Fight between UC Berkeley students and Trump supporters.
Screenshot of Fox News report.

Yesterday,  as a nation we suffered through a horrific reminder of just how bad the relations between us as fellow citizens are becoming. One determined and enraged individual, James Hodgkinson, opened fire on Republican congressmen as they practiced for the annual congressional ballgame between the parties. Miraculously, he killed no one, although the condition of Rep. Steve Scalise, the Republican House Whip, has reportedly deteriorated to critical. Had it not been for the presence of two Capitol Hill police officers on Scalise’s security detail, a large number of Republican lawmakers, both representatives and senators, might have been assassinated.

Reactions to the Attack

Some very insightful observations  of the reactions to the attempted assassinations were provided by reporter Mark Z. Barabak in an LA Times post, Reaction to shooting at congressional baseball practice reveals a nation that doesn’t just disagree, it hates. Mr. Barabak begins his observations by writing,

The attack almost seemed a natural, if sick, extension of the virulence that surrounds the country’s increasingly tribal politics.

As if to prove it, events quickly settled into a familiar pattern: finger-pointing, blame-laying, partisan positioning. People today don’t just disagree. They’ve grown to hate the other side, from President Trump on down.

Not necessarily over issues or ideology, which can be debated or leavened by compromise. But rather as an outgrowth of a deeper pathology, a contempt toward people for merely existing.

Barabak then quoted a political science professor at Vanderbilt University, Marc Hetherington, who said “It’s hard to suggest it’s an ideological conflict. What it’s all about is bad feelings.” Barabak then wrote,

He cited studies showing Republicans say they hate Democrats more than they hate atheists, and Democrats hate Republicans more than they despise religious fundamentalists.

The operative word in all these statements is hate.

Yet, reactions yesterday were not without their “instances of grace” as Barabak put it. These notes of grace were exemplified by comments of Speaker of the House Paul D. Ryan and Democratic House leader Nancy Pelosi in the well of the House.

Another splendid reaction was provided by the Democratic and Republican baseball team managers.

Nevertheless, expressions of hatred, especially on social media, vied to eclipse those notes of grace. Given past history, one might well expect these momentary flashes of grace to hold sway for a day or two, to be replaced with continuing polarization and rising violence.

The Continuing Rise of Violence from Politics

In his LA Times essay,  Mark Barabak states he believes the anathema between Democrats and Republicans to be “[n]ot necessarily over issues or ideology, which can be debated or leavened by compromise. But rather as an outgrowth of a deeper pathology, a contempt toward people for merely existing.” Nevertheless, the source of this great hatred arises from somewhere, and where else if not from the different and incompatible pictures of reality held by the two contending parties? If there is not sufficient overlap between the ideologies of progressives and neoliberals, aka “conservatives” —  and there seems to be very little overlap — no historic compromise can be struck between the two.

The conflict is generated not from a difference of our most basic human values, but from incompatible subsidiary values in the contending sides’ hierarchies of values. These subsidiary values are valuable precisely because they allow us to realize more basic values. While both sides want individuals and their families to live happy and fulfilling lives, they differ wildly on how that ultimately desirable state can be achieved. Progressives are very much convinced ordinary individuals lack the capacity and power to govern their own lives; only government, they believe, ruled by the expertise of technocrats, can achieve a just and munificent society. On the other hand, neoliberals believe government — while absolutely necessary to enforce the social contract — lacks the ability even in principle to govern in detail the chaotic social systems of human beings. This fact is particularly true for that social system called the economy. Only individuals themselves can solve their own problems and create happy lives for themselves and their families. In the neoliberal point of view, government interventions into social networks like the economy not only do not usually solve problems, more often than not government exacerbates problems.

When faced with the neoliberals’ explanations for their opposition to progressive policies, how do progressives react? The evidence from recent history, particularly since the 2016 campaign, is they believe neoliberals to be lacking in basic morality. In progressives’ views, neoliberal Republicans and their one-time Democratic working class supporters all belong to a “basket of deplorables.” They are all racists, fascists, misogynists, homophobes, xenophobes, and anything else that is evil. From this stark moralistic picture of reality, the total resistance to all Republican policies and to the Trump administration follows. From this portrait of Republicans as the embodiment of Evil comes the increasing violence from Antifa and the attempt by James Hodgkinson to assassinate as many Republican congressmen as he could. Already, Antifa has spearheaded a large number of violent and destructive demonstrations.

Hate engenders hate, and progressives will claim with a modicum of justice that neoliberals provide a mirror image to their own enmity and contempt. Although racism is not any part of neoliberalism, many progressives ascribe past violent racist acts to neoliberals. However, neoliberals should feel completely free to reject such an attribution as an inaccurate slander. If we get beyond violent racist crimes, progressives can nevertheless accurately claim that neoliberals hold them with pretty much the same kind of loathing and aversion. With hate comes hostility, and our present desperate danger is hatred and hostility of one side for the other forms a positive feedback for an exponentially growing instability that can destroy us.

Any salvation from this destruction can only begin with toleration by the belligerent sides for each other. Without toleration, nothing can save us. With toleration we can perhaps begin to talk to each other, and make a serious attempt to reconcile our competing ideologies by comparison of claims with actual empirical facts. To achieve this toleration to allow us to progress, everyone — but particularly the progressives and their news media allies — must dial back their vitriolic rhetoric.

There is an old story about Benjamin Franklin that is exceptionally appropriate here. When the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia finished on September 18, 1787, a departing Benjamin Franklin was confronted by a woman who asked “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin replied “A republic, madam — if you can keep it.”

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