The Trump years culminated the decades’ long trend of the transformation of American politics into tribal politics. The political parties once divided by policy issues, replaced with divisions based on moral and character issues. Democrats and Republicans who once saw each other as fellow Americans; now see each other as irredeemably flawed people.
It will take
much more than President Biden’s call for unity and legislative bipartisanship
to heal the nation’s toxic divide. In truth,
our political leaders, along with the media, are a big part of how we got to this
perilous and foreboding place.
Political
campaign strategy became less about issues and more about negatively defining the
character of their opponent. Republican
opponents are racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and heartless. Democratic opponents are dangerous elitist
tyrants, promising wealth distribution to gain power and control over you.
The
divisions between party loyalists grew even starker on social media during the Trump
Presidency, and the news media followed suit.
They shifted completely from reporting to advocacy as part of a business
decision to bolster viewership and readership.
The goal of reporting went from
objectivity, to persuasion –emphasizing certain news stories and spinning certain news events, to create narratives favorable to their audience’s party affiliation.
Now an
impeachment trial looms. Sure to further
inflame the passions of Trump’s protagonists and antagonists. The trial perceived either as another
illegitimate effort to silence their champion, or as a necessary step to
maintain the norms of our democracy. With or without acquittal, open wounds will
fester, and extremists on both sides will feel more empowered and emboldened.
Changing the
tribal mindset will not be easy and will not be initiated by politicians or the news media who have too much invested in maintaining the status quo. As naïve as this sounds, it leaves us, “we
the people”, to begin the process of forming, not a more perfect union, but a
union of respectful citizens. The
process begins with an essential first step, understanding the other side, from
their point of view. The Talmud (the book codifying Jewish law)
states that one must judge another only after considering 49 reasons for and 49
reasons against a person’s actions. In
essence, consider both sides of an issue before drawing conclusions, or passing
judgement.
Ironically that means utilizing a principal catalyst of the country’s stark divide, namely the media. Expose yourself to media from both sides of the political spectrum, What each side calls "fake news". Do so continuously and with an inquisitive mind. That way you will read or hear about stuff your side's media will not cover, or cover with a particular slant. Knowing both sides gives the complete perspective of what is going on in the country, Moreover, such exposure lays the foundation of common knowledge, permitting discussions of policy differences rather than character differences. To paraphrase Victor Frankel, there are only two types of people in this world, the decent and the indecent. Its up to the decent in each party to do the work necessary to lower the temperature of the rhetoric so there is less heat and more light in this country we all love.
For what it’s worth, here are
some of the people I read or watch. Television, political commentary and analysis --on the left, Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN; on
the right Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.
Television, daily news – on the left, David Muir and Norah O’Donnell
nightly news shows; on the right, Fox News Special Report with Brett Baier. Newspapers for news and editorial board opinions – on the left, Washington Post; on the right The Wall Street
Journal. Newspaper columnists who are thoughtful
moderate, or thoughtful partisan writers – on the
left Thomas Friedman of NY Times, Kathleen Parker and E.J. Dionne of Washington
Post; on the right George Will of the
Washington Post, Kimberly Strassel and Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal.
Next time, in
the spirit of understanding the other side’s point of view, I am going to explain
Trump loyalists, considered by many as very unsympathetic and indeed pathetic. My goal is to show the human side of Trump
supporters. Till then.
