We, as Americans, cherish the freedom and right to disagree—which we do, often deeply about important issues that need resolution. But polarization undermines that freedom by tightening prejudices rather than opening thought, thus diminishing the chances for finding resolutions and moving forward. So while polarization may feel like a righteous champion of freedom and right, it is in fact just the opposite—a stick jammed in the spokes of the democratic discourse of freedom. Here are some of the common ways it does it:
- SEDUCES with loaded, heated language and childish name-calling that appeals more to emotion that reason.
- BLINKERS by using cherry-picked facts, and ignoring or mocking opposing arguments and evidence rather than actually addressing them.
- TRIVIALIZES by focusing on “straw-man” issues whose value in re-enforcing biases is clearly greater than their substance.
- BULLIES by making you feel like a dupe or a traitor if you even listen to the other side.
- FLATTERS with language and a tone that makes you feel like an insider, who, of course, agrees with them because you “get it” … just like they do.
- FRIGHTENS by portraying the other side as not just wrong, but a dangerous, evil enemy, replete with wicked hidden agendas.
- “CLANS,” that is, plays the “us vs. them” identity politics game of associating the other view with groups or people (implicitly) “inferior” to “us.”
- “TRIBES” by using the knowing winks and nods of sarcasm, coded language, words in quotes (suggesting they’re misleading) and innuendo which you, as a member of the tribe, of course, will understand without explanation or justification.
This week…as I was pulling the usual snarling red vs. blue dueling headlines together, I saw an article in this morning’s Washington Post that felt like another ray of hope. Like last week’s mention of Senate candidate Beto O’rourke’s thought that “Reasonable people can disagree…”, this is also a story about a Democratic candidate. But it too expresses an idea that should be non-partisan. Elissa Slotkin, a candidate for Congress, assumed voters would be most interested in her position on the issues. What she discovered was that they are even more interested in finding a way to return to civility in politics. What follows is a highly edited/cut version of the article, focusing on this theme. Click the headline-link to read the entire piece.
AMERICA’S ANGER PARADOX: VOTERS WANT THE ANGER TO STOP, BUT CAN’T STOP BEING ANGRY
By Greg Jaffe, Washington Post, September 16, 2018
ROCHESTER, Mich. — Elissa Slotkin assumed that her campaign for Congress would be built around pocketbook issues such as the rising cost of health care, stagnant wages and unaffordable college tuition. Her first big indication that it would be something entirely different came at a house party last October in Ortonville.
“How do you deal with friends and family that are constantly posting things that are not accurate or that go blatantly against what you believe?” Sarah Allen, a 37-year-old mother of two girls, recalled asking.
“How do I respond without turning into an angry person that no one wants to be around?”… “How does this get better?” Slotkin says these voters often ask.
Slotkin improvised the best answer to Allen’s question that she could, urging her to post three positive things on Facebook for every criticism. “If you turn angry,” Slotkin said, “you’ve lost.” In the weeks that followed, Slotkin noticed that other women routinely asked her some version of Allen’s question.
One of the first things Slotkin noticed when she returned home last year after decades away was how much politics in her hometown and state had changed. “Neighbor sniping at neighbor. Cousin sniping at cousin,” she said. “We never used to have that in Michigan.” At almost all of her campaign events, Slotkin takes a rough measure of voters’ frustrations. “Raise your hand if, in the last two years, politics has made a relationship with a friend or family member tense?” she asks. Usually, every hand in the room goes up….
One morning last month, about a dozen women — an even mix of Republicans, Democrats and independents — were waiting for Slotkin at a cafe one floor down from her campaign headquarters. She had concluded that all-female groups were more open to her message of civility.
Just then, Sheryl Wragg, 63, rushed up to her and thanked her for her example. “You’ve kept me so many times from saying [expletive] on Twitter,” said Wragg, who uttered two words typically frowned upon in polite company. Slotkin laughed hesitantly and invited everyone to take a seat.
She opened with a lesson from her time in Iraq and negotiating with Russia on Syria. “You never start with the hardest issues,” she said. “You start with the easier issues where you can build some trust.”
After the breakfast, Wragg was eager to talk to her. She was unsure about Slotkin, too, and whether she could be a truly independent voice in Washington. “My biggest issue is creating harmony,” she continued. On that score, she thought that Trump, the Democrats and the news media shared equal blame for the infighting and the country’s deepening divisions. The woman, however, was willing to listen.
The last year on the trail also has taught Slotkin, a policy wonk by nature, that voters are more interested in empathy and understanding than nitty-gritty proposals. “There’s a whole group that want to know that you care about their problems,” she said. “They don’t want to hear your treatise on this or that issue.”
In late August, [Jan] Koop and [Nancy] Strole pulled together about 30 mostly Republican-leaning friends for a meet-and-greet with Slotkin. Neither of their husbands attended. “Our values are the same, other than this one race,” Koop said of her spouse. “We weren’t asking anybody to get married,” Strole added. “Just to listen.”
Standing in Strole’s living room, Slotkin thanked the two women for “taking a risk” on her. In today’s polarized political climate, it was “an act of bravery,” she told them. The more she listened to Slotkin, the more she liked her, too. Her support had little to do with Slotkin’s stance on issues. Rather, it was a feeling she got listening to her talk in Strole’s living room. “She’s a real person, like me,” Hansen said, “a country girl.” It was only one voter, but it was a start.
The late-summer sky was darkening as Slotkin offered up her final pitch. “Over my lifetime, a lot of things have changed in Michigan,” she said. “My dad was a Republican, and my mom was a Democrat. I never remember bitter fighting over politics.”
“We’re not New York. We’re not Los Angeles,” she continued. “We’re not Alabama. We’re mixed.”
This was Slotkin’s biggest and boldest bet: that the politics of her childhood memory still exist.
