Shaping the future with today’s choices.
I have no idea what demons drove the man who shot Congresswoman Giffords and 17 other men and women. And I am not writing this because I see this tragic event as an example of the effects of the harshness that now characterizes our politics. Rather, I want to make broader points.
Shaping the future with today’s choices.
I have no idea what demons drove the man who shot Congresswoman Giffords and 17 other men and women. And I am not writing this because I see this tragic event as an example of the effects of the harshness that now characterizes our politics. Rather, I want to make broader points.
First, on the basis of the facts available, this shooting seems to me to be most of all an example of free range, non-ideological craziness, of mental illness -- not one, directly, of inflamed politics. I recommend to everyone David Brooks' column in the NYTimes yesterday on this topic. Brooks argues that we are not dealing well with the broad problem of mental illness and violence. I agree with him, but I also think that Brooks' focus is too narrow. As a starter, it would be far preferable if it were not so easy for just anyone to buy a semi-automatic Glock 19. (But they can. Sales have soared since the shooting.)
Second, American political discourse has never been gentle -- you can go back to our beginnings, to the Jefferson and Adams presidential campaigns and the death of Alexander Hamilton and come forward to the present and find a very high level of insult, invective, and, sometimes, violence in our politics. But if I focus on the last 50 years, the political climate does seem to me to be distinctly more harsh and more dangerous. (Although even in saying that, I have to except whole eras like the 60's and the civil rights struggle and what civil rights leaders and activists faced then.) There is something "in the air." I have no idea whether this "something" actually effects anyone's behavior, but my gut feeling is that it does.
Sign up for weekly ND20 highlights, mind-blowing stats, event alerts, and reading/film/music recs.
Third, while the climate seems much more harsh across the board, there is -- or seems to be -- a more violent tilt to the rhetoric of the far right. Jim Fallows refers to a list compiled by the Coalition to stop Gun Violence of "violent" or "insurrectionist" political rhetoric. It is scary, and even though I say "across the board" above and mean it, I strongly doubt that Fox or the Wall Street Journal's editorial page could develop a similar list focused on the left. It is distinctly unhelpful for Democrats to see this particular tragedy as a result of Republican rhetoric; for Republicans then to point to Democratic excess; and on and on. But Republican leaders ought quietly to think hard about what they set loose in the country generally when they seem to indulge violent rhetoric. The disgraceful scenes during the passage of health care reform come to mind, when the Republican leadership made no apparent effort to lower the heat of what sure seemed to be semi-violent, racist insults thrown at Democratic congresspeople.
But hard thinking about the quality of our national discourse will not take place on either the right or the left. Hand waving and sober commentary will have no effect. The genie is out of the bottle. Our politics are what they are and no one is going to change. The reason stems from the deep structure of American politics today.
In his excellent book "Civility", Stephen Carter makes the point that as rhetoric becomes more and more inflamed, the differing sides of the political argument find it easier and easier to see each other as "the other." Once you see your opponent that way, it is hard to impossible to see the substance of their arguments or their basic humanity. But Carter doesn't try to explain why this might happen. Bill Bishop, in his equally good book "The Big Sort", shows why. We are now polarized not just by opinions and ideology, but by lifestyle and geography. We no longer live next door to the people with whom we disagree. We may be evenly divided as a nation, but at the local level we live -- to an astonishing and unprecedented degree -- in politically homogeneous neighborhoods. I grew up in a very small, rural village -- you had to get along day by day with neighbors you disagreed with completely with politically. Not any more.
At the same time, we segregate ourselves on the web. We live in homogeneous neighborhoods there also -- so today we have both our own opinions and our own facts. The talk shows and the blogospheres are almost entirely one voice and are highly intolerant of dissenting views. The awkward task of dealing with the actual thoughts of someone with whom you disagree is completely avoidable.
In this world, opponents are seen as the other, compromise is seen as corrupt, and any absence of ideological fervor is viewed with suspicion. No amount of fake goodwill is going to change this. I've come to think that until there is a true political voice at the center, nothing will change this. Hands will be waved in dismay, but the rhetoric will steadily worsen, the purpose of politics will be more and more ideological identification, and actual substantive improvement will be harder and harder to achieve.
Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bo Cutter is formerly a managing partner of Warburg Pincus, a major global private equity firm. Recently, he served as the leader of President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) transition team.