The death of decency

We have to be better.

Occasionally I write more personal posts about where we are — as a people — and where we need to go. This is one of those posts. I think they are important. If you agree, I’d love for you to become a paid subscriber — just $5 a month! — today!

Two (seemingly) unrelated tweets caught my eye over the last 24 hours.

The first came from the House Freedom Caucus, the loudly pro-Donald Trump wing of the lower chamber, in response to the news that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was stepping down from party leadership this fall.

The second came from Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman in response to an outpouring of attacks directed to Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert following the arrest of her 18-year old son.

(To be clear: Fetterman ABSOLUTELY did the right thing here. I was more highlighting the attacks on Boebert and her son via Fetterman’s tweet.)

My immediate thought: What the hell is wrong with us?

Look, I get that McConnell is someone that the Trump wing of the party didn’t like — and believed was selling out their values to Democrats.

And, yes, I also understand that Boebert has said and done plenty of things that are objectionable during her relatively brief time in Congress.

But, I also remember my dad telling me that there is a time and a place for everything. And the day an 82-year old man — and the longest serving Republican Senate leader in history — announces he is stepping back isn’t the day to dunk on him. Nor is the arrest of an obviously troubled young person, who happens to be the son of a controversial politician, the time to savage her (and him).

It’s just gross. And unfortunately, it’s become totally acceptable behavior by partisans — OF BOTH PARTIES.

I am not totally sure how we got here. I know when I started in politics in the late 1990s it wasn’t this bad. Yes, politicians from opposite parties — and sometimes in their own parties — disliked one another. Yes, there were petty rivalries. Yes, things got heated. But, those were the exceptions to the rule, not the rule itself. They were frowned upon. They were seen as bad behavior.

Partisanship and polarization has obviously exploded since then. Just look at this chart of the largest gaps in presidential approval rating among partisans (via Gallup):

It’s no coincidence that Barack Obama’s final year in office as well as much of Donald Trump’s term and Joe Biden’s first year in office represent some of the most polarized times in the history of Gallup polling.

I do think that some of the polarization is organic. We, as a nation, have self-sorted into communities in which we tend to live and work among people who share our political views. That reinforces those views — and leads to a belief that no right thinking person could disagree with you.

But I also think there is a far less organic explanation too. The rise of cable news — Fox News in particular — as well as the increasing centrality of social media to how we live our daily lives has played a HUGE role in getting us to the unfortunate moment where we now find ourselves.

The reality is that cable news and social media sites (and their super users) are businesses. They want to make as much money as possible. And they have learned that the best way to do so — at least in the political space — is to carve out positions on the extremes of the ideological spectrum.

Take, as just one example, the Lincoln Project. Composed largely of Never Trump Republicans, the goal of the organization is to do and say the nastiest, lowest common denominator things about Donald Trump. Like, this:

The ad, which intimates that Trump has a bad odor, has been viewed almost 650,000 times since it was published around Christmas. It has garnered 27,000 likes. And it got the Lincoln Project a massive amount of attention.

Now, if you ask the Lincoln Project folks why they take this approach to Trump, they will tell you that it’s because you have to fight fire with fire. And their goal is to get under Trump’s skin — and the way to do that is by going after him on a deeply personal level.

Which is a theory of the case! But, if there wasn’t a financial response from people who HATE Trump and want to believe, for example, that he literally stinks, I am not sure the Lincoln Project would keep doing what they are doing.

(Make sure to read this deep dive into the Lincoln Project by the New York Times in 2021.)

This model is, of course, replicated in Trumpworld too. Any number of entities have grown up around the former president — all designed to monetize the devotion a certain segment of the population feels for him and the enmity they feel toward those who oppose him.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was indicted last year, for example, on charges of money laundering and scheming to defraud in relation to a group he helped set up ostensibly aimed at helping to fund Trump’s border wall.

There are myriad examples — from cable to Substack to Twitter to podcasting to books: What sells is vitriol. Hatred of the other side. Affirming the view that your political opponents really are, in their heart of hearts, bad people.

Social media is the worst of the worst in my mind. Twitter, which was once a useful news gathering tool (at least for me), has turned into a battle of who can be the biggest troll. Who can say the nastiest, most outlandish thing (proof not necessary) about someone on the other side of the political aisle. And the winner is rewarded with likes, followers and maybe a book deal!

It’s all so very depressing. If politics is reduced to simply dunking on your opponents — and then standing over them and talking trash while a crowd gathers — we are never, ever going to get to a place where our politicians are incentivized to solve problems.

Now, while I did say both sides do it — and I believe that — there is also no question that Trump’s rise in politics has opened the floodgates on the political right to this sort of behavior.

When the leader of your party is calling his political opponents “vermin” and saying they are “evil” well, then, pretty much everything is fair game. And when people reward Trump’s bullying — “Cry more, lib!” — as some sort of winner bravado then we are in a really awful place.

But, that should not serve as an excuse for the ugliness that has risen among the left. Using as your justification that “he started it!” isn’t moving us toward the sort of politics that we deserve.

Yes, I get that trolling can be fun. And that thinking of people who disagree with you as ignoramuses — and telling them that — has a sort of satisfaction to it. I have done it! I will probably do it again!

But I think we have to try to be better. Let me end with the words of one of my favorite philosophers — Coach Eric Taylor from “Friday Night Lights”:

“I said you need to strive to be better than everyone else. I didn't say you needed to be better than everyone else. But you gotta try. That's what character is. It's in the try.”