Ye Olde Staging Point

Hi Andy, I suppose it's my turn to comment on political post of yours for once. :) Lately, I've been thinking about the enormous gulf between the left and the right as well. I found a fascinating interview recently at TomPaine.com (http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/7747 - a progressive web site characterized by much of the hand-wringing David Brooks describes in his insightful Weekly Standard piece) that tries to identify these disparate world views. A linguist named George Lakoff makes an analogy between the left and the right world views and different parenting styles, with the right being the Strict Parent and the left being the Nurturing Parent. It made a lot of sense to me as someone who is completely a nurturer. But I think it also demonstrates the unhealthy nature of such a dichotomy, in that I doubt many parents of real children embrace just one of these parenting styles. I think it takes a combination of severity and compassion to raise a child, and it makes sense that most people in the country fall somewhere in between the super polarized camps of the left and the right.

Hysteria is bipartisan:

"America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

-- George W. Bush

True enough, Jon.

The "hysteria" I was trying to get at, though, is not so much this sort of quote, as it is the tendency of political pundits lately to ascribe the most heinous and irrational of motives to political opponents. Gone is the day of giving your political opponent the benefit of the doubt--it seems common nowdays to immediately assume the absolute worst possible motives on the part of your opponents. Instead of voicing reasoned disagreement with the way Bush is handling things in Iraq, for instance, it's not uncommon to find people using words like Nazi, imperialist, warmongerer, Hitler, etc. People aren't content to disagree--it's as if they feel a need to make their political opponents as morally vile as possible. I suppose it's easier to hate someone when you've convinced yourself that they're guilty of every moral flaw in the book.

It's not just liberals (although you must admit, it's hard not to notice the stream of hate-filled invective hurled at Bush these days by vocal liberals). Kim pointed out that conservatives did much the same thing in painting anti-war protestors as traitors or cowards. But for all you may think Bush's statement on the nuclear threat is ridiculous or overstated, at least he isn't implying that Democrats are deliberately trying to destroy the United States--a patently absurd assertion leveled at him not only by fringe liberal crazies, but by fairly mainstream Democrats, as the article above notes.

Has it always been this way? It's as if simply countering your political opponent's ideas with logic is no longer enough--these days, to rally the troops behind your cause, you have to convince them (and yourself) that not only does your opponent disagree with you, but he's actually a vile, murdering, hypocritical, Hitler-loving monster who is hellbent on purposely crushing our freedoms. It's not enough to say that your opponent's tax plan, or war plan, or whatever plan, is flawed--nowdays, you have to maintain that your opponent's plan is going to destroy the United States.

I guess I'm rambling a bit (hey, it's late). But while I'll certainly accept your note that hysterical language is used on both sides, it seems to me that the most bitter and frenzied language today is coming from the left, with their dire, unending predictions of utter disaster in everything from war to the economy to foreign relations to constitutional freedoms. Why can't these people state their disagreements without trying to paint conservatives as monsters? Why can't they accept that their political opponents are decent human beings who are doing their best to serve our country? (Do they actually think that Bush is that evil? Do people actually believe that conservative political dominance is going to eradicate the Constitution and plunge our country into a Nazi-style police-state nightmare? I pity anyone who walks around convinced that everyone from the other side of the political aisle is an inhuman, profit-obsessed beast... but I personally know people who make exactly that sort of statement.) That's the question I was getting at--the above article provides some possible answers.

It's late, so I'm going to bed now :) Thanks both of you for your comments.

Kim,

I just read the Lakoff interview--very interesting! I'd never really thought to make the "nation as family" analogy, but it's an interesting one--and I like that this perspective allows that both sides of the political debate a) are operating out of a desire to build a healthy nation, and b) have important ideas to offer each other.

I also like his thoughts on the way that language can be used to frame an issue in such a way that it controls the direction of a debate and automatically casts one party in a bad light. (Although I would posit that both sides, not just conservatives, know how to do this all too well.) It's often really difficult to put one's finger on "news bias" even when you have a gut feeling that it's there--I think that looking closely at how debates/interviews/articles are framed, rather than just at the content, is a useful exercise. But at any rate, thanks for the link.

I'm glad you liked the Lakoff interview, Andy.

A brief response to your comment to Jon: Not that I am much of an apologist for the Democrats, but I think one important distinction that needs to be made is between the more radical left and the Democrats in Congress. Just as no one on the right would confuse the perspectives of fellow Republicans John Ashcroft and John McCain, there is also a great variety of viewpoints on the left that are too easily lumped together as anti-Republican. I personally have not come across any quotes from Democratic leaders accusing the president of murder, forming a police state, being a monster, or anything relating to the Nazis (although if you know of some, I would love to read them). There are certainly wackos on the extreme left who think the president is a monster, but this is a fringe component with significantly less power, authority, and political voice than either the Republicans or the Democrats. The quotes in the Weekly Standard piece use some hysterical rhetoric and clearly demonstrate the Democrats’ frustration and sense of powerlessness, but I don’t think they are an accusation of evil-doing by the president. In fact, many on the left are condemning the Democrats for NOT speaking out enough against the president’s policies and for being too scared to fulfill their role as the opposition party (check out this article by Arianna Huffington, beautifully entitled “Democrats: Profiles in Spinelessness” - http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/7915). I think the Democrat pansies in Congress are paralyzed by the thought of being labelled unpatriotic and have been incapable of articulating an alternative vision to the Bush administration’s plan for America – that is why they were burned so badly in the 2002 elections. And there is no way they will have a shot in the 2004 election unless they move beyond ineffectual criticism and embrace some ideals and policies that resonate with the rest of the country.

(I would also propose that any hate-filled invective going around now is following in the proud tradition that Republicans started during the Clinton adminstration.)

Fair enough, Kim--I see your point. I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I'll respond briefly.

First, I don't think I'm imagining it when I say that the anti-Bush rhetoric is worse than your typical political rhetoric. Check out those quotes from the Weekly Standard article again--in one of them, Janet Reno, hardly a fringe radical, draws a direct comparison between Republicans and Nazis. The other quotes have some equally out-there stuff. It could well be that those quotes were selectively chosen by the article's author (I'm sure he looked for the most sensational ones to make his point), but this article at Salon seems to support the idea that the left wing, or at least the Democratic party, thinks some pretty over-the-top awful things about Bush these days.

And yeah, I know that conservatives say ridiculous things too about their opponents too. I guess you just notice it more when your party is on the defensive. And it's an ironclad rule that whatever you're complaining about in politics, you can be sure that your side does it too...

Anyway, thanks for letting me rant. I wasn't trying to go off on you, Jon, you just caught me in a talkative mood :)