressive left. The goal is to rebalance the country, push it back to the time when there was more comity and across-the-aisle compromising. Those were in the days preceding Gingrich, McConnell, DeLay, Palin, Cruz, Coulter, Hannity and especially Trump, all those who fight opposing ideas with gasoline. These are among the most vitriolic antagonists of democracy, people who have labeled Democrats and Progressives as un-American and even traitorous. The hypocrisy of these claims in the face of Trump selling the country out to the Russians is downright contemptible. If we let the labels stick, the radical right will eliminate progressive voices entirely. Their dark money overlords, like the Koch Brothers, Adelson, and the Mercers, have declared that as their goal, so the threat is real — like Godzilla lumbering out of the sea.
Given the desperate times we’re in right now, where the country is losing its compassion and the radical right is clogging up our democratic arteries, the appropriate methods are not to meet in the current middle, to cozy up to the other side, to toast marshmallows together over campfires. We need to forcefully and with conviction push the middle back leftward, to confront the other side relentlessly, and keep the marshmallows to ourselves for now.
There have been many warnings from the center left and threats from the radical right to avoid fist fights in taking up the progressive cause, to avoid holier-than-though attitudes, and to forego identify based dramatics. We’re told, shy away from the LGBT “disturbances” of our cultural norms, from Black Lives Matter “disrespect” for law enforcement, from women’s liberation “man baiting”, from refugee “disruption” of our job market and our welfare system.
But each of these identity groups achieved the limited successes it has, not by being timid, but by making a case for the Constitutional and moral rightness of their demands and being loud and adamant about it. Broad based, multipronged, sustained, and insistent demands make change happen by stimulating action and involvement. So, bottom line: for those of us on the left, it’s time to bare our teeth, not just our souls, and bite hard. To answer Yeat’s question, to become that “rough beast … slouch[ing] towards Bethlehem to be born.”