It’s time to take a step back

The 2020 election season is in full swing, and the national temperature is heating up. The American people face an unprecedented choice in an election described on both sides as the most important since Lincoln’s in 1860. Never could the stakes be higher, nor the battle any harder, nor the struggle for victory any less divisive. 

This country is divided. We are divided along the lines of our leaders. To his supporters, President Donald Trump is a fighter for the forgotten Americans, a wall against China’s aggression and a defender of American prosperity. To his opponents, Trump is an incompetent stage man whose antics risk the health of the republic. Likewise, Joe Biden is to some a cautious and cool moderate whose even hand will lift America out of Trumpism. To others, Biden is a trojan horse for the ideas of the radical left. 

We are divided along the lines of our policies. In previous elections, Americans had been willing to compromise. Now, many voters view issues like healthcare, education, marriage equality, abortion and gun control as life or death. These days, it’s become fashionable to see multifaceted political questions along two poles: one that is completely correct and another that is unequivocally incorrect. There is no room for nuance and the in-between. 

The national temperature shot up this past spring with the killing of George Floyd. Floyd’s death brought a bevy of new ideas to the fore of American politics — police abolition and reparations for Black Americans among others. Ideas and movements like these, which once lived along the margins, now occupy a unique position in our political discourse. 

These phenomena form what political scientists call polarization: the growing chasm between the ideological groups of political society. Political polarization is to make extreme ideas mainstream. In the United States, political polarization typically takes the form of liberals versus conservatives, Democrats versus Republicans. It’s no secret to Americans that the age of Trump has seen the relationship between Democrats and Republicans sour beyond the pale. Lawmakers on either side that were once willing to work together are now cold, bitter enemies. 

It seems that both parties are interested in talking about what they aren’t rather than what they are. For Democrats, the primary objective this election year is to vote Donald Trump out. For Republicans, it is to keep burgeoning left-wing ideas out of the circles of power. To frame one’s political opinions in the context of one’s enemy is to create an us-vs-them mentality. “I’m not like the other guy,” one side says, and we’re left scratching our heads wondering what they are like. 

Political polarization is at its most dangerous when it bleeds into the lives of everyday people. All too often we other our political opponents. We lump people into boxes and make assumptions about what someone is like based on their political positions. When we judge others, we tend to see them only through the lens of our political axis. We refuse to see through someone else’s eyes. 

We sum up whole political philosophies and ideologies in singular maxims. This is good. That is bad. We take it one step further; if someone supports something we may think is bad, that must be because they are bad as a person. We forget the human. 

Political polarization has real-world effects. According to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, 71 percent of Democrats would not date someone who voted for Trump. A 2014 poll by Pew demonstrated that 36 percent of Republicans viewed the Democratic Party as a threat to the country, up from just 17 percent in 1994 — and this was before Trump stepped into the national spotlight. 

The causes of polarization are manifold. For the younger crowd, one important polarizer is social media. As high-school and college-aged youth spend more of their lives on social media, it becomes much easier to curate content that supports their preconceived notions and blot out opposing views that challenge them. The endless 24-hour news cycle and the availability of information at our fingertips prompt people to have opinions about everything everywhere. No wonder we’re polarized. 

There is a handsome price to pay for political polarization: violence. As partisans see their opponents less as human and more as abstract ideas, it becomes easier to justify violence against them. We have already seen polarization at its worst. During the Charlottesville, Va., protests in 2017, a white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing Black Lives Matter Heather Heyer.

A growing number of people are no longer content to simply disagree with their political rivals. They must confront those rivals in public — often with a rifle or crowbar in hand. 

The recent storm of violence that’s fogged over the United States is another symptom of our polarization. The unarmed killing of Black men and women by law enforcement has sparked a wave of demonstrations. Many are peaceful, others are riotous. These days it’s common to see images of looted Targets, destroyed businesses, wrecked cars and even entire buildings set ablaze. We would expect images like these from a tumultuous third world country. But this is all in America. 

If polarization increases beyond control, we will doubtless see the emergence of activist governments, administrations that play to an extreme set of ideas held by an extremely small cadre of partisans. It’s a bad sign when society forms so much of its opinions and value judgments from the assessments of activists and pundits. As politics and politicians move to the extremes, the everyday Jack and Jill will be more alienated from the processes that are meant to represent and protect them.

Of course, this isn’t an invitation to be politically apathetic. It is important for people to study politics and the issues, to form grounded opinions and to vote. To be clear, there is no problem with being passionate about politicians or attentive to the issues. However, any functioning democracy requires its citizens to respect the opinions of others. It requires people to decouple their political beliefs from their daily life. Politics should be things we believe, not what we are. When we allow politics to define who we are and how we wade through the world, we are wooing catastrophe. 

So take a step back. Remember the human. Lift your eyes from your news feed. Consider other points of view. Even if you can’t come to accept their positions, at least attempt to understand where your opponents are coming from. 

In times like these when it’s so easy to get sucked into the helter-skelter of politics, there’s nothing better than taking a break for a day or two. When it becomes convenient for politics to boil over into violence, it takes strength of character to tune out and drop off.