Political Polarization, Francis Fukuyama and freedom to hate in the age of Trump

 

Somebody wondered the other day “how did we become so polarized? How did we get to the point of these incredibly heightened emotions where there is so much anger and hate?” After pondering it some I came up with two different but connected takes on it.

The first is more general and it has to do with humanity’s deep-seated need for struggle and passionate action and expression. We are built to overcome obstacles, to struggle against adversity and to in doing so improve our condition. Our impulse to struggle is innate but when Society reaches a point where there is no real reason for existential struggle, that instinct has “nowhere to go” and we still want to struggle nevertheless. Francis Fukuyama foresaw this 30 years ago: “Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle. And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy.” This general state gave rise to the heightened emotions of the Trump era because the emergence of Trump as a politician gave people an easy object of hate after a long time of not having a convenient and easy target for exaggerated emotions. Trump emerged after 8 years of Obama presidency which were emotionally muted. Even if you really disliked Obama’s personality or actions, most were really careful in expressing that as hate because that would smack of racism, and very few (thankfully) are happy to self-identify as racist. If you liked Obama and disliked intensely the conservatives, the figures they put forth in opposition to Obama were not an easy object of hate  McCain and Romney. One a war hero and the other a mild-mannered Mormon. You could disagree with McCain or Romney but it was hard to summon real emotion about either of them. And then came Trump with his largely

disagreeable personality almost designed to offend. The hate exploded   it was once again OK to hate and an entire generation of people in their 20s, who by my observation comprise most of the participants of angry protests on the left, experienced the intoxicating effect of being able to be really nasty to somebody publicly and joined in that by millions of others. People love to hate, they hate the opposing sports team and their supporters, they hate the rival high school and they hate certain real housewives they can’t really stand. This hate met an equal and opposite reaction people who did not necessarily love Trump but were in favor of conservative policies reacted to hate directed at them as “Trumpsters” by developing their own extreme emotions. If you are going to dismiss my views out of hand and treat me as you would a fan of a sports team you hate then I feel no obligation to be reasonable towards you. You started first. And that is how it went. So that is at least some of what happened.