The Politics Of Demonization

He quotes from the e-mail of a partisan, who believes that Karl Rove has “a serious lack of ethics.” Rove is “capable, vindictive and mean-spirited... and he has run dirty campaigns...”

Leaving aside the obvious code words from the Democratic side of the divide, Cost reminds us what this is all about.

It’s all because of the necessities of politics.

Both political parties offer us a ready-made worldview, a lens through which we can look at our political environment and make sense of it... These partisan worldviews... are explicitly crafted to induce us to political action. One way that we can be induced to political action... is if we believe that our political universe contains heroes and, of course, villains. The demonization of Karl Rove (and, for that matter, Hillary Clinton) is therefore part and parcel of a partisan worldview.

The easiest way to summon people to action is through hate and rage. That’s why politicians do it.

But if you try to think about the other side using a “good faith assumption,” writes Cost, then you begin to perceive politics not as a battle between good and evil but a “conflict between competing interests.”

Then we can look at the Democratic Party as a coalition of the single, the secular, and the government employee. And we can look at the Republican Party as the coalition of the religious, married with children who work in the private sector.

And we can see that each party’s goals and interests are sensibly aligned with the interests of its partisan supporters.

And obviously the actions of the other party’s political actors in blocking our own party’s agenda is unethical and mean-spirited. Or worse.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

Comments:

Posted by: Nancy Coppock on 08/23/07 1:14pm

Interesting how Cost believes our world view is set by political parties and not the other way 'round. That says a truckload. Silly me, I thought and decided the Republican Party better aligned with my decisions and values. But if a political scientist declares values come from the Party down to the person, then maybe he is talking about a party other than mine. Does this mean that the Democratic Party is the party of mind-numbed robots receiving marching orders from party headquarters?

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Francis Fukuyama, Trust

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Liberal Coercion

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