Not So Divided

I don’t like doing it, but I have to respectfully disagree with Paul Krugman.  His column today talks about what he perceives as two moralities.  He believes, “we are a deeply divided nation and are likely to remain one for a long time. By all means, let’s listen to each other more carefully; but what we’ll discover, I fear, is how far apart we are.”  Krugman continues:

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.
The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

My dissent is one of scope, not message.  I believe there are people who consider taxes and social safety to be “tyrannical impositions on their liberty.”  I also believe, if that’s where you are coming from, then violence seems an apt response.  That said, I think the people who truly believe that are a very very small minority.  I don’t think the divide is so great in reality, but rather in rhetoric.

A few highly influential conservative pundits have gotten very rich by stoking the flames of government’s illegitimacy and wrapping themselves in the cloak of individual responsibility.  I doubt that actually believe all of it, but it makes them money.  Why not keeping saying the extreme if it’s profitable?

I also think the current Republican party has determined that they should indulge this rhetoric because it is politically advantageous.  Those that have been part of governing (as good will partners or not) like Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell have calculated the political advantage of accepting the rhetoric, while governing from a more center-right perspective.  Yes, I believe they are being disingenuous.  Not entirely, but on many issues I think they found it easier to grab a pitchfork, then to raise their voice for calm.

Finally, I just don’t think the number of people in this country that would condemn their neighbor to poverty because they don’t like paying taxes is very large.  Most Americans aren’t so cruel, or so short-sided.  I honestly believe those Americans who consider themselves right of center either have been recipients or know someone who has been a recipient of the safety net.  This knowledge and the good it brought to themselves, a freind, or family member also reminds them that someday they might need that net, or their kids might, or their parents.

I understand what Krugman is trying to say, and I certainly wish for more honest conversations about what we truly object to, as opposed to what’s politically advantageous to object to, but I don’t think the divide is so great.  But I also enjoy waffling between cynicism and optimism.  Le sigh.

Rhetoric & Violence

I’ll admit it. The moment I heard that an Arizona Democratic congresswoman was shot, I thought, “Oh great! One of the Tea Party-ers took all that rhetoric seriously and shot someone.” Judging from the initial blog posts of some in the blogosphere, notably Klein, Krugman, and Yglesias, I was not alone in that initial thought.

We seem to be wrong, or at the very least not completely right. Despite the facts not supporting, completely, the notion that the perpetrator was politically motivated the pundit-ocracy has tee-ed off on this tangent and I don’t think that’s an entirely bad thing.

Will Wilkinson disagrees and I think his post is important to keep us all tethered to the real reasons this particular gunman perpetrated this particular heinous act, but I also think his post fails to address something connected to the incident.

Why did so many commentators believe, just like I had believed, that the shooting was politically motivated and specifically why did we think it was entirely probable such an incident was perpetrated by a member of the Tea Party?

There’s a lot of baggage to that question. Clearly I’m citing “liberal” bloggers and there is the perceived “liberal bias” of the mainstream media. Maybe we are fearful of people who identify with the Tea Party and/or the people further right than people in the Tea Party. Maybe we’re concerned the ramparts of our urban utopia, bastions of liberalism that they are, will be stormed by gun-toting “patriots” from the “real America” and those first shots fired in Arizona are the opening salvo in a broader struggle yet to come that will be decided by “Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson” as Glenn Beck once said.

I would follow up those potential reasons for our response and ask, why do we feel that way? The answer, to my mind, is the hateful, violent rhetoric that has become part and parcel of the message of the right.

Also, let’s be honest with ourselves and admit that the violent rhetoric in recent years has been coming more from the far right then the far left. It’s not being partisan if it’s true. I didn’t hear anybody threaten to shoot John Boehner if he became speaker (though plenty of people threatened to move to Canada if McCain was elected president, which would seek to confirm leftist pacifism). It hasn’t always been that way in America, but that’s the way it is right now.

We’ve heard this litany before. Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map, basically anything that Glenn Beck says about Obama, Senate candidate Sharron Angle’s “second amendment remedies” for Congress, and who can forget the original innovator, Rush Limbaugh. Michelle Goldberg has a web-only piece in The American Prospect that recounts some of the history and urges some restraint in the rhetoric we use. This isn’t an assault on free speech, this is a call for some personal responsibility. Does Sharron Angle believe we should actually shoot members of Congress? I would imagine not. Does Glenn Beck truly think we have exhausted all options and armed opposition to the government is the only way to bring change? I doubt it (advertisers don’t have products to sell during a full-scale civil war and that’d be an issue for a radio program).

If they don’t believe it, then they have a responsibility not to say it. I’m not talking about being at a point were we can disagree without being disagreeable, I’m just asking that you not advocate for a violent solution to what is a political problem. And I’ll go on record and say this, we don’t need legislation about speech to handle this, we don’t even need forced civility, we just need not encourage the violent elimination of political opponents. That strikes me as a low bar.

What happened in Arizona on Saturday was a tragedy of the first order. Two public servants were shot and one has already died. Five other people died for doing nothing more offensive than being in that parking lot at that Safeway at that moment. As we learn more about the perpetrator, hopefully we will begin to understand why this particular incident happened. It does not appear to be what so many of us thought it was when we first heard the news, but maybe this is an opportunity. Perhaps this violence, though not springing exclusively from violent rhetoric, will give us all a moment to consider our words, what we want them to mean, what they may mean to others, and what actions that perception could lead to.

This time it wasn’t politically motivated, but if I heard the same story again, right now, I’d have the same first thought I had on Saturday. I’m hoping we get to a point where that’s not the case.