We'd rather play the victim than pursue the truth

Welcome to the Victim States of America.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped judging disputes based on reason and a search for the truth, and instead started basing our decisions on who can whine the loudest – and longest.

I suppose it’s easier that way. We don’t have to think; all we have to do is grease that squeaky wheel. Except, in this case, it just makes the wheel squeak louder.  

In yet another byproduct of our increasingly polarized culture, we prize loyalty to our “tribe” over a dedication to truth, and never has it been more apparent than in the current impeachment proceedings.

Democrats announced they would be pursuing impeachment before they’d read the whistleblower complaint against Donald Trump. Then, when it did come out, Republicans dismissed it without even appearing to consider how damning its contents were.

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican, hit the nail on the head. “Democrats ought not to be using the word impeach before they have the whistleblower complaint or before they read any of the transcript. Republicans ought not to be rushing to circle the wagons to say there’s no there there when there’s obviously lots that’s very troubling there. The administration ought not to be attacking the whistleblower as some talking points suggest they plan to do.”

Sasse counseled “lots of deliberation” but also acknowledge that “this place is terrible at deliberation.”

How we got here

“This place” might have meant Congress, Washington or the nation at large, and it would have been equally accurate.

There are, of course, reasons why we’ve exchanged deliberation and reason for loyalty oaths and litmus tests.

First, as mentioned above, it’s easier. You don’t have to think. You just let your tribal leaders do the thinking for you. Of course, you shouldn’t be surprised if you find they’re picking your pocket and shackling your wrists in the meantime.

Second, those tribal leaders have succeeded in making “deliberation” look like gridlock. They’ve done this in part by stonewalling the release of information, so that the process becomes so drawn out and tedious that no one has the time or patience for it. (This is especially true in an era when people often work two or three jobs to make ends meet, and those who don’t have been indoctrinated in a culture of instant gratification.)

Third, they’ve raised the bar for independent judgment so high that it’s almost impossible to reach. Anything short of absolute proof can be debunked as “doctored” or “fake news.” The upshot of this is we stop trusting ourselves to make informed decisions, so we abdicate that power to (surprise!) those same tribal leaders who thirst for it the most.

Fourth, they deflect. Instead of defending themselves, they point the finger elsewhere and say, “See, he’s doing it, too, and it’s even worse!” (One has to wonder whether the folks who do this have ever heard the saying “two wrongs don’t make a right,” or whether they did hear it and simply don’t care.) We don’t have time to weigh charges and counter-charges, so we ignore the whole thing and retreat to our own camps and, yes, those tribal leaders.

Fifth, we rushed to judgment and cried wolf so many times that no one’s listening anymore. The media, chained to their instant-update news cycle, contributes to this. So do political spin doctors eager to take the first shot. When they’re wrong, they lose credibility. And they create a vicious circle: The lack of deliberation has made us even less inclined to engage in it.

Skepticism gives way to cynicism, to the extent that everything coming out of the “other” camp can be dismissed as propaganda, no matter how much evidence there might be to back it up. We don’t have time to sift through all that, weed out the facts from the spin, and make an informed decision when we don’t even know if we have all the information we need to do so.

Is it any wonder we’ve disengaged from politics? Who wants to spend all day listening to people whine – and deciding who’s the bully and who’s the victim?

When Supreme Court nominee Bret Kavanaugh was accused of sexual harassment, his most effective argument was a self-righteous tirade about how he was the one being harassed. Clarence Thomas had done the same thing under similar circumstances a couple of decades, when he characterized allegations against him as “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves.”

The irony is that Thomas’ argument itself didn’t involve “thinking,” but was fallacious. He was attacking the messenger by questioning motive, rather than seeking to refute the allegation itself. He made it a question of identity – prejudice against “uppity blacks” – rather than reasoned argument. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone comment on the irony of that supposed defense, but maybe it’s because we’ve become so used to people playing the victim that we barely notice it anymore.

Thomas and Kavanaugh now sit on the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be the most deliberative body in the land. Its members are supposed to think, not engage in ad hominem defenses. What does it say about our society as a whole when even members of our highest court seem to rely on such flawed excuses for reasoning?

Loyalty over truth

Some people are shocked that Republicans are defending Trump in the light of what appears to be very compelling evidence against him. But they shouldn’t be, because we long ago stopped judging people based on rational argument and substituted Trump’s own standard for “truth”: blind loyalty. Trump has used this standard for his entire career, and comparisons to mob culture are entirely accurate.

But Trump recognized something he has used to his advantage: That culture was spreading. The nation was catching up – or more accurately, falling back – to the kind of tribal culture he’d exploited on a smaller scale all his life as a real estate developer. Whatever his other shortcomings, he knew how to make it work for him. And as it came to dominate American culture as a whole, newcomers accustomed to operating by more conventional political rules found themselves out of their league.

Not only does Trump know how to create blind loyalty, he also recognizes it and is able to call it out in others. He then exposes it and discredits them for the very things he himself is doing – often more flagrantly. And because that loyalty has bound so many people to him, they refuse to call him out for his hypocrisy, no matter how blatant it might be. He really could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.

Nobody whines louder about being the victim than Trump, who laments “PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT” in all caps and blames the media, the Democrats, and anyone else who dares to criticize him for all his woes. The only thing he seems to be more emphatic about is how great he (says he) is.

Who we’ve become

But this isn’t just – or even primarily – about Trump. He’s a symptom, not the condition. He could never have thrived if we hadn’t created a culture based on litmus tests and loyalty oaths long before he came along. Trump is Nixon redux, but in a time and culture far more vulnerable to Machiavellian bullshit. For this, we have only ourselves to blame. We began rushing to judgment long before Trump and others like him began using their cattle prods on us. We exchanged reason for outrage and humility for hubris. We ditched patriotism in favor of partisanship.

We’ve become so comfortable playing the victim and blaming others that it’s almost become second nature to us. We do it in government, in our personal lives, in our professional interactions. It’s become second nature.

But in exalting our own victimhood, we’ve abandoned what got us here: a spirit of determination that didn’t care what obstacles others put in our way. We didn’t waste time blaming the people who put them there; we tackled those obstacles head-on. We overcame them or died trying. It was what we used to call the American spirit. Flawed, yes. Cruel at times, to be certain. But we were not victims. Never victims.

Until now. Now we all want to do is play the victim – and in a sense, that’s what we are: victims of our own ignorance and stubborn refusal to face the truth.

And we’ll keep being victims until we’ve decided we’ve had enough.

Trump's undoing in Ukraine scandal: the word "though"

As I watched the coverage of the unfolding impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, I kept waiting for someone on cable news to mention one word.

They repeatedly referred to Trump’s use of the word “favor” in a summary of his conversation with the Ukrainian president, and that word is, indeed, very important. But they never mentioned a word that’s just as crucial in determining Trump’s intent.

The word right after “favor.”

“Though.”

In the exchange between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, as laid out in a summary released by the White House, the Ukrainian president says his country is grateful for U.S. financial aid because it wants to use the money to buy more defensive weapons.

That’s when Trump responds, “I would like you to do us a favor though.”

The word “though” explicitly links what Trump’s about to say with what Zelensky said that preceded it. That’s its purpose - its raison d’etre. Otherwise, there would be no need for its presence in the sentence. Trump could have easily said, “I would like you to do us a favor.” Full stop. Indicating the beginning of a new and entirely separate thought.

But that’s not what he said.

He said, “though,” inextricably linking the “favor” (working with Rudy Giuliani to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden) to the military aid just referenced.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “though,” in this context is an adverb that means “despite the fact that.” In other words: Despite the fact that you’re preparing to buy weapons from us, we want you to do us a favor. The clear implication is that the purchase of weapons is not enough to close the deal – to make the two sides “even.”

When used as a conjunction, “though” means “even if (introducing a possibility)” or “however; but (introducing something opposed to or qualifying what has just been said. ‘her first name was Rose, though no one called her that.’” (again, quoting Oxford).

In the case of the Zelensky-Trump conversation summary, “though” serves as a de facto conjunction that indicates Trump’s request for the “favor” qualifies or is even opposed to what has just been said. It introduces the possibility that the request will not be granted – or would not have been granted – without the condition being met.

But whether it’s used as an adverb or a conjunction is, in fact, immaterial. In either case, it links the two thoughts, creating a dependency of Zelensky’s action upon Trump’s condition (the favor). Such dependency is the essence of a quid pro quo, which Oxford defines as “a favour or advantage granted in return for something.” Yes, it even uses the word favour (albeit with the British spelling)!

I’m surprised the pundits I watched missed this. Perhaps others picked up on it, or have figured it out since then. But the word “though” is the key to this entire puzzle.

Remember when Bill Clinton, when asked about the status of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, famously responded: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”? The distinction was deemed laughable.

But there’s no distinction at all in the Trump-Zelensky exchange. Whatever the tense, there’s a quid pro quo here. “Though” means “though.” Period. Full stop.

Founders' foresight: The two-party system is destroying us

“The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful manoeuvres, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves.” – Thomas Jefferson

The two-party system is broken. Perhaps it was inevitable.

What’s amazing is that it’s taken us almost 250 years to reach this point. Actually, though, we’ve been here before. It pushed us to the brink during Vietnam and Watergate, and over the edge during the Civil War.

And now, here we stand once again, staring into the abyss of the chasm between us.

Because we’re divided. In two. And we hesitate to lay the blame where it belongs: squarely at the feet of an inherently toxic two-party system. We hesitate because this system has become so deeply ingrained in our political reality that we view it as an essential part of our culture. But it’s not essential. In fact, quite the opposite. It’s nowhere in the Constitution, and John Adams even warned that it was the Constitution’s worst enemy.

Said Adams: “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”

Thomas Jefferson, who was Adams’ rival in this emerging two-party system, agreed: “The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions, and make them one people.”

These two brilliant, gifted and esteemed rivals agreed, yet they couldn’t stop it. So now, it’s up to us.

Yes, it’s gotten worse

Why is the two-party system, in Adams’ view, “evil”? Because it encourages binary choices. Such choices leave no room for nuance or subtlety, and they create an atmosphere where extremism can thrive. Where we vote a party line, either because we’re too lazy to think for ourselves, or because the choices are so extreme – and we find one of them so unpalatable – there seems to be only one viable option.

Why does it seem worse now?

Because we’ve added unlimited money and endless propaganda, disguised as free speech, to the equation. And that’s a recipe for disaster.

Unlimited money is available via unrestrained campaign contributions. Propaganda is spread more quickly and effectively than ever – through conventional media saturation, social media pressures and election cycles that never end.

We’ve come to this place by accepting the lie that free speech is somehow absolute. Of course, it’s not. You’re not supposed to be able to slander someone, to perjure yourself in court, to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, to willfully incite others to violence ... No right is absolute. But a binary system encourages the belief in absolutes, even in the face of common sense, so is it any surprise that we’ve started interpreting free speech in those terms.

What’s worse is we’ve created a vicious circle. Not only does our binary system strengthen a false belief in absolutes. This belief, in turn, encourages us to think in binary terms. “I’m right, you’re wrong” – regardless of the facts behind the argument. Ad hominem fallacies become the rule of the day: The identity of the person doing the arguing becomes more important than the merits of the argument itself. This is why political parties in a two-party system, and their leaders, cast aside “bedrock principles” at the drop of a hat for the sake of winning.

The party that once believed in free trade becomes protectionist. The party that once encouraged slavery wants to consider reparations for slavery. The party that once railed against incurring debt runs up the biggest debt in history. The party that organized provocative protests on college campuses wants “safe spaces” on those same campuses to insulate people from provocation. These aren’t subtle shifts in ideology. They’re 180-degree turnabouts, and they often take place abruptly – over a few short years, not decades.

This isn’t how thinking people act to new information presented in a marketplace of ideas. It’s how people react to peer pressure in a binary system where the “marketplace” consists of just two vendors. These two share a mutually parasitic monopoly on ideas, each of them selling only absolutes that condemn the other, but each needing the other to serve as a scapegoat.

We’ve forgotten we agree

In a world of absolutes, there’s no room for agreement. There’s only us and them. Winning and losing. But this world of absolutes is not the world we live in.

Yes, we have our differences. Thomas Jefferson said, “Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth.” But, alas, this concept is being lost, due to the false binary choices being foisted on us in the current environment. Difference of opinion is no longer an opportunity to learn, but an excuse to attack and defend. It’s no longer a reason to discuss, but a reason to condemn.

Binary systems emphasize what we don’t like about each other – and encourage us to like it even less. And all this angst and fury does something else, as well: It obscures the fact that we actually agree on most of the important stuff. This is, I believe, the greatest tragedy that’s been foisted on us by our binary political system. Because the truth of the matter is, we actually agree on most things.

• We believe in the Golden Rule, or some variation of it.

• We believe in equal opportunity and equal treatment under the law.

• We don’t want our environment poisoned.

• We don’t want to die because we can’t afford medicine or a hospital stay.

• We preferred the late 20th century employment model to the “shareholder is god, employee is dirt” construct.

• We believe in education.

• We believe in “live and let live” within the law.

• We believe success should be based on merit, not on gaming the system.

• We believe in taking care of our own.

• We believe hard work should be rewarded, and those who can’t work should have help – but that those who lie about being unable to work shouldn’t get it.

• We believe in science, and we believe there’s something more out there that we don’t and maybe can’t understand.

In all these things, we are united. E pluribus unum: Out of many, one. Many people. Many ideas. Many approaches.

We still are the UNITED States of America. Those who feed (and get rich) off our toxic binary system want us to forget this. They don’t want us to focus on the many things that unite us, but on the few that divide us.

Expletive for emphasis: Fuck that.

It’s time for us to remind them who’s in charge in a democratic republic. It’s time for us not only to take back our country, but to recover our soul.

Why I've stopped writing about politics

My parents told me, back in the’70s, that it wasn’t smart to talk about two things in polite company: politics and religion. So, what did I do? Like any child determined to reach his own conclusions, I did the opposite: I talked about them – at least when I got old enough to know what I was talking about.

And I proved my parents wrong ... for a time.

About 20 years ago, I started a group on the now-defunct MSN Groups platform called Faiths & Reasons. The idea was to create a place for where people of different (or no) faith could exchange ideas and talk about the role reason played in their spiritual lives. It did exactly that. There were very few self-righteous rants; most people played by the rules. They enjoyed examining why they believed what they believed and hearing why others had chosen different paths.

Eight years later, MSN closed that platform, but the social climate was already starting to shift away from what had made that group a success. The openness that had been the hallmark of Faiths & Reasons was quickly being frozen out by a growing avalanche of tribalism. This trend was driven by a number of factors, not the least of which was a focus on identity at the expense of ideas.

(Forgive me now if I talk about politics for a bit; it’s kind of unavoidable in explaining why I won’t be doing it in the future!)

On the political stage, the trend toward kneejerk tribalism was reinforced by the success of Gerrymandered districts, which created seats of power safely insulated from viable challenge. When you know you’ll be elected regardless of your viewpoints, those viewpoints tend to become more extreme and self-serving. “The base” is no longer something to be courted in the primaries, it’s an altar upon which to sacrifice any principles you might have left.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham illustrates this perfectly. Once considered a man of principle, he has been exposed of late as a charlatan who hid behind principle because it was politically expedient at the time. Now, it no longer is. Trumpian lies and insults are all the vogue, so he’s adopted that approach as well. When the climate changed, so did he, admitting that his first goal had never been to uphold some high ideal, but rather to be re-elected. By whatever means necessary.

Changes such as Citizens United and the explosion of “preach to the choir” media only amplified the move toward unthinking tribalism. The end result has been to avoid talking about principle and exalt identity. This is, incidentally, why Nixon’s specter of the imperial presidency is rearing its ugly head again in a the Trumpian age. Empires aren’t about principle. They’re about the identity of the emperor. Bow down or fuck off (have your property seized and be locked away in a tower – if you’re lucky).

A new, more bitter age

Faiths & Reasons was based on the idea that people could honestly share and disagree on principles without having their identity questioned. It worked well in its time, but that time has clearly passed. For the past decade, I’ve been trying to do what I’ve always done: challenge bias – my own and others’ – through civil dialogue.

I’ve been pretty damned stubborn about it. I’ve persisted even though I’ve been called names, dismissed and accused of being sexist, bigoted, closed-minded, privileged, naïve ... the list goes on. There’s a saying that “what you tolerate will continue.” Well, folks, I’m done tolerating this. I won’t be blogging or posting much on social media about politics in the near future.

These days, anyone who claims to be speaking his or her own mind is shot down as either crazy or a liar. Case in point: GOP Rep. Justin Amash posts a detailed (for Twitter, anyway) rationale for why he believes Trump should be impeached. Trump’s response was typical of what I described above – not to mention his own crass puffery: He dismissed Amash as a “lightweight” and a “loser” only interested in “getting his name out there through controversy.”

It would be easy to say, “Well, that’s just Trump.” But it isn’t. Trump is as much a reflection of our culture as he is a builder of it, and the signs go far beyond his toxic Twitter feed.

It’s gotten so twisted that people dismiss reasoned arguments as “talking points” – while relying on their own talking points to do so! Responding to Amash’s critique, Republican Party leader Ronna McDaniel basically refused to acknowledge that he even had a brain, accusing him of merely “parroting the Democrats’ talking points on Russia.”

It’s truly Orwellian when a knee-jerk toady accuses an independent thinker of being, well, a knee-jerk toady. But this is the world we’re living in, folks. And I won’t be suckered into participating that kind of doublethink anymore.

It would be bad enough if it were just Trump and lockstep Republicans, but there are true believers on the other side who demand that people be marginalized for deviating a single syllable from the party line, assuming that such deviations, intended or not, are signs of some latent and cleverly concealed “ism.”

They may be right. But they just might be wrong, too. And in the current climate, they never pause to consider the latter possibility, because they’ve committed themselves so strongly to their position that they can’t even begin to entertain other options. Maybe they’re wrong. Or maybe the situation they see as in such absolute terms is more complicated than they want to admit.

Process, not conclusion

I’m not creating some false equivalency here. I’m not saying, as Trump did, that there are “good people on both sides” in a confrontation between civil rights advocates and white supremacists. That would be patently absurd. I’m not talking about conclusions, but the process we use to get there: Do we arrive at our conclusions through rational thought or because someone else tells us that’s how we should think? In my mind, the second method is like cheating on a test: You deserve a big fat F even if you get the right answer!

If you react based on fear and outrage rather than based on reasoned analysis, you’re part of the problem, yet that’s how more and more people are reaching their conclusions these days. That’s especially true of politics. Politicians like to talk about “working across the aisle” and “having a dialogue” on race or immigration or whatever. When positions are already firm and unyielding, a dialogue isn’t possible. What we get, instead, is a shouting match.

Both sides become determined to bargain from a position of strength and avoid sliding down a slippery slope, so they dig in their heels and nothing gets done. The current trade war is a prime example. “Compromise” has long been dismissed as a dirty word, but if that’s true, what’s the point in negotiating? Successful negotiations will always be conducted in good faith, and today, neither side has any faith in the other ... beyond the assurance that, if they give an inch, they’ll get screwed.

If this were just the way politics operated, it would be bad enough, but the tribal mentality is permeating society on nearly every level in 2019. The cycle of outrage and distrust has become locked in, as politicians and the public reinforce it – locking out any hope of rational discourse.  It’s pointless to argue about the chicken and the egg: Politicians and the public reinforce this toxic thought with each other, thereby locking out any hope of rational discourse.

Switching teams

Sports serves as an interesting parallel: People continue to root for their chosen teams, even if they adopt a whole new playing style or trade for players they previously disliked. I’ve been accused of being a fair-weather fan for switching my allegiance from the Lakers, whom I supported for years, to the Warriors because I like their players’ attitude and enjoy their style of play. Does Magic play for the Lakers anymore? Does Kareem? Jerry West? James Worthy? If they did, I’d still be a fan. But the Kobe show paled in comparison to Showtime, and I’ve never been a fan of the drama that LeBron and Lonzo bring to the table.

So, I became a Warriors fan.

Similarly, I’ve been a Republican, a Democrat and an independent, and I won’t apologize for switching affiliations when I did. In each case, it was a reflection of either my own political evolution or a party changing what it stood for – or some combination of the two. (The Republican Party of today looks nothing like what it did under Lincoln, Eisenhower or even Reagan.) I place principle and substance over assumption and identity.

But our society doesn’t view changes in position as a sign of personal growth or independence. It sees such evolution as a sign of inconsistency, hypocrisy or weakness. Or, worse, betrayal. I don’t buy that. To my way of thinking, revisiting previous decisions is one of the most courageous things a person can do, especially in an environment such as this one. I’m going to continue to do that, no matter what others may think.

Out of step

I’m a person of nuance living in a world of absolutists who have won the day through an endless barrage of fear and propaganda, with an emphasis on reinforcing their identity as part of this or that “in group.” The tribe. People who, increasingly, believe it’s better to drink the Kool-Aid than question what might be in it.

I’ll operate on their black-and-white level in one instance only: I’ll vote. Because, ultimately, I believe that’s the best way to make a difference. I’m glad it’s a secret ballot, because that means I won’t feel like I have to walk on eggshells or justify my position to those who don’t care about the reasoning behind it in the first place. That’s exhausting, and that’s why I’m out. I’m not interested in preaching to the choir, nor do I want to get blasted for refusing to echo someone else’s ideas, down to the last dotted “i” and crossed “t.”

I’ve come to the conclusion that I can make a bigger difference in other ways that have nothing to do with the tribalism that dominates the current political scene.

My parents were right, after all. I still hope we can return to a world in which sharing ideas doesn’t have to be akin to walking through a minefield, but I’m not holding my breath it will happen soon. So, for the time being, I’m removing myself from the fray.

I’ve realized that my tribe isn’t a political party or a spiritual group. It’s not the people who share my profession or my hobbies. It’s not a “movement” or an “issue.” It’s those who think the way I do, who believe in assessing ideas openly and independently, rather than simply accepting the conclusions of the powers that be.

Just as in Faiths & Reasons, I know I’ll find them in the oddest and most unexpected of places, even if they may be, in today’s climate, exceptionally rare.

Note: If you want to know what I think about politics, I’ve written about it on this site extensively in the past. Also, you’re free to pick up my book, Media Meltdown: In the Age of Trump.

Purists are making allies an endangered species

Our polarized political tug-of-war has created an odd dichotomy in the middle. On one hand, more and more people are identifying as independents. On the other, these people “aren’t really all that independent,” as CNN wrote in a headline.

The percentage of voters identifying themselves as independents increased from 33 to 38 percent between 1994 and 2018, according to the Pew Research Center. This should have made the so-called “moderate middle” fertile ground for candidates in a general election. But it hasn’t. Instead, politicians have focused more and more about appeasing “the base” – those true believers at either end of the political spectrum.

These true believers, not surprisingly, are more engaged and motivated. Or, to use a term often employed by pundits, the base is “where the energy is.” In other words, people at the extremes are more likely to vote. A Pew poll in the fall of 2018 found that roughly 60 percent of party-affiliated voters said they voted; that compares to just 54 percent of Republican-leaning independents and 48 percent of Democratic leaners.

Because they don’t identify with one side or the other, independents don’t feel as though they have as big a stake in the game. Their concerns aren’t reflected in the shock-addicted media or acknowledged by either of the parties, so why bother? This attitude, however, creates a vicious circle: The less they vote, the less the parties will pay attention to them ... and they less relevant they’ll feel. More and more people feel ignored by the two parties, disengage, and see the parties confirm ignore them even more.

Instead of working together, the true believers are working from both sides to make gaps unbridgeable. Gender gaps, income gaps, gaps between faith and science, between urban and rural America. I could go on.

This hasn’t happened all at once. It’s been occurring over the course of years or even decades, propelled by a number of factors – many of which involve the fragmentation of how we communicate and our willingness to consider opposing views. Like prizefighters, we stay in our own corners (Fox or CNN, Breitbart or the Mother Jones) until it’s time to come out fighting. Then, the Marquess of Queensbury Rules be damned. The transformation from civil society to MMA-style social brawl has been insidious, like a boiling frog.

Those who insist on staying in the middle don’t matter.

This is why the power of “the base” is ascendant even as independents have become the largest segment of voters. It’s why Mr. Trump continues to target his ultra-conservative base, rather than worrying about how independents view him. They don’t matter, because they’re less likely to vote, anyway. And the more they feel marginalized, the higher the chances Trump will win re-election.

But the principle is in play on the left, as well, where intra-party feuding is rampant and political “purity” is reinforced by voter shaming and a series of litmus tests not all that different from NRA ratings an anti-tax pledges on the right. The latter can be traced to George H.W. Bush’s act of reneging on his “no new taxes” pledge. But instead of realizing how badly such pledges boxed them in, Republicans decided to make more of them and be sure they kept them, regardless of whether they were a good idea.

Their willingness to do so helped plant the seeds of the political purity movement we see today, and the resulting trend toward the extremes has been fairly well documented in the political realm.

Disaffected

What hasn’t been mentioned much is that the same dynamic is occurring socially. As with politics, tension has arisen between issues and identity. Many of those issues, indeed, are common to both the social and political realms, but social identities are different, and often less fluid, than political identities, which makes the social dynamic even more treacherous for those in the middle.

A Democrat can always re-register as “decline to state” (in California) or with a different party, and some states, such as Virginia, don’t even offer party registration.

Social identities, by contrast, aren’t that easy to change. Some of them – race, sexual orientation and, to a slightly lesser extent, gender – don’t offer any wiggle room at all. You were born with it, and that’s what you are. It’s slightly less difficult to escape class-based identities, but it’s still no easy task: Those who live in wealthy neighborhoods have a built-in head start on obtaining a good education, making white-collar job connections, and so forth.

It’s no coincidence that the economic middle has been growing less relevant, too (although, unlike the disaffected political middle, it’s shrinking, not growing). Political decisions affect economic realities and reinforce social constructs. So, as the political and economic middles become less relevant, the same thing is happening socially.

The rise of social “purity” on the right has led to a resurgence of newly emboldened white supremacists, nationalists and religious bigots. On the left, it’s led to censorship and political correctness, the free exchange of ideas be damned. The people left out of this are, socially as well as politically, the middle-grounders: the people who want to think for themselves and reserve the right to disagree, on occasion, with those they most often support.

The concept of a “loyal opposition” has gone down the toilet. Either you’re loyal or you are the opposition. That’s Trump’s mantra, to be sure, but the same principle is being invoked, only slightly less explicitly, on the left.

Allies go home

The shrinking social middle consists largely of allies: People who may not belong to a certain group, but support that group as a matter of conscience or principle. Like those in the political middle, they don’t – or can’t – identify with a given “side” in the culture wars, but they nonetheless agree that side should prevail. Maybe in most respects. Maybe in all. They are, however, not the social base. They’re not as personally invested in the struggle and, while they may believe in it, they’re often not as motivated to fight tooth and nail for it.

Plus, many have an aversion to following anything blindly. Even if they agree with most of the actions a group espouses, they reserve the right to think for themselves and politely disagree if they prefer a different course of action.

Increasingly, however, such politeness is met with skepticism and derision. Members of the social base have adopted a motto of “if you’re not for us, you’re against us.” They don’t trust independent allies because they don’t appear to be “all in” for the cause, whether that cause be racial justice, gender equity, LGTBQI rights, or raising the minimum wage. If they disagree occasionally, it’s seen as a red flag that they might not really believe in anything the group stands for. Disagreement is viewed as evidence they’re (at best) slaves to some subconscious social conditioning or (at worst) posers out to infiltrate the movement.

Some question whether a white male can ever really truly be all-in on gender equity or racial equality; whether a cisgender person be all-in on transgender rights; whether a person oriented toward the opposite sex be all-in on LGBTQI rights. There’s always going to be some underlying lack of understanding or potential conflict of interest when the rubber meets the road, or so the purists fear.

Disengaging

If you’re a social ally in the middle and your motives are repeatedly questioned, you’re likely to do exactly what political independents do: Disengage. If you feel shamed for your identity, you’re apt to withdraw. Race, gender and sexual orientation aren’t like political parties; you can’t simply reregister at the drop of a hat. So, you’re left feeling as though you don’t really belong anywhere. You can’t abandon your identity, but you won’t abandon your principles, and that tension isn’t something most people care to live with for long.

It didn’t exist, at least not to this extent, 20 years ago, but social purity tests have poisoned the well, just as surely as political polarization has proven toxic to government. (Lawmakers willing to forge alliances by working across the aisle are all but extinct, thanks to demands for political purity.) In the current environment, many allies become silent supporters, voting their conscience at the ballot box but otherwise keeping their mouths shut in order to avoid taking fire from both sides. They turn their attention elsewhere – to places where they feel like they are relevant: their families, their jobs, pastimes they enjoy. Places where they’re appreciated and feel like they can make a difference.

Political independents are checking out in droves for the very same reasons.

In alienating the social and political middle, extremists are accomplishing their ultimate goal: to create an atmosphere of social and political tyranny ruled by bigotry, censorship and intolerance. It’s the antithesis of what the founders sought to enshrine in the Constitution: a free exchange of ideas that acts as a crucible for progress and innovation.

So much for the American dream. In alienating independents and silencing the middle, we’re killing it. It’s dying from the inside out.

Lindsey Graham abandoned his conscience — or maybe he never had one

Dear Senator Graham,

I’m going to put this to you directly: What does Mr. Trump have on you?

I’ve been watching politics a long time. It’s a game in which opportunists routinely “adjust” their positions to catch latest updraft in public opinion. The man you tried to convict and remove from office two decades ago was famous for it. Governing by polls, they called it.

But we’re not talking about your run-of-the-mill Clintonian flip-flop here. We’re talking about a 180-degree turnabout in your opinion of a man he called a “race-baiting xenophobic bigot” and a “kook not fit to be president” just four years ago. Today, you’re one of his most avid supporters. This isn’t a flip-flop; it’s as a transformation that would make any good chameleon green enough with envy to stand out in the greenest rainforest.

A Washington Post story claimed you’d provided some answers to this question: You wanted to “be relevant” and declared, “If you don’t want to get re-elected, you’re in the wrong business.”

I’d say the more appropriate answer is, “If you don’t want to serve the people and the nation’s highest good, you’re in the wrong business.” And that’s what you’ve always said you were doing. You positioned yourself as a person of conscience and, whether or not people agreed with your conclusions, you crafted something of a reputation for following that conscience.

Until now.

Conscience, what conscience?

So, I’m sorry, but I don’t buy your explanation that this is simply a case of political pandering in an attempt to be re-elected. That kind of explanation that would work in explaining your typical, everyday political about-face, but this is something else. Plenty of other legislators fell in lockstep behind the “race-baiting xenophobic bigot,” but they were not the kind of people who boasted of working across the aisle and speaking with an independent voice. You were.

Take your colleague from Texas, Senator Cruz, for an example. He did an about-face on Trump, too – even after Trump threatened to “spill the beans” on his wife (whatever that meant) and smeared his father without justification. But let me point out two important distinctions: First, Mr. Cruz never had the reputation for integrity you cultivated and, second, his support of Trump hasn’t been nearly as public and vocal as yours has been.

I know you’re not a big fan of Senator Cruz: You once likened a choice between him and Mr. Trump in these terms: “It’s like being shot or poisoned.” So, in deference to that statement, I’ll choose a few other examples to illustrate my point: Your conversion regarding Mr. Trump isn’t politics as usual, it’s bizarre, even by Washington’s standards.

It’s tempting to say that, now that Trump’s in office, that you were, in fact, poisoned. But I suspect this poison emanates from within. Here’s why:

Hypocrisy writ large

I invite you, Senator Graham, to think of your colleagues who have earned reputations as people of conscience. Imagine if Bernie Sanders repudiated democratic socialism and became a Republican. Or Rand Paul started speaking out in favor of foreign intervention and tax increases. Imagine if the late Senator John McCain had started decided to oppose all campaign finance reform. These are men who, it’s clear, have held to their beliefs regardless of which way the political winds were blowing, and you depicted yourself as one of their number. If any of them did what I’ve just described, they would be labeled the biggest hypocrites in Washington.

But now, I’m afraid you’ve got that title all to yourself.

What you said about Trump being a “race-baiting xenophobic bigot” could have just as easily been said about David Duke. You know, the former KKK grand wizard. It was unequivocal. If you were wrong about it, you owe Mr. Trump the most abject of public apologies. If you were right, you owe that same apology to the American people. But since Mr. Trump doesn’t believe in apologies, and you are now one of his unapologetic disciples, I don’t expect you’ll issue one – even to him.

I’m even less optimistic you’ll offer one to the American people, and at this point, it doesn’t really matter, because that reputation you built as a “man of conscience” is pretty much toast. If your mysterious about-face regarding Mr. Trump hadn’t incinerated it, your willingness to stand by while he threw your supposed friend, Senator McCain, under the bus most certainly would have. Friends don’t act like that; assholes do.

Two possibilities

So, I’ll ask you again: What does Mr. Trump have on you? Think carefully before you answer, because if you say, “nothing,” there’s only one real alternative: That you were never a person of conscience in the first place, and it was all just a brazen act from the beginning. That would make you the worst kind of political troll. Worse than Clinton or Cruz or even Trump himself, because Trump – while a shameless con man – never pretended to be a man of conscience. You did.

That leaves us with two possibilities: First, that you are a true man of conscience who’s been undone by something so dark and despicable that you forsook that conscience and hitched yourself to Trump’s amoral bandwagon. I’m not talking about your rumored-and-denied homosexuality; that’s no longer (thankfully) the political or social liability it once was, even among Republicans.

This would have to be a whole lot more damaging than that. It would have to be downright humiliating. I have no idea what this sword of Damocles might be, and perhaps it doesn’t even exist. But if it doesn’t, we’re left with only one other option: that you never a man of conscience in the first place. That you’re an even bigger huckster than the “Art of the Deal” guy himself, and that your entire, well-cultivated image was nothing but a fraud from the outset.

Those are your choices. Think hard and choose wisely.  I’ll be waiting for your answer – not that I ever expect to get it.