From a stage in Minneapolis, President Trump unleashed a profane rant against his political rival after his son, during the opening act, spurred on the crowd to chant, “Lock him up.” Meanwhile, on a stage in Los Angeles, those seeking to replace Trump denigrated people of faith and threatened to punish nonprofit organizations on the basis of their beliefs.
Many of us seeking a sane politics have gotten whiplash over the past several years, as Democrats have responded to Trump’s extremism with a radicalism of their own. In the new form of politics, the other side cannot merely be disagreed with in a civil way. They need to be berated and treated as the enemy.
Outrageous behavior by one side is not seen as an opportunity to make the other side set a better tone but a justification to embrace ugly tactics in pursuit of their own side’s causes.
The other side is always the merciless one, willing to lie and cheat and destroy innocent people to win. To embrace civility in the face of the other side’s evil is only to unilaterally disarm and lose gracefully. So elections devolve into contests of who is more willing to be nasty, to marginalize the other side, and to toss aside norms to achieve their desired ends.
In Minnesota, Eric Trump, warming up the crowd, said of Joe Biden, “Maybe lock her up goes to lock him up. Lock him up.” The crowd dutifully responded, “Lock him up.”
Trump himself went on his own foul-mouthed rant against Biden, declaring, “He was only a good vice president because he understood how to kiss Barack Obama’s ass.”
As sanctimonious as liberals wanted to get about Trump’s rally, the authoritarianism and contempt for religion being displayed by Democrats in CNN’s “equality” town hall was something to behold.
Beto O’Rourke, fresh off his campaign to confiscate guns, declared that churches, colleges, and charities that did not support gay marriage should lose their nonprofit status. The move is patently unconstitutional. While the government could get rid of the tax-exempt status of all nonprofit organizations, it can not pick and choose who gets a tax benefit on the basis of political beliefs. But that didn’t stop the audience from hooting and cheering O’Rourke’s response.
It would be easy to dismiss O’Rourke’s statement as a one-off coming from a desperately flailing candidate. But that would overlook the despicable display from front-runner Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
During the event, Warren was asked how she would respond to a supporter who told her, “My faith teaches me that marriage is between one man and one woman.”
Warren said, “Well, I’m going to assume it’s a guy that said that. And I’m going to say, ‘Then just marry one woman’ — I’m cool with that.” After taking a beat, she added, “Assuming you can find one,” rolling her eyes in disdain for dramatic effect.
There is, of course, a perfectly respectful way to make the case that the existence of gay marriage does not prohibit anybody from having a heterosexual marriage. Indeed, that’s an argument I’ve been making myself for well over a decade.
But in the new politics, it isn’t enough to make an argument: A politician has to show disgust for anybody with different beliefs, as well as employ caricatures of the other side.
First is the assumption that the theoretical anti-gay marriage supporter would be male. A recent Pew poll found only a narrow difference between the genders on gay marriage. Though 33% of men said they opposed same-sex marriage, 29% of women, or nearly as many, said the same. Second, there’s the assumption that no man who opposes gay marriage can be able to find a partner.
It isn’t enough that gay marriage is legal in all 50 states, the third of the population that still believes it should be illegal should be mocked and vilified by somebody seeking the nation’s highest office, and if in the process she can throw in an attack on men, even better.
Predictably, on social media, partisans cheered on Trump’s zingers, and liberals thought Warren totally crushed the answer.
The Trump phenomenon increasingly looks less like an aberration and more a sign of where politics are moving.
