I speak weekly to my aging father who leans right politically. He labels himself as a Nixon Republican, which any student of history will have to frown at, knowing what we know about the 37th president’s time in the executive office. Growing up in this solidly conservative reality, I learned early that there is some good on the conservative side of policy making and that the Republican Party has a history of quite progressive ideas and leaders (see Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, George H. W. Bush for examples). I’m no longer politically a conservative or a Republican because it has become evident to me that whatever the right had going for it in terms of policy and principle has been permanently lost with its recent violent lurch rightward. The goons are now in control.
This populist, nationalist lean isn’t a new development. Recent historical events (beginning with Senator John McCain taking on running mate Sarah Palin and culminating with January 6th, 2023) have made it evident that the right has lost its ever-loving mind. They deal in casuistry rather than policy, appalling showmanship rather than leadership. Right-leaning media platforms make a mockery of any discourse that isn't already morally imbecilic. These (online and cable TV) networks spread conspiracy thinking and inane versions of reality like potent virulences. The combination has been lethal for our democracy.
My father’s position on much that is going on in the world today comes primarily from his right wing TV news channels and discussions with his friends. He's not on social media, but it is apparent, even without exposure to the Russian troll-fed propaganda on those networks, Pops has become a bit of an extremist about much that is going on.
And yet, the issues he's 'up-in-arms' about are never what I expect; it's never the really egregious, scary problems; the infractions of liberty, the threats against our establishments, the attacks on our democratic processes, the undermining of our precious freedoms. Instead, he seems to be caught up in culture war jargon, even if he doesn’t know what most of it really means. He’s become a parrot that repeats the words and emotions fed to him, morning, noon and night from his TVs. Most of us have.
Since Pops is the one person on that side of the ideological divide that I have regular contact with, he has become a proving ground for a philosophical experiment that I’ve been working on. How do we break the barriers of ideology and talk about the tough issues again?
Pops is not a college graduate, nor did he work in education, information services or economics. He’s no dummy, however. He retains his late 20th Century smarts about modern events. When I asked him if he was interested or upset about the former president having been indicted on 37 counts of felony possession of top secret and other confidential documents, he said he’d heard about it, but didn't know the details. He betrayed no real emotion, but I got the sense that he didn’t believe it was a big deal. Later in the conversation he asked me if I knew what the word "woke" meant. When I said that I had some idea of what he thought it meant, he went into a deeply impassioned rant about how Democrats are ruining freedom using that word. He was quite adamant about it.
Note the difference, though. The historical event of ‘great pitch and moment’ he was aware of but with no emotion. The other thing of literally no import—except propagandized scapegoating—he knew about and was really angry because of it. The dichotomy between the culture war jargon from propaganda-filled TV and Pops’ lack of interest with the actual scary things happening in our society fascinates me. It proves that there is a chasm even for him, but the gulf between the sides isn’t so much intellectual as it is emotional. As I reflected on our conversation I was caught by the odd misplacement of his strong feelings.
For some time, I have suspected that there was more involved in the apparent ideological schism than just a difference of opinion. When we noticed that some of the people we are friends with began to—like Pops—become a bit more extremist about their political and religious beliefs, I wondered what had changed. I knew part of it was social media; if ever there was a place for people to have their worst ideas reinforced by algorithms, trolls, bots and other, like-minded users, it was Facebook and Twitter.
Likewise, I noticed that people on the opposing (read: ‘left’) side of things had become more militant. When the hardline right wing grew radical (and more unhinged), the people left of that movement went harder left and seemed to get a little more easily offended and willing to embrace news that was not objectively verifiable. They also got very touchy about anything that challenged strongly-held beliefs. It seemed a natural balancing reaction considering how far into the bleak landscape of authoritarianism the right had moved, but at the heart of it all was a consuming, righteous outrage about the “other side”. Deep, powerful emotions, irrational, always raging, erupted with the sharing of “opinions” and woe to those who tried to take a more civil, reasoned approach to disagreeing.
At first, I thought that it was just that things on the fringes of the political spectrum were rougher, generally. Actually, there’s no real difference in informational intake on either side. Both halves of the schism get their news in the same ways, but because it is spun with whichever political or religious flavor the user prefers, we tend to follow the content that confirms our inborn biases. Since bad news gets clicks and good ratings, if the channels and platforms can make their users unreasonably angry about a topic, regardless of where it falls on the political spectrum, all the better. They can moderate their content to swing people harder left or right from there.
There’s a perfect example of this in George Orwell’s masterpiece novel, 1984. Called “the two-minutes hate” every worker of Oceania’s Airstrip One (totalitarian England) had to stop and gather before a huge screen where Emmanuel Goldstein, the ideological enemy of Big Brother is portrayed. During this hateful interlude, the workers are expected to hurl spittle and vitriol at the screen, working themselves into such lathers of outrage that some people actually collapsed. No one can resist the visceral whoop of rage because it feels good to be angry at something. It is never made clear what Goldstein has done to earn this hatred, except that he’s “the enemy”.
The helplessness and bleak totalitarian nightmare of their lives has to be relieved so that they continue to be compliant and docile. If they rage at Goldstein, they will not rage at the injustices perpetrated on them by Big Brother’s regime. After the two-minutes hate concludes, there is a moment of patriotic revelry, where all unite in mutual adoration of Big Brother, once again transported to heights of passion.
Sounds all-too familiar.
Orwell knew well what we seem to have forgotten. When we try to cross the chasm of our cultural polarization, we’re not faced with well thought-out opinions or even reasonable (if not totally rational) hopes and beliefs. It is unreasoning emotion, stoked up by feelings of perceived persecution and grievances too deep to ever be solved.
People (all of us) seem to not be able to help reacting with our anger. We have been conditioned to guard our beliefs with feelings, rather than logic. This has made us more tribal, more othering (prejudiced), more intolerant, more credulous and more unironic and literal. Thus, we react with anger when challenged and take whatever information caused that anger as if it were Gospel. We never seek to objectively verify them, because we feel they are right.
And yet, if I speak to my friends calmly, rationally, with empathy and open mindedness, we seem to agree on more than we disagree. Although I loathe the phrase ‘agree to disagree’ for reasons of semantics and personal snobbery, I find that we can actually find common ground even where we differ fundamentally if we lose the emotional tone and try to speak objectively. We can—as the founders intended—be free to dissent and not have pitched battles about tough topics or create scapegoats or make enemies of our friends.
Pops is still wise enough that he’s not going to start a family fight with me over a difference of opinion, nor I with him. I know that he’s also never going to stop watching cable TV news. He’s set in his ways and he likes the noises and light and I think it makes him feel like he’s participating in the process of democracy when he gets angry at what they tell him the problem is with this country. Nevertheless, between the extremities of both of those positions is a place where he sometimes listens to reason and defers to a different, less emotional take. It's taken time to get past the strong feelings for both of us, but it has been worth the effort.
My hope within our community is that we aren’t yet so blinded by artificially stoked outrage that we can no longer speak rationally together. I’m not fully convinced, but I’m hopeful that finding this non-emotional pitch is the only real solution to our current divisiveness (that, congressional term limits and an end to Citizens United, of course).
Our nation is teetering on a series of emotionally-charged ideological time bombs ready to explode us into an authoritarian nightmare much like Orwell’s less and less fictional 1984. And, although I won’t say that all people have been duped, many of us are too emotional to see what actually matters and what is at stake. One of the hallmarks of a newly developing despotic regime is that people are so amped up and outraged over perceived challenges to their way of thinking that they put a “strongman” in power who eventually removes anyone’s right to be free.
I hope, to quote Christopher Hitchens, “No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine.” I'm also quite certain that unless we start trying to find common ground with our fellows, the chasm will be too wide and we will forget that we’re brethren in this fight for human rights and liberty.
It isn't necessarily imperative that we speak solely about politics or religion or their many subcategories with our friends (like LGBTQ+ rights, gun violence, billionaire-funded super pacs, book banning and the devastating erosion of the wall that separates church and state). Yet, while these two topics go without discussion because of the vitriol of their proponents and while exposure to the loss of liberty brought on by credulity, we also lose our ability to bring the conversations back around to reason, logic, skepticism and doubt, kindness, open mindedness, love and eventually—hopefully soon—civil discourse.
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