If you follow X (Twitter) as I do, scrolling through hundreds of posts a few times a day, you can’t help but conclude that the political divide in both the U.S. and Canada, between Democrats and Republicans and between Liberals and Conservatives, has become wider and more extreme than it has ever been.
At the moment, perhaps that is stating the obvious.
However, there is seemingly no issue the opposing sides agree on. In the U.S., the battles over abortion, guns, religion, immigration, COVID, vaccines, foreign policy, electric vehicles, even library books and Taylor Swift, are ugly, vitriolic, and magnified by absurd conspiracy theories and blatant lying — and given more credence on 24-7 cable TV news shows.
Part of the problem is the “echo chamber” of social media; people follow other people who share and reinforce their view of the world — no matter how distorted or delusional — and tend to ignore any arguments that challenge that self-perpetuating narrative. “Myriad studies, many dating back to before the internet was ever dreamed of,” Elizabeth Kolbert pointed out in a January 2022 New Yorker article about partisanship, “have demonstrated that, when people confer with others who agree with them, their views become more extreme.”
It is also a reality of social media that individuals with more extreme views post far more comments, often in language that is critical, sarcastic and malicious. Most of us, in fact, are moderate and shy away from online confrontations that can degenerate into ugly arguments, racism and threats of violence. Take a look at comments on posts by U.S. President Joe Biden or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and you will be shocked (or perhaps not) by the disrespectful and vile tone of many remarks.
In the U.S., this polarization and abusive and insulting language has become worse since Donald Trump hijacked the Republican party in 2016 and used social media to lamely ridicule and attack anyone he perceives is his enemy. The progressive wing of the Democratic party can be inflexible and often advocate policies they know alienates moderates. Yet the right side of the Republican party, so-called “MAGA Republicans” who obsessively follow Trump and adhere to his dictates no questions asked, are arguably far more dangerous.
How else to explain the recent hypocrisy of Congressional Republicans demanding Biden come up with an acceptable policy to deal with the continuing problems at the country’s southern border, only to reject a decent solution arrived at by bipartisan negotiations, because Trump ordered them to reject it?
This partisan posturing is further proof of a Pew Research finding from March 2022 that Axios noted at the time: “Congressional Democrats and Republicans are further apart ideologically than at any point during the past five decades — and Republicans are more to blame than Democrats.” Another earlier Pew survey from late 2021 indicated, according to Kolbert, “that more than half of all Republicans and nearly half of all Democrats believe their political opponents to be ‘immoral.’”
You would probably have to go back to the mid- to late-19th century and the bitter fight over slavery to find the kind of hostility that is evident today. That highly charged confrontation led to the creation of the Republican party in 1854; the split of the Democratic party into the northern anti-slavery faction and the southern pro-slavery wing; and ultimately, a bloody four-year civil war.
The visceral hatred between the two sides knew no bounds. On May 22, 1856, South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat, entered the Senate chamber and used his walking cane to viciously beat Republican Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on his head and body, almost killing him. A few days earlier, Sumner, an ardent opponent of extending slavery in new states or territories, had denounced Preston’s first cousin, South Carolina senator and slaveholder Andrew Butler.
Brooks was hailed as a hero in the South and the story of the attack — as most criticisms of Republican wrongdoing is today — was downplayed by his colleagues in Congress and the southern press. In truth, Sumner suffered serious injuries that plagued him for the rest of his life and he was unable to resume his duties in the Senate for three years. Brooks was arrested, tried and convicted for the assault, but his only punishment was a modest fine. The incident became an issue during the 1856 presidential election and divided the country further.
The end of the Civil War quelled some of this animosity, but it never truly disappeared. A century later, disputes over civil rights, women’s rights and abortion pushed the Republican party further to the right on social and economic issues. By the time Republican Newt Gingrich became the House Speaker in 1995 during the Democratic party presidency of Bill Clinton, that hyper-partisanship and disdain from an earlier era had returned to an even greater degree. Gingrich “turned politics into a vicious blood sport, broke Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise,” wrote McKay Coppins of The Atlantic magazine in 2018.
The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol building was the tragic, though not totally unexpected, consequence of this political war, a war that continues to the present time with no end in sight.
Now & Then is a column in which historian Allan Levine puts the events of today in a historical context.
