Mutual Contempt: A Portrait of Polarized America
Gandalf Grey
By Andrew Bard Schmookler
Created Mar 6 2007 - 12:50pm
Over the months, I've occasionally suggested that some of the people who
have supported the Bushites are not altogether contemptible and evil people.
For example, in my call for a "prophetic social movement," I said that we
need to reach out to some of the decent people who have been "seduced" by
the Bushites, "for if these good people can be helped to see that these
emperors have no moral clothes, they will withdraw their support." (At
www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?page_id=27 [1]
In a subsequent piece to explain how the defects in the seduced play a role
in their own seduction, I posed the puzzle in terms of "how it is that a
disproportionate number of the most remarkably decent people I know voted to
re-elect a president whose administration has been remarkable precisely for
its lack of such decency."
And most recently, I made an offhand (even parenthetical) remark to the
effect that some good people subscribe to a conservative political ideology.
I wouldn't think this would be so bold or controversial a position to take,
but every time I say anything along these lines there are some who come
forward to pound me. Or more to the point, they've come forward to denounce
in unequivocal terms the people whose redeeming virtues I've asserted.
These people are scum, some of these respondents assert. Their religious
beliefs are worthy of nothing but scorn. Their political values are
contemptible. They deserve no respect or regard of any kind.
These denunciations ring a bell for me. I've heard such things not so long
ago, but with an interesting twist.
I do a monthly radio show to an area of Virginia where I lived for a decade
up until 2002. Virginia's a conservative state, and this area is more
conservative than most of the rest of the state. For the decade I lived
there, I discussed hot-button political and moral controversies, trying to
undo the damage done to the consciousness of much of that audience by
demagogues and panderers like Rush Limbaugh. By the time I left, I had the
feeling that I'd accomplished something.
But of course with the coming of the Bushites, the forces of rationality and
open-mindedness and mutual respect were over-whelmed by the deliberate
manipulations of Rovian propagandists, sowing hate and polarization and
irrational patterns of thought.
In the face of that, I used one of my monthly radio shows to poses this
question for discussion: "I'd like to ask you conservatives about how you
regard liberals. [To them, "liberal" includes everything to the left.] To
what extent do you regard them as your fellow citizens, with a legitimate
point of view, whose concerns and values deserve to be taken into account in
determining the destiny of America? And to what extent do you regard them as
your enemies, who are so evil or misguided that their views should be
disregarded and who should be vanquished as thoroughly as possible and
rendered irrelevant to our collective decisions as a nation?"
In the first hour of this two-hour show, there were plenty of right-wingers
willing to come forward and denounce liberals without reservation.
"Criminal" was one of the words used to describe liberals. Others included
"ignorant" and "irresponsible" and "selfish."
The right-wingers' attacks on "liberals" had very much the same tone and
flavor as the left-wingers' attacks on conservatives evoked whenever I've
acknowledged any virtues among the people on the other side of our divided
nation.
Which leads me to ask these questions:
What do you think happens to a country like ours when it's divided into
two polarized camps that see each other in terms of such mutual contempt?
Do you think that a democracy can function well in such a polarized
social/cultural/political environment?
Whose interests do you think are best served when people on each side have
no respect or regard for people on the other?
How do you think the emergence of this mutual contempt came about?
And if your goal is to help the values you most believe in, regarding the
nature of America's political process, to gain ground in America, what do
you think should be done about this mutual contempt?
***********
A final note: To be sure, the conservative/traditionalist side of America
has in recent years made a moral error of a magnitude unprecedented in the
history of our country. What error could be more serious than mistaking the
evil for the good? Seeing this been very disturbing to many of the rest of
us. (I've written about the traumatic impact of witnessing this disgraceful
episode in my essay, "Why 'Good Will Toward Men' Has Become More of a
Challenge for Me: My Christmas Thoughts," which can be found at
www.nonesoblind.org/blog/?p=399 [2].
But does this justify holding them in unadulterated contempt?
For one thing, the liberal side of America --as I have been arguing since I
first launched my website, NoneSoBlind.org-- made some important moral
errors over the past couple of generations, with its rejection of whole
categories of moral judgment, thus helping to create in many Americans that
fear of moral anarchy that fascists have always exploited to rise to power.
For another thing, history shows that most groups of people, under the right
(or wrong) circumstances, can manifest something ugly. But people's worst
potentialities are not all there is to them. Thus the fact that American
conservatives have followed a leadership that has brought out their worst
side does not mean that its fair or valid to reduce them to the parts of
them that are most defective.
That's the same thing that those right-wingers who called into my Virginia
radio show were doing to liberals-- seeing them only in terms of their
defects.
What happens when each side thinks it has a monopoly on truth and virtue?
--
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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson