Back on September 1, 2023 The NY Times editorial board used one of their headlines to do some implied false equivalence by omission.
Partisan Politics Put a Huge Win for Public Health at Risk
To make a long editorial short, it was all about how the current crop of Republican extremists are in the process of destroying one of the few good things George W. Bush did — the PEPFAR program which has saved the lives of millions of people either with HIV or at risk. But simply calling it “Partisan” lets them decry it without identifying Republicans as the problem for people who don’t get past the headlines. They got a lot of flak in comments for not simply calling the GOP out in plain sight.
But there’s another problem with that headline. (Besides the idea that politics can be partisan-free.)
It reinforces the idea that being partisan is inherently bad. I wrote a comment in which I pointed out it’s not that simple:
Let's stop for a minute and consider the word partisan.
To be described as partisan these days is to imply that someone is taking an action or supporting a policy purely for political advantage, with no connection to any legitimate reasons for doing so on their own merits.
A more neutral definition of partisanship is to describe someone as adopting and promoting the viewpoints of a particular party - choosing a side. But that still carries the taint of somehow being unfair or biased.
So let's take this a little deeper. Choosing sides may be partisan, but it also is a judgement call - which side is on the side of the angels? It requires making value judgements, making distinctions, and weighing facts - informed partisanship.
The old song "Which side are you on?" is still relevant - and clearly Republicans are on the wrong side here. To decry partisanship is to blur the lines, make no distinctions between sides, as though the very act of choosing is a bad thing.
All political positions are partisan - but some of them are defensible while others are not. To treat them as equally valid or equally biased is to indulge in false equivalence. It is a kind of moral idiocy we can no longer afford.
Fear of being seen as partisan appears to be a sin only liberals can commit — or worry about. Bipartisanship is seen as virtuous, again something that only liberals are expected to aspire to. Partisan, bipartisan, nonpartisan — we need to stop confusing the labels for the contents.
Each of those can be good things OR bad things depending on what’s at stake and what justifications underlie them.
Frank Vyan Walton posted about something John Pavlovitz wrote that explains why he is taking what is called a partisan position all too often. To excerpt from the conclusion (Read the whole thing), there’s this unambiguous statement:
I believe you’re wrong in ways that are harming people.
You’re wrong to deny the humanity of other human beings.
You’re wrong to justify your affiliation with this violence.
You’re wrong to embrace a movement built on the worst parts of who we are.
I simply can’t agree to that.
Those are what some would call value judgements. People have to make them all them time. Compromise is not something that can be done when the choices are that stark. Refusing to acknowledge those choices is a form of moral cowardice.
It’s a bit more credible in my opinion if they can be based on objective facts, but it’s impossible to have values without making some kind of distinction between choices on a consistent basis — unless your values are all about whatever seems expedient. This video compilation of Fox talking heads is a demonstration of their values, and what side they have chosen to be on.
If opposing them is to be seen as partisan, that does not invalidate the reasons for opposing them.
Michelle Goldberg wrote the other day about Naomi Klein, Naomi Wolf and the Political Upside Down. The two women are very different in their views, and people confuse them for each other. It’s disorienting.
In “Doppelganger,” [a new book by Klein] Klein offers a half-joking formula to explain onetime leftists or liberals who migrate to the authoritarian right: “Narcissism(Grandiosity) + Social media addiction + Midlife crisis ÷ Public shaming = Right wing meltdown.” As Klein emphasizes, Wolf’s journey into the Mirror World can’t really be described as a fall. She and others like her, says Klein, “are getting everything they had and more, through a warped mirror.” For Klein, the more important question is less about Wolf’s motivations than those of her followers. Somehow, Wolf’s apocalyptic pronouncements about sinister drug companies and imminent technological tyranny speak to these people in a way that the left does not.
“When looking at the Mirror World, it can seem obvious that millions of people have given themselves over to fantasy, to make-believe, to playacting,” writes Klein. “The trickier thing, the uncanny thing, really, is that’s what they see when they look at us.”
This is what gives partisanship a bad name, when it’s no longer connected to reality, when there’s no shared consensus based on facts that can be honestly debated or disproven. That doesn’t make it any less important to know what side you have chosen or to defend it. Sometimes it’s a matter of survival.
The Mirror World image stimulated a lot of comments. Here’s mine:
Sometimes it feels like being present at a house fire, where there are people trapped inside who refuse to be rescued and believe the firefighters are trying to kill them. Worse, some of them believe gasoline will save them and they want to spread it to all the other houses in the neighborhood.
Sometimes “partisanship” is insufficient to describe someone’s views. Sometimes it needs a modifier, like unreasoning, irrational, corrupt, cynical, self-defeating, naive, fanatical, deluded, cult-like, reflex, and so on.
Or other words like: principled, practical, reasoned, informed...
We live in an uncertain world. No one ever has all the relevant information about a given situation. No one is right all the time. No one is completely rational about their choices. But it would certainly be convenient if there was such a person. It’s why strong-man dictators and demagogues keep bedeviling humanity; some people will choose that kind of ‘certainty’ when faced with a world that they can’t understand and/or are terrified of. They choose to avoid choosing and let others do it for them.
Democracy is an attempt to deal with an uncertain world. People make arguments, express their views, and try to persuade others to join them, rather than blindly following the loudest most self-assured ‘leader’ or adopting a rigid set of beliefs. It involves being able to change minds and do so on the basis of objective facts (where available), and should incorporate accountability. The assumption is that if enough people can agree on something, that’s the way to go, but...
If something doesn’t work, don’t keep trying to do it harder when it becomes clear it doesn’t work. (And getting people to agree on that is a partisan endeavor as well.) If someone or something keeps getting things wrong, don't be afraid to turn elsewhere. Mistakes happen — but the answer is to learn from them and do better, not defend them.
It’s why attention to those who differ, who are in a minority still need to be given a certain amount of respect — because it may turn out they were right after all.
What do you value? What do you know? What do you want? What and who do you believe? What and who do you trust? How far will you choose to go to defend your views? How do you deal with those who disagree — and how will they deal with you? What do you do if/when you decide you’re mistaken, you’ve been wrong?
Unless everyone has the same answers to those questions, a certain amount of partisanship is unavoidable — and so is conflict.
Make sure sure you can justify your answers, don’t be afraid to show your work, don’t be afraid to change your mind if the facts warrant it, don’t let labels be used to define or confine you against your will and your best efforts to deal with an uncertain world.
Recognize that you may not have an answer to everything or always be right — but always asking the right questions, the next question, is sometimes enough to keep moving forward.
What do you think?