How Enmity Imperils Liberal Democracy

“Rather than calm debates about policy and its implications, both good and bad, we now live in a political era defined by emotion, where political discussions mutate into threats to our personal and group safety.”

Gone are the great “third-way” movements of the 1990s and the early 2000s. Indeed, the era of James Carville’s famous phrase, “It’s the economy stupid” and debating the nuances of presidential fellatio, feels antique. Now we live in a time of political upheaval, and while the “populist menace” of former President Donald Trump may have receded, there remain deep cultural and political battles over a variety of topics. From abortion rights to transgender rights, the Right and the Left are fighting over increasingly divisive wedge issues. Rather than calm debates about policy and its implications, both good and bad, we now live in a political era defined by emotion, where political discussions mutate into threats to our personal and group safety.

As fears over our collective safety emanate from everywhere, the content of politics becomes diluted. Beyond the vacuous talk of rights, freedom, and liberty, there is little depth to our political movements. Instead, we have Twitter wars and continuous panics about the “future of democracy.” Some theorists such as Jonathan Haidt fear the mechanics of our politics and society endanger not just our democracy but also our general health. This theory has both salience and some value; after all, social media and virality have taken hold, leaving a vulnerable, hypersensitive population cocooned in their bubbles. Yet, does this really tell the whole story?

The danger of talking solely about the functionality of politics is that we miss what lies underneath (i.e., the essence of “the political”). It is not simply how political messages are delivered that drives polarization; rather, it is the kinds of politics we have that drive such tensions. Rather than macroeconomic policy or foreign policy as in the past, now it is questions of equality and recognition driving the political agenda. These questions let loose group dynamics that the bedrocks of liberal democratic regimes (institutions, rights, an open political culture) struggle to contain.