We talk so much about the flow of money in our politics, when what I think people care most about is the flow of love. We’re so deeply social that we’re barely aware of what a distinctive feature our sociality is. We live in big groups. We strive for status. We form coalitions. We cooperate to achieve shared goals. For us, life is a popularity contest. If other people respect and admire you, you’ll have friends and supporters, maybe even fans and followers, you’ll be more successful in all your endeavors, you’ll attract desirable mates, people will come to your defense in times of conflict, and bring you comfort in your moments of greatest distress.
These facts are true today, but they were true in the distant past as well. They’ve been true for so long that our psychology has adapted to the reality that how other people feel about us is often more important than any of the more concrete facts of our environment. Being singled out for ridicule feels physically threatening. Our pulse races, adrenaline surges, time slows, skin flushes. Seeing a look of contempt or disgust on the face of someone who we count on for love and support is as terrifying to us as looking down the barrel of a gun. Earning a wave of adulation from our peers is as rewarding as discovering an oasis while lost in the desert.
We feel these day to day shifts in our sense of social worth as pride or shame. Each event recalibrates our impression of where we stand in the social order. Human societies are hierarchical. In the adult world, where we move among many overlapping groups and among people with a lifetime of acculturation to norms of civility, that’s not always obvious. But recall what life was like in middle school or high school. There the hierarchy was plainly visible. If you asked a bunch of school kids to rank their classmates on the basis of popularity, I suspect you’d find that there would be a high degree of correlation in their answers: the pecking order is well established and understood by all. And while we often mean to trivialize something when we call it a popularity contest, the consequences of social hierarchy are very significant. In school, high status meant people wanted to be your friends, they would do you favors, you’d be invited to parties, you’d be exempt from bullying. In adult life, popularity can secure a promotion, cause people to follow your leadership, get you elected to a public office, or shield you from criticism.
Social value exists on a sliding scale. If you added up how much the people around you value and admire you, you’d get something approximating your social value. Subtle changes in our social value are deeply salient to us. If someone insults you, or expresses a low opinion of you, if you have a falling out with a friend, or a lover leaves you for someone else, the memory will be burned deeply into your mind. You may relive it again and again. Revisiting memories like that represents a human instinct to analyze the dynamics of social worth. We train ourselves for future success by trying to diagnose our past failures with the hope of being more socially correct in the future. Why did this happen to me? What could I have said or done differently?
But there are worse things than these ordinary slights and humiliations that beset us all. Such experiences are painful. They make us feel like we’re less valuable as people than we were the day before, but they leave us whole as human beings. We’re still accepted as members of society in good standing. Sometimes though, a person’s value drops so low that the people around them no longer regard them as worthy of the special treatment that we accord to humans as opposed to non-human animals or objects. There’s a magic in dignity—a switch that’s flipped inside of us that transforms base matter into something worthy of love and emotional concern. When we think about cruelty being visited on people who we love, it horrifies us. But if a person’s social value in our eyes falls below some threshold, call it basic dignity, we no longer see them as worthy of that kind of emotional generosity. We can even come to relish their setbacks and suffering. It becomes possible for us to see them as deserving of subordination, humiliation, and suffering.
We must never forget that these competing forces exist within us. There’s almost no limit to the hardships we’ll endure for the betterment of those we love, but also no end to the miseries we’re prepared to inflict on those we hate. When Abraham Lincoln first addressed the American people as President, he closed with an admonition.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
In that time, when our nation was riven with conflict as never before, or since, he recognized that the one thing that could ultimately destroy us was an unconstrained and passionate animosity. He foreshadows the post-war effort to rehabilitate the southern states and southern people through the project of reconstruction. This must always be our attitude if we want to live together in harmony. We must allow no resentment between us so great that it breaks our bonds of affection.
Such resentments grow out of intergroup competition. When human groups compete, our hierarchical value structures compete. We see some groups as more righteous, more deserving of concern and support, than others. We struggle on behalf of our preferred interpretation. We ought to be humanists: we ought to treat everyone as if they were of equal worth. But, by nature, we’re chauvinists: our side matters more. We idealize justice as blind, but impartiality doesn’t come naturally to us. The judgements we’re inclined to level against those who do harm are weighted by the dignity we afford the respective parties. If we love and admire the offender, we’re likely to look for reasons to excuse their actions. If instead they have a bad reputation with us, or they’re a member of a group we despise, we might accept their guilt before the evidence is even presented. If the person harmed is someone we love, we’ll demand the most severe consequences for the offender, but if we mistrust or dislike the victim, we might assume they had it coming.
You can see competing value structures at play in the way that different people interpret the events surrounding demonstrations against police brutality in our cities. I’ve seen footage in which the police behave badly, and other footage in which activists are unquestionably provoking violent interactions. Having seen images of police killing Black people, many protesters appear to have come to the conclusion that police officers are, in general, reprehensible people. They’ve dehumanized the police to the point that harming and humiliating them has become a positive good in their minds. Among the rest of the population, views are divided. Those who are more inclined to see the police as an oppressive and racist force in our society focus in on the misbehavior of the police. Those who think of the police as public servants earnestly doing their best to protect all Americans look much more closely at the destructive activities of anti-police activists.
The fact that chauvinism causes different people to place different values on the wellbeing of particular individuals or groups explains how both sides always feel like they’re in the right in conflicts. Even when we all acknowledge the same facts of history, we legitimately see the balance of justice going in different directions. We apply different dignity weights to the individuals involved in each incident. We love them unequally. That’s how conflicts escalate. Each side sees their own actions as justified acts of retribution, while the other perceives those same acts as atrocities. Each perceived injustice serves to dehumanize the other side a little more, making the next round of counter aggression seem more justified.
Each violent confrontation demonstrators have with the police drives a deeper wedge between opposing groups in our society. One side views police violence as categorically more troublesome, and the other that of the demonstrators. Neither side ever feels they’re in the wrong, or culpable for what’s happening. They can each construe each situation so that the fault lies with the other. In this way, provocations serve the interests of extremists on both sides. And there’s definitely a fringe among the demonstrators whose intent is to provoke. When they surround police vehicles and buildings, hurl projectiles, start fires, they’re not engaging in acts of speech. They’re goading the police into a conflict. They implicitly know the response will be interpreted by a sympathetic audience as one more injustice perpetrated by those fascist pigs. Extremist groups stand to gain by radicalizing more of the population. Those new radicals are potential recruits and supporters. When they can count on many people to interpret any conflict in their favor, instigating such conflicts becomes an effective strategy for them.
I worry about how leaders have hesitated to take, and the media to call for, the steps necessary to bring an end to this violence. The American left, as we know it today, was born in the civil rights movement. Seeking the vote for women, legal equality for Blacks, and freedom for gay people to live their lives openly and safely were unequivocal stands for human dignity. People were being treated as less valuable than others in the full sight of our entire society and with the sanction of law. The left has carried forward a mandate in which they see themselves as the defenders of the excluded and disenfranchised. That’s a humane mission. We should all strive, at all times, to identify those who are being left out in our society and give them comfort and assistance. But I think that a certain vanguard of the left, on issues of identity, have taken their partisan feelings of protectiveness toward historically marginalized groups to the point that they themselves are increasingly guilty of chauvinism, bigotry, and dehumanization.
For many years, leftist scholars have worked to develop social critiques identifying injustices affecting historically oppressed groups. This work provides resources to activists and advocates struggling on behalf of these groups. It corrects for mainstream narratives that have overlooked their experiences. And it humanizes and dignifies groups who have had reason to feel devalued. As I’ve said, when we love someone, we can’t help but experience their suffering as deeply significant. Dignity and empathy go hand in hand. Cataloging the sufferings of these groups shows concern and sensitivity for them. It emphasizes our recognition of their humanity.
Those intentions are good. But the work of these scholars is often adversarial and fosters intergroup conflict rather than reconciliation. This orientation skews the record in a way that encourages mutual hostility and dehumanization. Feminist theorists often emphasize patriarchy and misogyny in women’s history in a way that minimizes the real bonds of love and affection that have existed between countless men and women throughout history. Accounts of American history that center on slavery and discrimination direct our gaze at true and terrible things, but to the exclusion of the abundant evidence of humane, sympathetic, Americans who have given Blacks comfort and support throughout their struggle against oppression. Sifting through history for violations and sources of grievance is divisive. I’m not saying that we should overlook the sins of our past. But we ought to situate those events in a more complete context that leaves room for acknowledging the humanity of all sides. Ignoring kindness, solidarity, and intergroup bonds of affection produces a jaundiced and incomplete picture of reality. It’s indoctrination into alienation. By demonizing people, we turn them into the monsters we imagine. It’s important that we develop mutual respect and trust, rather than just devising ever greater reasons to resent one another.
It wouldn’t make sense for me to criticize the work of these thinkers if they were just cloistered academics. But they’re very influential. The left are the dominant cultural force in America today. People on the right think that’s obvious. People on the left are often not so sure. Of course, both side’s perceptions are skewed, but, when I make my best effort at impartiality, it looks true to me. The left don’t see their own overweening influence because they’re immersed in a public culture of their own making. And we all tend to be blind toward our own ingroup chauvinism.
Many young leftists today seem narrow minded and overzealous, even to a lot of people on the left. But their attitudes shouldn’t surprise us. Their parents, teachers, movies, TV shows, news media, books, and professors have all told them the same story. If every source of information you’re exposed to says you’re on the right side of history, and that those who disagree are bad people who want to protect privileged groups and abusive systems, why would you not be zealous? There are many young people who’ve been raised in just such a bubble.
To detect chauvinism, it’s helpful to mentally swap the positions of the parties, but keep the particulars the same. If your moral instincts about the situation also suddenly flip-flop, you might be experiencing chauvinism. Imagine if our cultural situation were reversed. If academics were overwhelmingly conservative, and increasingly strident in their activism; if the vast majority of school teachers were on the right and openly advocated their political views in the classroom; if the entertainment industry was conservative and used its influence to instill traditional values; if most major media outlets were significantly to the right of the average American; as a Democrat, how would that make you feel? What if, in this world, people were routinely fired for transgressing conservative norms, universities set up boards to approve curriculum from a conservative political perspective, right wing extremists were assaulting the police and burning buildings, and through all of this the mainstream media were complacent? Please, really, try to imagine it. What would you feel? Might you not be prepared to take desperate measures to defend your political rights?
We worry a lot about Donald Trump, with good reason. He’s not a good steward of our nation. His disrespect for our institutions is transparent. His ways of communicating foster exactly the kind of animosities that I’m warning against. But, as I’ve said before, I think Trump is a symptom of the problem rather than the cause. A lot of things had to go wrong before we could end up with him as our President. And even with him in that office, I feel like the left are still in the driver’s seat.
I’m not asking people on the left to relinquish their positions of control over our many institutions, or to change any of their policy objectives. I’m just asking them to use their power more graciously. You can advocate for equality, a healthy environment, and social welfare without the use of illiberal tactics to control the narrative or speaking contemptuously of those on the other side. Create space for people who think differently from you. Condemn and demand an end to bad behavior, without regard for the ideology of the perpetrators. Magnanimity in their ascendence would strengthen, not weaken, the left’s ability to achieve their goals.
Yes, repressive ideas once held cultural sway in our country such that many people were treated unfairly. Now that the cultural movement that carries the banner for those people is riding high will it itself become repressive? Must those people who aren’t quite keeping up with our nation’s leftward march be backed into a corner? We should be inclusive of rural and blue collar white people, Christians, the police, and the left’s other outgroups. The left excoriate them unremittingly. A recent Democratic candidate for president referred to some subset of them as deplorables. That’s clearly dehumanizing. Try shifting the categorical markers: undereducated Black people, Muslims, school teachers. If these groups were publicly treated by scholars, activists, and public figures on the right in the way that those on the left speak of those other groups, I have no doubt that an outcry against their intolerance would be at the center of our national conversation. Are those groups really less worthy of basic dignity?
The Democrats tend to appeal to constituencies by constructing a basket of policies containing something for everyone. They often complain that poor Republicans are irrational for not seeing that their platform has more to offer them than the Republican party’s does. But it’s not that those Republicans don’t recognize that fact. Sizable majorities of Americans prefer the policies of the Democrats (figure below, from Asymmetric Politics). And yet the parties split the electorate quite evenly. Clearly, it’s less about policy than the Democrats think.
I think many of these people just want to be treated with dignity. They want to be able to say that they’re proud to be Christians without people rolling their eyes. Or they want service in the military or law enforcement to afford a person respect rather than contempt. Or they’re tired of people treating those who didn’t get graduate degrees and move to the big city as backward remnants of some dark age the country is trying to leave behind. The implacable hostility of the left has pushed these people into Trump’s hands. He’s not a champion of the working class, a devoted Christian, or a principled respecter of duty, service, and lawfulness. He’s not a barn building, bass fishing, backwoodsman. What holds Trump’s coalition together is their repulsion from the left. If the left want to dismantle it, they ought to be opening their arms rather than slamming doors.
We assume it’s policy preferences that keep us apart. But what if it’s about love, not money? The left have held the cultural high ground for decades. The right is fighting a rearguard action. But the far left’s anger and stridency just keeps increasing. The left’s political policies may be inclusive, but their cultural conceptions of human worth are exclusive. I think their prejudices against their political opponents have played a bigger role in charting the course to our present situation than many realize. And, for that reason, the left have more power to change the tenor of American discourse than they appreciate. If we want to build a better world, we need to embrace universal dignity. If we fail to do that, I fear we’ll descend further into mutual dehumanization and violence. Let’s devote our energies to building everyone up, rather than tearing some people down. Let’s demand that everyone treat one another with respect and kindness. Everyone.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment or email me at hank.politicaltherapy@gmail.com! If you’re not a subscriber, sign up for more.
I agree with you, especially in the sense that the cancel culture has caused the Left to become more intolerant and judgmental. This defeats the openness to others and perpetuates the cycles of violence we are witnessing. Luckily, I believe Biden is striving towards a message of inclusivity and tolerance. And let's not forget, unconditional positive regard should be the operational attitude from both the left and the right. But sadly, I think we're beyond that, and moderates like us get drowned out.