This Is Why We Ignore Them All
One of my friends on the left side of the political spectrum tweeted something the other night that got me to thinking. He referenced some of the pending bills at the legislature on public schools and transgender students, and asked why Republicans were always so mean and nasty.
I scrolled down a bit and found similar posts, but with the reverse topic…asking why Democrats were also so nasty and mean in asserting their political views and destroying property in the process.
We lived through the era of “the politics of personal destruction”…now, it’s taken on a new form, presuming that anyone who does not agree with you broadly is hard-hearted, thoughtless, and inhuman.
That’s the key point…because if we demonize our opponents, if we turn them into something unworthy, it’s far easier for us to mobilize like-minded folks to our side. By creating a bogey man opponent, then by definition we don’t have to listen to what they have to say and can dismiss their arguments as invalid and unworthy.
I suppose a lot of it is a product of our social media age. Nuance goes out the window when you have limited numbers of characters to use, and it makes it far easier to dehumanize our political opponents.
Again, I said opponents and not enemies…that’s a phrase used by many to help advance their agenda.
And this is why so many are turned off by political discourse…because it’s not really conversation, debate and discourse…it’s wide-eyed screaming and pointing about how bad the other side is, without much conversation about the merits of the actual topic at hand.
And for that, we all suffer a bit.
