Respect vs. Extremism: Finding a Path Back to Political Discourse
Respectful political discourse is dead. Do you agree?
President George W. Bush and Michelle Obama shared a hug at one of the many events they’ve attended together. The image and video were widely shared on social media. How could two people with such differing political viewpoints actually like and respect each other? Is that still possible in today’s world?
Extremism has taken over in politics. Political views have become deeply opposing, highly personal, and heavily influenced by morality, religion, and ideology. No longer can we share a hug with someone from the opposing political team. Why? How did we get here? And is it possible to return to the space Michelle Obama and George W. Bush still seem to inhabit?
Let’s start by understanding respect from a philosophical standpoint. Immanuel Kant writes in his work Metaphysics of Morals: “So act that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” What did Kant mean?
Kant believed that people had a moral obligation to treat others with respect. If a person was a rational human being, they deserved respect. This respect wasn’t based on agreement or shared views; rather, it was inherent in recognizing others as rational beings capable of making their own choices. Whether or not we agreed with those choices did not affect their right to be treated with respect.
I can already hear the argument: "The other side's beliefs are not rational, therefore I don't have to respect them!" From Kant’s perspective, rationality is not defined by our agreement with someone’s thinking. What matters is that they had a thought and arrived at a conclusion based on that thought. In Kant's view, that alone is enough to deserve respect. Agreement is not a requirement.
Our opinion of how logical or rational someone’s thoughts are should not determine whether or not we respect them. This tendency often comes from morality, religion, and ideology—things that are viewed as core to a person’s identity, beliefs, and values. These are the factors we often use to decide if someone deserves respect. As politics has become more entwined with religious, moral, and ideological views, our perception of others has become increasingly polarized and, often, hateful.
Social media is overrun with name-calling, threats, insults, and personal attacks—all in the name of political viewpoints. Families have been divided and relationships fractured over simple political beliefs. We seem incapable of questioning someone’s perception or political beliefs without insulting them or attacking them personally. Genuine conversation has become nearly impossible. When confronted with the idea that they are not being respectful, people often defend their behavior by arguing that they cannot respect someone who holds certain beliefs, further defending the moral and religious ideologies that currently define our political landscape.
No longer can we come up with genuine ideas or find ways to compromise. The only strategy left is the one that says “not that.” We vote the same way—not because we fully support a candidate, but because we know we don’t want the other one. We vote for the "other" candidate, regardless of their policies or principles. A strategy of blindly accepting political candidates based on who they are not sets us up for a kind of political warfare the world has never really seen. Sure, we’ve fought over politics in the past, but not quite like this.
The strategy of “not that” comes from a place of disrespect and hate. It’s not rooted in logical or rational thinking; rather, it’s a painful emotional strategy that will create more problems than it solves. If we’re honest about the current political landscape, it already has. It’s leading us straight into World War III, a place nobody ever intended to go.
World wars are created through extremism, a loss of respect, and overly self-identified ideologies, morals, and religious beliefs. When respect is lost, violence takes its place. People are taught to fight against the things they don’t like. When we lose respect for a person, a group of people, or, in this case, entire political parties, it quickly degenerates into violence because that becomes the only way to "win" the fight. We can no longer allow opposing views to exist simultaneously, and so violently forcing people to see things our way becomes the only option.
Maintaining basic human respect for each other is what keeps us out of violence and war. It allows us to keep our political views as just that—political views—and not substitute them for moral or religious debates. Religion was not meant to be debated in the political landscape, nor was morality. We are meant to have a separation of church and state. But we often lack the self-awareness to recognize when our religious and moral beliefs are influencing our political opinions.
For example, we may not see that our anti-abortion stance is shaped by our religious beliefs, nor do we always recognize that our pro-abortion stance is influenced by our perception of morality. Whether we are pushing religious or moral beliefs onto each other is irrelevant. Neither one is inherently better or worse than the other.
The government’s role should not be to pick a side in the debate between morality and religion; it should simply allow both to exist by creating access where it is wanted and denying access where it is not wanted. Individual communities should have the autonomy to decide, via a vote, whether or not to allow access to abortion within their own jurisdictions. When we move away from a one-size-fits-all approach and allow communities to make their own choices, we effectively create space for both sides to coexist peacefully.
It is disrespectful to deny people the freedom of choice. It is disrespectful to force people into boxes, to make them conform to our views of how the world should look. When politics becomes a question of how we want everyone to live or be in the world, we create conflict. If that conflict isn't resolved in a way that respects everyone’s wants and needs, violence becomes inevitable. We cannot continually ignore the wants and needs of the opposing side and expect them to respect us while playing nicely. It will not happen. You wouldn't tolerate this dynamic in your own personal relationships, so why do we expect entire political parties to tolerate it at a societal level?
The balance has been tipped to the left for a long time. When we look back at the past and see issues like slavery and the lack of women’s rights, the pain from these events can lead us to believe society was tipped to the right simply because they existed. But this perspective is skewed by pain. In order to address these issues and create a more equal society, the pendulum had to swing left. To abolish slavery, for example, there had to be a prolonged period of change that pushed the balance to the left. In the evolution of human rights, the pull to the left is a recurring necessity. Over time, however, it creates an imbalance that becomes hidden within the evolution of change.
We refuse to acknowledge and accept that, in repeatedly pulling society to the left, we have effectively marginalized the political right. Often, the left defends this shift by claiming moral high ground. However, the right has increasingly become more frustrated, argumentative, and combative because they feel unheard and excluded from the ongoing process of societal change—a process that, by definition, leans left. Their frustration has become outright disrespect, which is met by an equal level of disrespect and frustration from the left with the lack of progress, a process that is rapidly degenerating into what will inevitably become war.
The left would do well to acknowledge the imbalance, find compassion in the frustration and fear of the right, and let go of the all-or-nothing approach to political legislation. It is time for the left to get off the moral high horse that has now led them to lose much of the progress they had made.
The Universe works on a system of balanced energy. Good and bad, right and wrong, love and hate all fall on a spectrum. When we spend too much time on one side or the other, we end up shifting the other way to create balance. From the human perspective, it can feel like we’re going backward. What we’re really doing is learning to heal old cycles and let go of old pain. While the left needs to get off its high horse, the right needs to heal its fear of progress and let go of the old ways of being.
There is something to be said for creating an acceptable status quo and staying there. Sometimes, the constant push for progress can be harmful. We might do well to allow the political right to catch their breath by accepting the status quo for a while. What if we just allowed things to be as they are, without continuously poking at the fear of those who don’t want the progress we’re trying to create? Just as in our individual lives, where we don’t always push to create something new, it’s possible that we need to take the same approach at a societal level.
I fear, however, that it might be too late. Dictatorship and war seem to be on the horizon in the near future. As the world attempts to rebalance itself from a country gone rogue, we can reflect on how to ensure we don’t end up here again by learning from the lessons of past experiences.
Basic human respect is not too much to ask when the alternative is war. In the end, what will hold us together is not politics, division, morality, or religion - it is respect.
Love to all.
Della
