telling the truth about our opponents

With trusted, wise, respectful voices in seemingly rare supply, who we listen to matters. With massive amounts of media sharing misinformation and amplifying hosts who encourage rage and/or fear — because rage and fear maximize response and minimize critical thinking — when you find a source you actually can trust, what a refreshing find indeed. One such voice the Intramuralist trusts is David French. He’s fair, logical, and respects all people. His weekend column was excellent. Sobering. And worth sharing. It’s entitled “A Whiff of Civil War in the Air: Malice and misinformation are driving national division.” An excerpt from French…

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“On Thursday the University of Virginia released pollingresults that should shock exactly no one who closely follows American politics and culture. A majority of Trump voters (52%) and a strong minority of Biden voters (41%) strongly or somewhat agree that it’s ‘time to split the country.’

Why would they even contemplate taking such a drastic step? Well, the poll provides the answers, and they’re not surprising. Competing partisans loathe each other and view the opposition as an existential threat. This also isn’t new. It’s been tracked in poll after poll for year after year. This one found that a ‘strong majority’ of Trump supporters falsely believe there is no real difference between Democrats and socialists. A majority of Biden voters falsely see no real difference between Republicans and fascists. What this poll tracked better than many others is that the mutual loathing is based more on emotion than policy…

We’ve seen it time and again. The combination of malice and misinformation is driving American polarization to a fever pitch. While there are real differences between the political parties, a fundamental reality of American politics is that voters hate or fear the opposing side in part because they have mistaken beliefs about their opponents. They think the divide is greater than it is.

For example, other polls have found that Americans ‘substantially exaggerate the extent to which members of the other party dehumanize, dislike, and disagree with them.’ In addition, ‘Democrats and Republicans imagine almost twice as many of their political opponents as reality hold views they consider ‘extreme.’’ Moreover, this ‘perception gap’ gets worse with increased education and media consumption. 

Last week the Washington Post’s Robert Kagan published one of the most important essays of the year. Called ‘Our constitutional crisis is already here,’ Kagan persuasively argued that America was set for an electoral confrontation (especially if Trump runs again) that could lead to the ‘greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves’…

He understands what few people grasp—that American radicalism has now filtered down into the ranks of the ‘normal’ folks, the solid citizens who are often the pillars of their communities… The cycle works a bit like this. Malice and disdain makes a person vulnerable to misinformation. Misinformation then builds more malice and disdain and enhances the commercial demand for, you guessed it, more misinformation. Rinse and repeat until entire media empires exist to supply that demand…

It’s important to understand that there is no policy fix for malice and misinformation. There is no five-point plan for national harmony. Popular policies (like the Biden policies supported by Trump voters) don’t unite us, and there are always differences and failures to help renew our rage. 

Instead, we are dealing with a spiritual and moral sickness. Malice and disdain are conditions of the soul. Misinformation and deception are sinful symptoms of fearful and/or hateful hearts…

I do not pretend for one moment that there aren’t significant differences between left and right. But our system was built from the ground up to channel political differences through a Constitution that is designed to protect the fundamental human rights of both winners and losers, majorities and minorities, including minorities of one. 

So long as those constitutional guarantees last, the stakes of our political disputes should never grow so high as to necessitate the rupture of our national union. And if we want social peace in a time when false accusations of ‘socialism’ or ‘fascism’ echo across the land, then telling the truth about our opponents is the most fundamental and necessary start.”

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Did I mention sobering?

Respectfully…

AR