How many times have we heard this wistful question presuming to reflect America’s reasonable political “center”? It would be nice if such discussions could occur. But there is a compelling reason why this is no longer feasible and it has nothing to do with a stand-off between two stubborn antagonists. It certainly is not a conflict between “left and right”—not when the “left” is a traditionally centrist Democratic Party and the right a party actively engaged in undoing our electoral system and hence our Constitution. Yet even the GOP’s non-traditional extremism is not the main reason for this lack of dialog.
The reality is that virtually half the American electorate no longer deals in reality or facts. The longed-for conversations cannot take place when one side has disintegrated into a vast cloud of unknowing that bears a grotesque similarity to religious fanaticism. I still haven’t heard Trump or GOP legislators cite one accurate fact about the economy, immigration, gun safety, health care, or tax policy. Unless one counts Trump’s gleeful announcement to a 2017 gathering of his wealthy backers after getting his tax-cuts passed: “You all just got a lot richer.” That’s the GOP fiscal policy. Soak the 99.9 percent for the sake of the billionaires.
This idea that the electorate’s two camps cannot civilly address each other regularly distorts election coverage. For example, a recent article in The Washington Post recently covered the hostile political divide that arose in Butler, Pennsylvania after Trump was targeted by a gunman there. The article’s main narrative was that Dermocrats and Republicans have been equally at one another’s throats. However, every one of the more than half dozen acts of hate speech and threats cited in the article consisted of Trump supporters targeting local Democrats. The narrative of two sides enmeshed in “fear and loathing” (as the article has it) cannot be considered objective journalism when that same article clearly shows one side being responsible for all the intimidation. The Post in effect validates the violence and hate-fueled politics of Trump’s party by pretending it is equivalent to the Democrats’ peaceful and civil campaigning. “Why can’t the two sides just talk to each other?”
It is possible to have these cross-party conversations even when two parties are far apart. About six or seven years ago I approached a gun-toting man in a Wyoming restaurant and told him I wanted to ask him, from my east coast perspective, why he was openly wearing guns inside a family restaurant. We had a friendly conversation about gun control and gun rights. It was possible because he was not a stereotype, but a man thoughtful about what guns meant to him and open about when and why he carries them. Neither of us tried to convince the other, we just shared and considered our respective points of view. That’s all it takes.
But in the wake of January 6, 2021 our political culture has changed. The failure of Republicans to unreservedly denounce the riot in the Capitol and their eagerness to absolve Trump of responsibility for it in the face of evidence, empowered Trump’s violent rhetoric about illegitimate elections. Republican politicians doubled down on their campaign to turn America into a fundamentalist Christian-run nation while the Supreme Court violated ethics at every turn and manipulated electoral rules to enable the overturn of legitimate election results. The Republicans have rejected and attacked the most basic Constitutional procedures designed to assure a functioning republic.
That’s why it’s so difficult today to have these two-way conversations. Neither Trump nor any other Republican has advanced a coherent plan to repair our infrastructure, save our environment, or plan for the future. In foreign affairs Trump’s presidency immediately went about destroying the State Department, as Ronan Farrow’s The End of Diplomacy details. Trump spent his time tweeting like a stoned canary his admiration for North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, two of the more odious and anti-American leaders on the world stage. His supporters cannot explain how a serial bankruptee and accused rapist can masquerade as a successful businessman and man of god.
There is simply no set of coherent policies or ideas to have a conversation about. Republican voters’ viewed Obama, Hillary Clinton, and now Kamala Harris (see Washington Post article above) as satanic figures if not the antichrist himself (Obama). Literally. We are all anxious about the future but the Republican base blames it not on corporations draining American jobs and creating environmental chaos, or the Republicans they vote for shredding the social safety net, or America’s endless wars. It’s all the fault of the LGBTQs, blacks, immigrants, Jews, Latin-Americans, Asian-Americans, Muslims, and anyone who believes government can create programs that improve the lives of its citizens. Or it’s the “Zionist Occupation Government’s” (not in Gaza but the one that allegedly runs the U.S. and the world) plan to take away everyone’s guns and replace white people with all the hated “others”. They revere a pitiable incoherent serial liar and criminal as their savior. Their candidates across the country derive steady support from white supremacist organizations that openly admire Hitler. And, like any fanatics, they do not believe anything that contradicts their world view. Science? Lies devised to contradict the Bible. Countless mass shootings in schools and work places? Better to allow the shootings to continue than impose the slightest restriction on owning, carrying, or even modifying weapons that shoot hundreds of rounds a minute. Facts not only do not matter, they do not exist.
I’d love to have more conversations like the one I had in Wyoming. But when one side consists of people with little more than rage, desperate belief, and a rejection that ideas and facts matter, conversation is impossible. There is no divide. There’s just no one to talk to on the other side.
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