We are told by wise elders and pundits of the left and right that a lack of civility has overtaken politics in this country, and that it is an affliction that has infected the entire political spectrum— progressives no less than conservatives:
Incivility in America has reached epidemic proportions. Every day rudeness, disrespect and hostility sideline collaboration and compromise. Sound bites replace sound journalism. Extremes on both ends of the political spectrum stymie productive dialogue. The public, initially worn and weary, is increasingly enraged about how the lack of civility has left government helpless in the face of our nation's most pressing problems.
The 2016 campaign has brought political incivility directly into living rooms across America. Not only have candidates exacerbated this through numerous disrespectful remarks, name calling, and by insulting various members of minority groups, but the tone of the campaigns has also led to physical violence. Uncivil words have led to uncivil actions and are the direct result of the nature of the rhetoric expressed by those competing to lead in public office.
But what if the ‘civility has broken down across the political spectrum’ trope wasn’t actually true?
What if the ‘both sides do it’ trope is a false equivalency, much as the much discussed ‘crisis of polarization’ turns out to be ‘not a thing’, as my kids might say, but simply a narrative that distorts the reality— the right wing has become increasingly extreme, but not the left:
Does it matter whether the polarization, and the deep dysfunction that follows from it, is equal or not, including to the average voter? The answer is a resounding yes. If bad behavior—using the nation’s full faith and credit as a hostage to political demands, shutting down the government, attempting to undermine policies that have been lawfully enacted, blocking nominees not on the basis of their qualifications but to nullify the policies they would pursue, using filibusters as weapons of mass obstruction—is to be discouraged or abandoned, those who engage in it have to be held accountable. Saying both sides are equally responsible, insisting on equivalence as the mantra of mainstream journalism, leaves the average voter at sea, unable to identify and vote against those perpetrating the problem. The public is left with a deeper disdain for all politics and all politicians, and voters become more receptive to demagogues and those whose main qualification for office is that they have never served, won’t compromise, and see everything in stark black-and-white terms.
It turns out, when someone does careful research on political messaging, we find that there is not a even distribution of incivility between the political right and left — conservatives aren’t merely the more polarized and rigid in their attitudes, they actually prefer to hear speakers who show disrespect:
...we found that voters’ attitude towards disrespect in politics affected their candidate evaluations, producing different patterns for the social judgment dimensions of communion and agency. Specifically,the link between disrespect and agency was stronger for voters with a positive attitude towards disrespect, while the(negative) link between disrespect and communion was stronger for voters with a negative attitude towards disrespect. This means that under certain conditions, disrespect indeed confers a positive sense of strength and assertiveness, but it can also lead to backlash on the interpersonal dimension. Through these social judgments,disrespect also affected voting intention and actual voting decision. (emphasis added)
How do we know it’s conservatives that prefer displays of disrespect? The appeal of disrespect towards perceived opponents lies in its connotation of strength, and it’s a feature of the authoritarian personality, which is a particular attribute of conservatives:
In the United States, Republicans began averaging higher on authoritarianism than Democrats before the rise of Trump (Hetherington & Weiler, 2009). And the party began to learn how to appeal to this segment of the American electorate in various ways. The Republican Party’s opposition to virtually everything proposed by the African American President Obama helped. But it remained for Trump to break the unwritten rules of American politics and appeal directly and openly to authoritarians and those who score high on SDO [Social Dominance Orientation]. Not surprisingly, recent work reveals that Trump supporters tend to be especially high scorers on both scales. Eight months prior to the election, MacWilliams (2016) relied on his survey finding - that high authoritarians were strongly in favor of Trump - to predict correctly that routine election surveys were sharply underestimating Trump’s support. During the presidential primaries in February 2016, Feldman (in press) also found a significant positive relationship between authoritarianism and favorable evaluations of Trump among Republicans. Indeed, none of the evaluations of the other primary candidates revealed such a connection.
I’ve argued repeatedly in diaries that Trump’s campaign was explicitly fascist in nature, and Trump voters (90% reliable GOP voters) are proto-fascists, receptive to the message of a fascists, and ready to be recruited (as the election demonstrated). Richard Seymour makes it clear why discourse fails with fascists and proto-fascists:
The problem is, in part, that operating liberal political theories about 'speech' -- the theories that, whether we 'believe' them are not, tend to be the ones that predominantly guide people's actions and responses -- are centuries behind the state of knowledge about how language works. It is still assumed that language is basically a neutral conduit, transferring meaning from one to the other, rather than something which is done to you. Meaning itself is treated as something contained in the language, which we may decide to unpack and digest, rather than as a form of intending, something which acts on us, by means of the very materiality of language and what it activates in us. If language does things to us, if we find that disagreeing is somehow just not adequate as a response, if it makes us want to throw a punch, or a brick, it must be because we're triggered snowflakes who can't deal with the argument.
The advantage that fascists have on this terrain is that they do not behave as though they are having a conversation. They are aware that they are throwing verbal bricks, and that in good time, in circumstances of their choosing, they'll throw literal bricks or bullets. In the meantime, they are taking advantage of the protocols of mainstream media communication to amplify their voice without in any serious way engaging with their opponents.
Letting a conservative talk at you will not make them feel heard, and so make them more receptive to hearing progressive messages. They are not trying to convince us, they are trying to beat us to the ground.
If we assume they share a good faith interest in making the country better for everyone, we will be rewarded only with disdain, and the progressive accomplishments of the past century (imperfect and incomplete as they are), will be lost.