Resentment, paranoia widen divisions
It’s not ideas that currently divide the nation; it’s emotions, attitudes, paranoia and tribal loyalties. Rather than focused arguments over clashing values, Americans express a generalized sense of resentment aggrievement and grudge. That makes the chances of compromise increasingly remote and the prospects for resolution all but unthinkable.
Take the ongoing battles over management of the coronavirus: both sides insist they are defending some honorable principle but their ferocious disagreements reflect underlying hostilities and irrational instincts.
Anti-vaxxers march solemnly and self-righteously with placards proclaiming “My Body, My Choice” – expressing the sort of logic they would forcefully reject regarding the abortion issue or recent proposals for sweeping legalization of recreational drugs.
On the other side, leftists who normally love the mantra that “Dissent is Patriotic” and view civil disobedience as transcendent virtue, will brook neither dissent nor disobedience when it comes to the public health strictures they support. And their talk of sweeping national mandates only could be enforced by the police and military – institutions whose expanding power they traditionally fear and decry.
It’s not just that the thinking on these issues is utterly incoherent, it’s that there is no thinking at all – just feeling: an angry, suspicious detestation of those with whom you disagree and an impassioned determination for “our side” to come out on top.
What can be gained for the nation at large if earnest pleading and relentless misinformation succeed in keeping a substantial amount of Americans unvaccinated. The majority of such folks may emerge from the pandemic without death or hospitalization, but no evidence exists to suggest that dodging the jab enhances health prospects.
There also is scant evidence of beneficial impacts from the vast, tireless project of statue removal or destruction by the “social justice” legions of Woke Warriors. At a time when they demand deeper understanding of the past oppressions, how does it help the cause to cleanse the landscape of physical evidence that it happened?
And if you insist on including Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson along with Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee in the list of worthies whose ancient tributes must be obliterated, doesn’t that exculpate the Confederates by inclusion, minimizing their misdeeds by equating them with figures with far less grievous, or more intimate, shortcomings? Looking at the swelling lists of targets for downgrades and cancellations, insightful members of the new generation must reasonably conclude that a single sin counts most decisively: the misfortune of being born into prior centuries less enlightened than our own.
And finally, one topic above all denies any real chance for rational discourse or even a highly partisan ideological analysis. The endlessly recycled, logic-proof claims of a “rigged” or “stolen” election in 2020 have now lasted more than a year. Vigorous indulgence of recounts, lawsuits, audits, and investigations produced a result that may be lamentable to some Americans but with an outcome that must be incontestable to all.
What higher principle, what noble purpose can conceivably be served by continued harping on increasingly preposterous conspiracy theorizing about Trump’s purportedly purloined victory? Even the most loyal supporters of the former president will find it challenging if not impossible to construct any scenario in which this focus helps their paladin with his prospective 2024 presidential campaign, or otherwise facilitate the triumphal return he craves?
The United States faces at least another year of perplexing predicaments, even if the pandemic finally recedes. Crime and education are increasingly acute crises and economic challenges have begun to generate real public fear.
Addressing such issues pragmatically and immediately may not deliver the bilious rush that Maxine Waters enjoyed by calling her GOP opponents “evil” but a more adult approach would bear the advantage of practical benefits and a healthier politics. It also could prove that ideology and even partisanship should become part of the potential solution rather than their false identification as the source of our problems.
Michael Medved, nationally syndicated talk radio host, is a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors and author of 14 non-fiction books, most recently “God’s Hand on America.”
Addressing such issues pragmatically and immediately may not deliver the bilious rush that Maxine Waters enjoyed by calling her GOP opponents “evil” but a more adult approach would bear the advantage of practical benefits and a healthier politics. It also could prove that ideology and even partisanship should become part of the potential solution rather than their false identification as the source of our problems.