A-Sailing We Will Go

Maybe the problem between our two political affiliations in America has to do with something more rudimentary than a preference for one set of policies over another. I’m obviously no political scientist – I’ve never even played one on TV – but I wonder whether one of the main predictive tests for somebody’s political preferences might come down to a belief in humanity’s innate goodness or humanity’s innate malevolence.

If your inclination is to view your fellow humans as generally good, it seems to me that you might be more inclined to vote for more liberal policies. If you believe that people are generally ill-intentioned, it seems to me that you would likely support more restrictive and regressive policies, the better to contain your fellow man.

Such preferences wouldn’t necessarily fall neatly along party lines since liberal policies don’t always equate with more freedom, and vice versa. For example, in this country liberals generally oppose school vouchers, even though such vouchers should, in theory, create more options for all students. The reason they do not is because they fear that school vouchers will have the effect of undermining support for public education which is, itself, a very liberal policy. By contrast, conservatives opposed vaccination mandates because they mistrust the government telling them what to do with their bodies, even though they are happy to have the government tell women what to do with their bodies during a pregnancy.

You are here.

A healthy mistrust of government is prevalent on both sides of the political fence, surely a good thing since governments themselves are reflective of the political sensibilities which install those governments. A conservative populace will install a conservative government, alienating liberals, and the opposite is also obviously true. Further, when people and institutions accrue power, they are likely to misuse that power. A distrust of power is, in my liberal opinion, healthy.

On the other hand, a blanket rejection of institutions is as unhealthy as granting those institutions carte blanche. For this reason, I’m one of the people screaming that we need to resuscitate a healthy Republican Party. The current diseased version is not only consuming itself, it’s in danger of taking down its host body, which is the nation as a whole. Principled opposition is critical to a functioning democratic government. One party rule will always spawn corruption and abuse of power. When parties are too tightly wedded, it will do the same.

At the same time, when hyper-partisanship has reached the levels we’re currently experiencing in the United States, the parties tend not to even speak to each other, which results in a different kind of bad outcome, namely that they begin seeing each other as enemies instead of political rivals both committed to improving the lives of their constituencies. Rivalries are good. Warring camps are bad.

Which returns me to my original point about the way we view humanity, and how those views are reflected in our political preferences. Because once we’ve crossed into “warring camps” instead of “political rivals,” we’ve opened the door to something sinister. January 6^th was, I fear, an opening salvo in a potential low-grade civil war. Such a conflict, currently being waged primarily by the right but which could easily be matched by some on the left, threatens to unravel the nation from within.

These are obvious points, but worth reiterating, I think, because it’s apparent that America is teetering. Why that should be so has to do with so many factors, including the media, dark money, gerrymandering, and the attention-based economy. All of it designed to tap into our most primal emotions. Chief among those is fear.

Maybe you’ve seen some of the studies which conclude that conservatives are more likely to have larger amygdalae, the part of the brain responsible for fear. Conservatism is a philosophy of fear. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. The reason why people want to preserve (or conserve) the status quo is because they understand it. Changing it is scary because the consequences are unknown. Liberals tend to want to progress the status quo even though they cannot always predict how such changes would affect society.

For example, last week on Have I Got News For You, I asked former Republican Congressman Charlie Dent if he regretted any of the votes he took while in the House. He said that the one that springs to mind was his vote against gay marriage. I heard similar from conservative David Frum, whom I interviewed for my former podcast, How To Be Amazing. If you recall, the debate about gay marriage had to do with the “sanctity” of the institution. Sanctity is a way of saying, “the way things are.” To change marriage was to change something so ingrained into the culture that conservatives feared their own heterosexual marriages would, somehow, be cheapened.

In retrospect, that argument seems absurd. I mean, it seemed absurd at the time, too, but it’s a good example of how conservatism will fight tooth-and-nail to preserve what is at the cost of seeing what could be. That’s probably a wise course of action in certain circumstances, and fear can be a healthy response when somebody finds themselves in possession of a baby and some bathwater.

Liberalism can be as excessive as conservatism. My own inclinations are probably not fear-based enough. I’m always happy to toss bathwater willy-nilly, thinking to myself, “The baby will be fine.” Well, sometimes, the baby isn’t fine and we have to do what we can to keep it safe.

Change is neither good nor bad. Change is simply change. Progress, too, isn’t inherently good or bad The status quo, too, might be good or it might not be. Our nation works best when we can have good-faith debates on the consequences of our proposed actions. Our nation falls to pieces when such debates become impossible. And those debates become impossible when we imbue our political opponents with malevolent intentions.

Let me be clear: the MAGA movement is malevolent. Its malevolence has been ruinous for our political health. But I hope that when its sputtering flame is finally extinguished, we can, somehow, regain our footing. Liz Cheney has suggested a new political party might be needed altogether, and I suspect she’s correct because the current Republican party has been captured by white Christian Nationalists who would remake the nation in their image. It’s not an image I recognize as America, or as American.

But I don’t think half of the country is malevolent; I think they’re frightened. And I think they have good reason to be frightened. The other half – my half – is also frightened. And I think we also have good reason. I like to think my half leads with hope; hope for the poor and the marginalized and those who seek to make a better life for themselves in our country. My hope – I hope – outweighs my fears when supporting political policies, but I can understand why somebody might let their fears outweigh their hopes. We are a big country and we have big problems. There are those who wish to push forward at all costs and those who would caution against racing into oncoming winds. Neither is more correct than the other. I just hope we can figure out a way to hear each other over the storm.