Those of us raised by “The Greatest Generation” came up during a brief respite of bi-partisanship. Experts mark the period from the end of WWII until 1964 as a truly unique period in this country’s ideological history. Many of us who came up during that period mistakenly thought it had always been that way and we’re fogging our view of today thinking it still “should” be.
Maybe as some experts believe, “The Greatest Generation” valued bi-partisanship, having been tested like none other first by the Great Depression and then while facing down the unfathomable inhumanity of extremist ideologies.
More than any before or since, that generation’s value for bi-partisanship came closer to embodying what many Founding Fathers hoped for the political process in this Country.
But almost immediately elected officials fell into what some term “boarding house” silos as witnessed by Thomas Jefferson when he bemoaned a Congress that failed to grasp even then “the necessity of accommodation and mutual sacrifice of opinion for conducting a numerous assembly.”
As widely noted, and well documented by this recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the rancor and rhetoric and partisan gridlock was with us almost from the beginning and obviously reached its extreme some 60 years later with the tragic Civil War.
I’m persuaded that today’s partisanship is “bottom up” not “top down” as it is vogue today for some to intimate by demonizing others as Washington “insiders.” Our current divide is evidenced by a dramatic decline in the number of “moderates” elected to Congress, dropping from 45-53% in 1949 to less than 10% today and many of those cowered into block voting with the extremes. We the “electorate” have made it hard to be a moderate and hard to compromise.
Fueling today’s divide is the compressive, effect of insatiable 24/7 news which offers little additional insight while hardening any dissent into a fight to the death while demanding absurdly simplistic solutions to very complex problems.
Unlike that 1860’s War Between The States, the country today isn’t divided up by section of the country. It is much more complicated and to me more dangerous. Salt and peppered around the country are more and more counties and some entire states that are dominated by majorities, eager to cower any other thinking with more and more extreme ideology.
This is best exemplified by the current, block voting-incalcitrance within a Republican Party, where it seems once moderate politicians are now in the “closet,” so to speak. Historians have documented that Its growing extremism took root in 1965 and deepened throughout the 1970’s and since.
Predictable and increasingly extremist statements now by that party’s leaders after every vote in Congress is nothing more than a reflection of an increasingly inflexible and extreme electorate back home.
Today’s civil war of words, like the violent Civil War of the 1860s, is again about culture and economics. On one side are descendants of the era of “social gospel” believing in acceptance of differences and a salvation anchored by creating a better, more tolerant society.
On the other side of this civil war of words is an increasingly extreme and inflexible, sometimes violent group believing everything is a war of good and evil in the fight for individual souls, making every text book, social safety net, court ruling and every “requirement” for the commonweal, an all-out, angry battle.
The two sides, increasingly, only read what reinforces hardened opinions, only speak to those who fully agree, only live around “people just like them.” The vitriol of some talk show hosts and easily angered movements, is what Big Sort authors Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing might term a type of “ideological road rage.”
I sense in extremists today, the same incalcitrance that led to this nation’s tragic Civil War over slavery and other cultural and economic issues a little more than 60 years after its founding.
Ironically, that one was triggered by the election of a Republican President vowing change just as today’s civil war of words and vitriol, in my view, has been triggered by the election of our nation’s first African-American President because it symbolizes a public acceptance that “ideological road ragers” apparently can’t accept because it means other divides can be overcome.
I so hope I’m wrong. Maybe a new generation coming up will repopulate our Congress with moderates who will again be unafraid of bi-partisan dialogue and accommodation and compromise and rescue us from what we know from experience is the result of unchecked “ideological road rage.”
I’m an optimist by nature so maybe it is an alarm that comes with age but I must admit I don’t have a good feeling about this one. God Bless America and I, oh, so hope I’m wrong.
Note: Some of the ideas expressed above evolved or emerged from my recent reading and re-reading of The Big Sort, a must read for anyone who cares about the future of this Country, Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Liberal (or Moderate,) passionate or dispassionate, young or old…
2 comments:
Predictable and increasingly extremist statements now by that party’s leaders after every vote in Congress is nothing more than a reflection of an increasingly inflexible and extreme electorate back home.
Today’s civil war of words, like the violent Civil War of the 1860s, is again about culture and economics. On one side are descendants of the era of “social gospel” believing in acceptance of differences and a salvation anchored by creating a better, more tolerant society.
On the other side of this civil war of words is an increasingly extreme and inflexible, sometimes violent group believing everything is a war of good and evil in the fight for individual souls, making every text book, social safety net, court ruling and every “requirement” for the commonweal, an all-out, angry battle.
It's hard to read this and then, as you and so many pundits would do, draw the conclusion that the two sides are somehow equivalent.
There is a moderate position in this country, and it's well represented in Congress and the White House. We call it the Democratic Party.
There is also a xenophobic radical right-wing that has a seat at the table, both in our mediated discourse and our government. We call this the Republican Party.
There is not, however, a similarly radicalized left-wing program that ever gets mentioned, let alone taken seriously. This doesn't really have a name, does it? I mean, hell, the most radical "leftist" commentator on my TV is an ex-sports announcer named Olbermann, and if you think he represents any actual leftist positions, then i can tell you were educated in the US.
Just review the whole "Health Care Reform" debate from the last 18 months if you doubt this. Or more recently, check out the "Ground Zero mosque" debate, which isn't about a mosque, and isn't at ground zero, and is only about the freedom of religion, the very building block of American society; the bedrock of American values.
Try to tell me that the position which says that the First Amendment to the Constitution requires that the government refrain from making any decisions about someone's freedom to worship is a radical position. It isn't, we both know it, and there's no equivalence between frothing at the mouth xenophobes who think our civilization's survival is at stake over what is essentially a YMCA, and someone who points out the First Amendment is pretty much the defining code for this kind of thing.
We may yet end up with some sort of bloody clash between opposing ideologies here*, but the folks who act and write as though the lack of civility on both sides of the great divide is somehow the main problem will have to accept their responsibility for that development as well.
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One could argue that some of the immigrant bashing that we're seeing around the country represents the first wave of this. If so, then ask who's stirring that pot?
Good points Barry and you very well may be right.
Figures I used are from Keith Poole at UCSD and aggregate of both parties but you may be right.
But I see he's co-authored online info updated through 2009 online. Scroll down if you're interested...fascinating stuff:
http://voteview.com/polarizedamerica.asp
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