The Emotional Psychology of a
Two-Party System
Defense mechanisms against
emotional ambivalence incline us to fully embrace
one side and fully reject the other -- which makes
compromise nearly impossible.
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REL Waldman/Flickr
Last summer in Colorado, I pulled into a filling
station behind a pickup truck with political stickers
on its rear bumper and window. One sticker showed a
red-hued Obama and gave this warning: Be Afraid.
Be Very Afraid. Another displayed a green
hammer and sickle, with this ominous message: Green
is the New Red.
Communist Russia used to be Americans' enemy -- over
there, across the Atlantic -- but for a large sector
of the public, the enemy has now appeared within our
borders: President Obama, who supposedly wants to
install a communist regime here in the United States;
liberal environmentalists who'll tyrannize over the
rest of us if we're not vigilant. America seems to be
engaged in yet another war, but in this one, both
sides to the conflict are domestic.
During wartime, governments often make use of
propaganda to instill fear and hatred in their
citizens, mobilizing them against an existential
threat. On the domestic warfront, our political
parties rely on similar methods to stir up their
respective bases. The right in particular makes use of
rhetoric more
suited to wartime, rallying its troops against the
liberal War on Marriage, War on Family Values, War on
Freedom, etc. The supposed Republican War
on Women was a rallying cry for the left during
the last election.
Such rhetoric reflects a black-and-white,
us-versus-them approach that views each debate over
taxation, social policy and the role of government not
as a problem in need of a solution but a battle within
an ongoing war. During warfare, our aim is of course
to vanquish the enemy and emerge victorious; to reach
out to your enemy makes you a villainous collaborator,
a traitor to your cause. On the right, anyone with the
temerity to suggest that Obama and the Democrats have
some redeeming qualities is likely to be attacked from
within the party. Just ask Chris Christie.
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REL
Waldman/Flickr
Propaganda during wartime typically dehumanizes the
enemy. Our current political rhetoric likewise relies
on two-dimensional caricatures to de-legitimize the
opposition, encouraging us to hate "them." The process
is more blatantly vocal on the political right, with
the radio voices of conservatism inciting
hatred for cartoon versions of President Obama, Nancy
Pelosi, members of the liberal press, etc. Rush
Limbaugh has gone so far as to compare
Obama to Adolf Hitler, the epitome of unalloyed
evil. While less obvious, the left has its own set of
two-dimensional villains to hate: greedy and heartless
bankers, evil corporations, gun-toting religious
freaks.
For both sides, the Other often lacks true
dimension. In propaganda, the enemy never has a
legitimate point of view that needs to be taken
seriously and balanced against our own views. Hating
an enemy leaves no room for complex, ambiguous
problems without an obvious solution. It eliminates
the uncomfortable tension that arises from doubt and
uncertainty amidst difficult choices.
F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that the "test of
a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two
opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still
retain the ability to function." Whether it's a
question of intelligence, psychological maturity, or
emotional capacity, there's little sign of such
activity on the current political front. Instead, our
parties encourage us to take refuge in one of those
two opposing ideas and reject the other. Complex,
ambiguous perspectives are shunned in favor of
absolute, simplistic and immutable beliefs about right
and wrong, good versus evil.
For the extreme right, each effort to legislate
limits on gun ownership represents an ominous assault
on that unquestionable good, the constitutional right
to bear arms. Even universal background checks are an
intolerable infringement: according to Ann
Coulter, they would eventually lead to the
confiscation of all weapons and the "extermination" of
gun rights. Instead of responding with a reasoned
argument, she stirs up fear of totalitarian overreach
and incites hatred against Big Government.
Voices on the left sometimes employ similar tactics.
Maureen Dowd of The New York Times
compared
Tea Partiers to suicide bombers. Katrina
vanden Heuvel of The Washington Post
argued that the Republican Party had "strapped
a bomb" to the
economy. Peter Goodman of The Huffington
Post likened the debt debate to the Cuban
missile crisis, "with the crucial difference
being that we are the ones stacking up the nuclear
warheads and threatening to detonate them on
ourselves." Suicide bombers and nuclear terrorists are
evil, of course, and you can't negotiate with an enemy
bent on your destruction.
As the
neurologist Robert Burton has noted , ambiguity
or confusion is so difficult for many of us to bear
that we instead retreat from it into a feeling of certainty,
believing we know something without any doubts, even
when we actually don't and often can't know. Those of
us who have trouble with such discomfort often resort
to
black-and-white thinking instead. Rather than feeling
uncertain or ambivalent, struggling with areas of
gray, we reduce that complexity to either/or.
We may define one idea or point of view as bad
(black) and reject it, aligning ourselves with the good
(white) perspective. Feelings of anger and
self-righteousness often accompany this process,
bolstering our conviction that we are in the right and
the other side in the wrong. Hatred for the rejected
point of view keeps ambiguity and uncomfortable
complexity from re-entering the field.
Hating an enemy leaves no room for
complex, ambiguous problems without an obvious
solution.
Black-and-white thinking reflects the psychological
process known as splitting. When we feel
unable to tolerate the tension aroused by complexity,
we "resolve" that complexity by splitting it
into two simplified and opposing parts, usually
aligning ourselves with one of them and rejecting the
other. As a result, we may feel a sort of comfort in
believing we know something with absolute certainty;
at the same time, we've over-simplified a complex
issue.
On the emotional front, splitting comes into play
when we feel hostile toward the people we love.
Holding onto feelings of love in the presence of anger
and even hatred is a difficult thing for most of us to
do. Sometimes hatred proves so powerful that it
overwhelms and eclipses love, bringing the
relationship to an end. More often we repress
awareness of our hostile feelings; or we might split
them off and direct them elsewhere, away from
the people we care about.
In other words, splitting as a psychological defense
mechanism resolves emotional ambivalence -- love and
hatred toward the same person -- by splitting off one
half of those feelings and directing them elsewhere,
away from the loved one.
One of the helpful functions of society is to
provide us with outlets for that anger -- to identify
places where it's okay to feel and express (split off)
aggression, even hatred. Consider the uses of
professional sports, for example, where most
spectators identify with one team or competitor and
wish to crush the opponent. Not only does this provide
a needed outlet for competitive urges, it also allows
us to channel many aggressive feelings away from our
intimate relationships and express them in a safer
context.
Warfare, with an identified enemy combatant, may
also serve the same function, providing a sanctioned
outlet for our aggression. In times of war, splitting
becomes powerfully evident: people at home "come
together" more easily, put differences aside and unite
against the common enemy. For a time, it can create a
sense of domestic harmony and unification, especially
important when confronting an existential threat from
the outside.
On the other hand, if we make use of splitting to
gin up hatred against a two-dimensional Other, we
undermine our ability to think. The enemy is rarely as
monochromatically evil as governments like to portray;
the other side often has legitimate complaints against
us we might do well to heed. Fomenting hatred rather
than encouraging rational thought may lead us into
ill-considered wars we later come to regret.
In politics, to the extent our parties rely more on
splitting and hatred than appeals to thought, they
create a wartime atmosphere on the domestic front. We
are good, the other side is bad, and we hate
them. Preoccupied with vilifying the opposition, we're
unable to perceive both sides of an issue and find a
way to accommodate them both, albeit imperfectly.
Pursuing total victory takes precedence over
problem-solving.
None of this is new, of course. Richard Hofstadter
long ago identified the
"paranoid style" in American politics, tracing
it back to the earliest days of the Republic.
According to Hofstadter, the politician who speaks
from the paranoid perspective "does not see social
conflict as something to be mediated and compromised,
in the manner of the working politician. Since what is
at stake is always a conflict between absolute good
and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise
but the will to fight things out to a finish."
Such a Manichean world view is the result of
splitting: the gray middle ground gives way to
absolute black and white, and hatred toward the other
side keeps the split in place. If Hofstadter's
description sounds depressingly familiar, it's because
the paranoid style is alive and well in America. A
hostile fight-to-the-finish mentality holds sways and
the capacity for constructive thought has been its
primary victim.
You can find evidence of this all-or-nothing wartime
approach just about any time you tune into the
political news cycle. Right now, we hear it in the
blame game surrounding the sequester as we once again
approach the debt ceiling. Speaker Boehner insists
that
"the revenue issue is now closed" and further
cuts to the budget are the only way forward. While not
as unequivocal as Boehner, Leader Pilosi periodically
announces that direct cuts to benefits are "off the
table."
Much of this is political posturing, of course, as
each side speaks to its base and tries to stake out
the most advantageous position in future negotiations.
Still, the strident my-way-or-the-highway rhetoric
makes future compromise exceedingly difficult. How can
you return to your troops and admit you ceded ground
without sounding like a traitor? After denouncing the
enemy, how can you go back to your base and
acknowledge that the other side might have some valid
points?
After fomenting hatred in your supporters, splitting
complex reality into simple black and white, how
can you possibly ask them to think?
This post is adapted from
Why Do I Do That? Psychological Defense Mechanisms
and the Hidden Ways They Shape our Lives.
