America’s political crisis and the war in Gaza are more intertwined than you might think

The very same day that Donald Trump was shot in an assassination attempt, another deadly military strike hit Gaza. The two sides disputed the cause and the consequences. Israel claimed a successful strike on a legitimate military target, Palestinians claimed large numbers of women and children among 90 dead. A brutal war showed no signs of abating.

The two events were separated by thousands of miles and widely different circumstances. But they are interlinked. Understanding why they are interlinked is crucial not just to the course of the United States or the war in Gaza, but to the faltering progress of global democracy. The lesson of this moment is only gathering in force. Understanding it begins with understanding how dramatically American politics has changed during the past 30 years.

In recent decades, politics in the United States has become a lens that is dramatically warping Americans’ views of one another. A study in the July 2018 issue of The Journal of Politics asked partisans to describe their political opponents. Democrats thought that nearly 40% of Republicans made more than $250,000 annually. The actual number is about 2%. Republicans, meanwhile, perceived that more than 30% of Democrats were lesbian, gay, transgender, or bisexual. The actual share is about 6%. Other examples fit the same trend.

In this way, politics has become a means, not to deal with reality, but to feed our own perspectives and prejudices. The most partisan Americans are playing defense against an opponent that, in important ways, does not exist outside their own heads.

America’s defining political trend

This has helped fuel the United States’ defining modern political trend: negative polarization. Negative polarization is not a support for one’s own side, it is a fear of the other. Negative polarization is all about “them” – stopping “them” from ruining the country.

From 1994 to 2022, the percentage of Republicans who said they have a very unfavorable view of Democrats rose from 21% to 62%, according to the Pew Research Center. Democrats who said they had a very unfavorable view of Republicans rose from 17% to 54%. You can see Pew’s chart here.

Most important is what this says about how Americans view one another. Some 72% of Republicans said Democrats are dishonest; 64% of Democrats said the same about Republicans. Both were up more than 20 percentage points since 2016. Similar trends are apparent in questions about close-mindedness, lack of intelligence, patriotism, and laziness.

Yet one question along these lines stands out. Do you think the other side is immoral? Some 72% of Republicans said Democrats are immoral, up from 47% in 2016. For Democrats, the number was 63%, up from 35%. You can see these charts here. 

When one side thinks the other is fundamentally immoral, where does a country go from there?

The problem of ‘them’

Here is where Gaza offers lessons.

In the current war, debates over violent actions often turn to attempts to justify who is right or wrong. But another consideration is just as important. Israel’s calculations seem to value Palestinian lives far less than Israeli lives. In operations to rescue Israeli hostages, the deaths of scores of Palestinians to bring back a handful of Israelis has been seen as an acceptable cost of war. When Israel launched its latest strike this weekend, reports indicated that the operation got the green light only when it was confirmed there were no Israeli hostages in the area.

The result has been 40,000 Palestinians killed since the war began, many of them noncombatants, and virtually no moral outrage within Israel. The reckoning behind this mathematics could be seen as only a more advanced state of what is now taking hold in American politics. The other side are all terrorists, civilians included. They were complicit in Oct. 7. They still have our hostages. They are hiding Hamas. They started this.

Them.

If America’s racial reckoning since the murder of George Floyd has taught anything, it is the insidious danger of stereotypes and generalizations about “them.” The strife between police and the Black community is built on real challenges, from racism to crime rates. But amplifying these problems through stereotypes and generalizations not only impeded the ability to find solutions, it did the opposite. It turned the situation into a powder keg that set the country alight. It made things worse, and dramatically so.

Progress on this issue has been difficult, but it has come through rehumanization – humbly consenting to see through another’s eyes. Do we see how many Black Americans are stalked by racism and the legacy of it? Do we see the honest cop, struggling with how best to keep communities and colleagues safe in a complicated and dangerous job?

Democracies’ essential demand

Autocracies flourish on hate. Autocrats thrive by leveraging one group’s hate or fear of another to hold on to power. Democracies demand rehumanization. The reason is that the real genius of democracy is in losing. In a democracy, one must lose an election and yet trust the other side to govern. One must lose some of what one wants in legislation in order to find the common ground essential to building governing coalitions. Losing requires humanization.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson once said that “the basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people.” When we don’t think well of one another, free societies falter.

Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack was wantonly inhumane, based on its belief that Israel is a racist, colonial state. Israel’s response has shown a species of that same inhumanity – an unwillingness to break through the stereotypes and generalizations of “them.” So the original violence has been amplified.

The need for rehumanization

What will America do? The threads of right and wrong are becoming increasingly snarled. The temptation to justify and dehumanize is only growing.

Not long ago, I spoke with Alexandra Hudson, author of the book “The Soul of Civility.” What came through so clearly in her research of societies from ancient China to modern America is that civility is not a “nice to have.” Nor is it a papering over of difficult questions. It is, in fact, the only way free societies can wrestle with existentially difficult questions without destroying themselves. It is the refusal to allow any consideration to override the value one places on another’s humanity.

These times unequivocally demand rehumanization. It is not only Israel and Gaza and the United States grappling with these problems. From Germany to France to Brazil to India, we see this same challenge in different shapes and stages. 

Them.

The world’s democratic experiment is still relatively young. There are lessons to be learned. What we are learning today is that the greatest threats come not from external forces – from Soviet Russia or modern China. They come from within. Democracies, it seems, can withstand differences of opinion. They can defeat tyranny abroad. What weakens them, perhaps fatally, is internal incivility and the inhumanity that flourishes behind it. This does not in any way preclude us from standing for what we think is right. What it does preclude, categorically, is any indulgence of hate or dehumanization as an acceptable price to pay.

The Monitor’s Rebuilding Trust event discussed these themes in greater detail. You can see a recording here. 

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was updated to more accurately state Hamas’ views of Israel.