Demonizing the Opposition

Rather than have an actual, substantive discussion about the relative qualifications of different governing philosophies, most people find it easier to characterize the "other side" as in some way evil. Sometimes they even use the actual word "evil", but more often than not some euphemism is applied. The other guys "hate America", or are racists, or are crooks. Name-calling is so much easier than taking the time and energy to understand the other side's position, to understand why they believe the way that they do, and to understand why they don't agree with you. Why do people seem to at times vote against what you think are there best interests? Why do people tolerate in their own preferred candidate things that they abhor in the other candidate? There's no easy answer to this; it takes work, it takes thinking, dare I say that it takes empathy to put yourself in another's shoes, in that person's head. 

And I'm not just talking about person-to-person attacks, when you characterize a politician as, for example, a hater-of-America, you are by extension painting anyone who agrees with or supports that politician with the same brush. Statements like that just kill civil discussion right off the bat. There are people that I get along with fairly well, who can't talk about "liberals" without unmistakable disgust and accusations that we are destroying America.

The current Presidential election has just made things worse. Previous modern elections have involved serious and fundamental differences in vision for the future of the country, and there has been no shortage of ad hominem attacks, but the salvos fired by the campaigns of the major party candidates resemble the comments on Facebook, and they are often literally just that, considering the Twitter war that one of the candidates continually wages.

The root of some of this incivility can be traced partially to the rise of certain political talk radio personalities in the nineties, for example, Rush Limbaugh. The constant drumbeat of attacks against Bill Clinton gave conservatives some source material for their anger and challenged liberals to come up with counterattacks. The rise of and widespread use of social media allowed everyone to be able to publicly voice an opinion and we saw "sources" multiply like mushrooms on a rainy day. Facilitating political discussion while at the same time separating real face-to-face discussion made it very easy for people to always be in "insult mode".

I doubt that we'll see civility reign any time soon. I almost typed in "a return to civility", but I'm not sure whether I am allowing false nostalgia to color my perceptions. Just remember, when you're discussing political positions, you're talking about real people, not cartoon demons.