“Literally Hitler.”
The words we use in American politics are part of the problem.
As a child, chances are at least one adult in your life told you not to call other people names. You learned that it’s okay to be mad about something stupid that someone else did, but it’s not okay to call that person stupid.
Part of Management 101 is “separating the person from the issue” — in other words, addressing and correcting behaviors, not treating the employee like they’re incompetent or a bad person.
Neither of these behaviors are intuitive. It’s much easier to call Coworker John an idiot than it is to spend the time to understand why, if you were in his shoes and had access to the same information he did at the time, you might very well have made the same decision. At the same time, though, once you do call John an idiot, it’s going to be extremely difficult to rebuild a productive relationship with him.
Our default mode of discourse in American politics these days is to call everyone an idiot, and we wonder why our country is more polarized than ever.
I was talking with someone the other day who called Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “evil.” Now, there are a LOT of policies espoused by both politicians that I passionately oppose, even though I wouldn’t consider myself conservative. But to make the leap from disagreement to “evil” is something I just can’t justify. For conservatives to ratchet up the rhetoric to 11 over gay marriage and taxes doesn’t leave any stronger language to actually address true evil.
Liberals have their own alienating language too. The word “bigot” gets thrown around far too much in reference to individuals that, if we’re being honest with ourselves, could be allies if we weren’t so busy yelling at them.
The bottom line is this. We live in a complex society with diverse backgrounds, cultures, families, and goals. We can disagree on the role and appropriate size of the government. But until we stop calling each other stupid, bigoted, and evil, our politics will keep getting angrier and angrier.
I’m not interested in a “winner takes all” America. It’s too exhausting.
