Culture Warriors and the Evil/Ignorant Spectrum
Laws codifying the marginalization of women, transsexuals, homosexuals, and others are emerging at an alarming rate. No matter their underlying motivation, the laws' supporters must be ostracized.
“The country needs a strong Republican Party. It's done so much for our country” - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
It isn’t particularly controversial to argue that the conservative culture war is employed by the American right to prey upon the average “middle American’s” fears and prejudices. The Republican party in particular has proven itself to be adept at propagandizing them and dog whistling to their underlying racist fear of white replacement, their anger at having to tolerate other religious practices, their discomfort at “unnatural” sex acts and relationships, and their unfounded objections to a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body. Being the party of the rich, the Republicans employ a vast network of dark money, abuse parliamentary procedures and back door deals, and employ gerrymandering and other underhanded political tactics to ensure that the rich stay rich and businesses can exploit their workers and the environment without worrying about inconvenient rules and regulations. The words “good faith” have never applied to them: they are the bullies who abuse their status as the power holders to stifle dissent in an era in which the stakes could not possibly be higher.
Despite the Republicans’ track record of open malfeasance and dishonesty, the Democratic Party (the putative alternative to the forces currently at work destroying the planet) are unable or unwilling to stand powerfully in opposition to the them, and their penchant for compromise is regularly celebrated by the media class, especially when a mid-term or Presidential election is approaching. It would be easy to assume that the drive to compromise is a good faith effort to maintain the principles of participatory democracy, if not for the fact that the last twenty years have shown that the real adoption of leftist policies has been stymied by the Democrats as much as the Republicans, to our catastrophic detriment. This tendency to lionize compromise for compromise’s sake as an illustration of the health of our deliberative democracy often results in some uncomfortable conclusions: for example, compromising with a racist who wants to reintroduce segregation would be out of the question even for most centrist Democrats, but even this extreme example would result in op-eds and thinkpieces urging us to understand and engage with the segregationist position, lest the left’s obstinacy cost Democrats votes.
Empathy in a deliberative political system is important, but it can only go so far if actual progress is ever to be made. Certain outlandish or unsupportable positions have to be quickly eliminated, to prevent the discourse from getting bogged down in a process of dismissing a limitless number of contrived arguments, such as flat Earth theory. Many sincerely hold on to this belief, but it is wholly unsupported by any real science and is comfortably relegated to the margins. A comparable modern example is the belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, a too-common but still roundly rejected idea that is nonetheless endorsed by fringe Republican candidates and even a few in Congress, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene. These indefensible positions are comparably harmless and rote in comparison to the social issues mentioned above—they are less mobilizing and more selectively promoted to fringe groups in order to gain a few of their votes. Republicans use these social issues to instate their economic agenda and court voters who might otherwise understand that actual leftist policies benefit them in a real way. In the modern conservative dogma, transphobia, homophobia, and the “grooming” debacle may not be sincerely or deeply held beliefs, but they are nonetheless a crucial part of its platform.
There are two classic explanatory possibilities for the emergence of this fascist movement: one, that the conservative position on abortion, trans rights, etc. is genuine and a reflection of “middle America’s” traditionalist view of the past (whether or not this is an accurate reflection is unimportant), or two, that these issues are a more predatory and cynical exploitation of what they perceive to be a fear of change among possible voters (and indeed the staggering number of Republican politicians caught in sex scandals gives some credence to this idea). Where do the architects of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, for example, fall on this continuum, and does this matter when it concerns the propriety of working with them, or meeting them halfway in order to achieve some other goal?
If most on the right are ignorant instead of willfully evil, it would seem to follow that they can be reasoned with and have their opinions altered through patient education and sympathy. The problem here is that ignorance blends in with evil: despite all efforts to destroy public education in the US, information is free and the existence of social justice movements should be sufficient to convince an actually honest observer that opposing trans rights for example is anathema to a functioning society. The act of being aware of the issue is in and of itself recognition that a conversation is taking place, and the price of admission for making one’s voice heard is a requisite good faith effort to educate oneself about it. Those who are truly ignorant of the issues are usually silent on them and identify as apolitical generally. If the right are instead maliciously evil—if they don’t actually believe that transsexuals are less than human yet are willing to take that viewpoint to its natural conclusion legislatively to achieve some other goal, or are indeed deeply convinced true believers in the inferiority of people who are different than them—then they declare themselves inoperable and their ability to organize and infringe on the rights of others must be removed entirely through marginalization, deplatforming, and the enshrinement of powerful civil rights guarantees. This was achieved with some success with the issue of desegregation (although it should be noted that de facto economic segregation still exists and is in many ways worse than it was in the 1960s).
Arguing for ostracizing certain viewpoints does not reveal a lack of empathy on the part of leftists. To have empathy for this conservative position is to understand that it is informed by a lack of empathy itself—for pluralism, freedom of choice, and the right to life. Empathy is also distinct from sympathy: it is possible to be too sympathetic and openminded, which some have argued is the Democratic Party’s problem. Real sympathy for the right instead resembles a quick medical intervention: first, remove the ability to harm oneself or others (codify the rights of all groups in such a way that they cannot be abrogated), identify the problem informing their suffering (are they motivated by prurient interests or blinkered true believers?), and then propose and administer the cure—in this case, the answer is simply education (and Americans as a whole are quite sympathetic to leftist causes in honest polling). Propaganda is more effective on an ignorant population, and it is no surprise that the right has been behind efforts to defund public education and push questionable private alternatives over the last several decades. This effort has been so successful and all-encompassing that millions of Americans refused vaccinations against Covid-19, with many dying as a result.
Religion is the purest form of propaganda, as it is inherently non-logical and cannot be meaningfully argued for or against. It exists as a powerful social force with an automatic and unearned cachet, making it particularly suited for use in the commission of bad argumentation. If a preacher tells his or her congregation to hate a particular group, the congregation is going to do so regardless of their underlying feelings on the matter (a better illustration of the intersection of malice and ignorance does not exist). There are also those who set aside their better judgment to worship politicians such as Donald Trump, and this cult of personality is no different. To deny the important role of religious worship in facilitating bigotry would be to forgive Fox News for its own outsized role. The religious are of course not brainwashed zombies—they choose to be religious and remain so in the face of overwhelming evidence against it, just as the “ignorant” Republican above is not actually innocent. To call them zombies only excuses their prejudice and efforts to mix church and state.
On the topic of the Democratic Party’s tendency to work with evil instead of against it, the question is again one of willful malice (or evil) versus well-intentioned weakness (or ignorance), and there is no reason to believe that the Democrats’ weakness is a result of the latter and not a cogent desire to act as the dutiful opposition in the service of maintaining virtually the same system Republicans want and to preempt and shut out actual leftist voices (they will of course make excuses in the service of convincing Americans that they simply didn’t get enough votes or donations to do the right thing). The outcome in either case is the same, however. The last twenty years have shown that real adoption of leftist social, economic, and environmental policies has been stymied by the Democrats as much as the Republicans, to our catastrophic detriment. This excessive engagement with evil is damaging in a number of ways, far more so for the would-be morally upright defenders of equality and justice. Republicans know they’ll never face real consequences for being outed as hypocrites or cheaters in any way due to their monopoly on dark money and single issue voters (and they have no face to save), so they’re comfortable sacrificing some small amount of respectability to draw the well-intentioned into a rhetorical quagmire which normalizes and boosts dangerous ideas—a lie repeated often enough can become effective propaganda, especially if opposing sides engage with it unnecessarily. We do not engage flat earthers in good faith, we ignore and silence them. Similarly, these new Republicans causes don’t stand up to even minor scrutiny, but that was never the point. Teachers are not looking to “groom” students, of course, but Republicans know that they can argue for the sanctity of the child in one case and abandon them to hunger, actual child predators in their church or family, and a future ravaged by climate change because the lie is sufficiently big. Attacking their hypocrisy only amounts to an ad hominem and simultaneously implicitly endorses their overarching position.
To take one example as illustration, instead of meeting Republicans halfway on the issue of abortion, Democrats must push more strongly for the right to choose and stop efforts in states like Texas to criminalize the procedure before they are ever even discussed. The argument for abortion rights is in fact deceptively cut and dry: absent a clear scientific (explicitly not faith-based) reason to believe a fetus is alive in any meaningful way (which does not exist, and the burden of proof to declare something meaningfully “alive” rests on those who would limit a woman’s right to terminate it), its status defaults to just another part of the mother’s body, to be aborted at any point for any reason. This is a basic and generally agreeable argument that is nonetheless controversial because of a century-long campaign by conservative monied interests to minimize women’s health issues and amplify religious teachings about the start of human life. In engaging with this argument, Democrats cede the ideological high ground and are brought down to the sullied level of the right, a compromise which recently had disastrous results in Texas:
After charging a woman with murder over a self-induced abortion, forcing her to spend three days in jail and drawing national attention, Starr County officials announced Sunday they would change course and move to dismiss the case.
Lizelle Herrera was arrested Thursday and held in jail on a $500,000 bond, court records show. She was released on bail Saturday, according to jail records and a local abortion fund. The district attorney had presented the possible murder charge to a grand jury last month, leading to her indictment and arrest, before his Sunday announcement.…
Herrera's arrest, first reported by The Monitor in McAllen, quickly became national news, in part because Texas lawmakers recently passed a law to prohibit abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy. But that law, which went into effect in September, doesn't have any criminal repercussions. Instead, enforcement of the law can only be carried out by private citizens who may sue abortion providers and anyone involved in aiding or abetting an abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected.
Last year, Texas also narrowed the window in which physicians are allowed to give abortion-inducing medication to patients from 10 weeks to seven weeks into pregnancy and banned mailing such drugs. But again, pregnant patients are not subject to criminal enforcement under the new law, according to statute. Accused providers would face possible lower-level felony charges, which carry a maximum punishment of two years in state jail.
Should it matter to Lizelle Herrera or any other pregnant women that our democracy, such as it is, is functioning properly? Should it matter to the trans community, who are experiencing increasing harassment in the wake of laws normalizing their otherness? Should it matter to the teachers who are now being threatened with termination or worse? Should it matter to the homeless, or those who can’t afford needed medical treatment? Does it matter to any of these people if some percentage of the architects of their oppression don’t really hate them, or don’t understand why they’re acting in such a way?
Republicans’ deep-seated motivation for their obstructionist and regressive policies, which are unfortunately mirrored to an insignificantly lesser degree by Democrats, are irrelevant. We cannot even fully know ourselves and what motivates us in our day to day lives, so opining over the degree to which malice or ignorance might explain the growing fascism in the US is not as important as strategizing how to destroy it. The reasoning behind the action is less important than its outcome, especially when it is evident that, as in the case of the flat earth movement, there can be no sufficient rationale that politically engaged individuals can agree upon. It is time to silence the voices of hate, not amplify and engage with them.