Many Democrats and Republicans hate each other, these days. That’s unproductive, but understandable in view of the political issues of the day and the high emotions on both sides. Hatred is common on both the left and the right.
However, there’s a strain of hatred that is unique to the right. On the right it’s common to feel that the left is inspired or actually controlled by the devil.
It’s the devil, they say, that is behind late-term abortion. It’s the devil that is behind the mutilation of teenage genitals. It’s the devil that is behind the commercialization of Christmas, the exaltation of Halloween, and the demise of Easter.
Don’t stop there! By golly, it’s the devil that is behind global warming, declining birth rates, electric cars, high taxes, low test scores, and Stephen Colbert. It’s the devil that is behind teachers’ unions.
Mind you, I come out on the side of the right on almost all those issues. I think we’d be a better society if we were on the right side of the issues of late-term abortion, mutilation of teenage genitals, religious holidays, DEI, global warming, high taxes, and teachers’ unions.
I’m not above ridiculing people who think otherwise. Logic and ridicule are both legitimate rhetorical devices. See: Shakespeare, William.
But I don’t think that people who disagree with me are generally devil-worshipers. Even when I hate them for their ignorance, their intolerance, their human flaws, and just their plain wrongness, I don’t hate them for their supposed devil-worship.
And the converse is true. The left doesn’t hate me for supposed devil-worship.
It’s easy to say that this devil-worship-hatred is on both sides – to say that if the right does it then the left must do it, too. This is the age of “whatabout”-ism. But, in fact, I think believing that the other side is devilish is much less common on the left.
Granted, it’s true that the left denigrates the intelligence and morality of the right. For example, the left thinks the right is stupid (notwithstanding surveys suggesting that highly intelligent people tend to be conservative, not liberal) or greedy (they acknowledge that Elon Musk is not stupid, and so he must be greedy).
But the left does not think the right is inspired or controlled by the devil. That’s perhaps because most of the left does not believe in the devil. Indeed, most of the left does not even believe in God, much less the devil. (That disbelief makes me question the sincerity of their moralizing – after all, if there’s no God then there are no ideals of good or bad – but that’s a different column.)
There are dangers here, in the belief that one’s political opponent is Satanic. For one, that belief encourages a person to dismiss their opponent’s argument. Why waste your time arguing with the devil?
For another, the belief that the other side is Satanic encourages a person to think that everything they say is Satanic. In other words, like the devil, the other side is always wrong.
That’s a mistake. The Democrats are not always wrong and not always lying. They were probably right in supporting the Wilderness Act, for example. Kennedy and LBJ were probably right for drawing a line in the sand in Vietnam (though LBJ made a hash out of the ensuing war). The Democrats were right to push Joe Biden out of the 2024 election (though they obviously did so far too late).
If you ask a Democrat what time it is, you’ll probably get an accurate answer.
Finally, believing that the other side is Satanic justifies awesome weapons in the war against them. One must fight fire with fire. And so, there’s justification for dishonesty, cruelty, and atrocity against the other side. He’s the devil, right?
We’ve seen the outcome of this “he’s-the-devil” mentality many times by both sides, in Catholic/Protestant wars, and, before that, in the Spanish Inquisition, and, before that, between the early Chistians and the Romans, and, through all of recorded history, in pogroms against the Jews.
No serious intellectual today, from the Pope on down, dismisses the other side’s argument as Satanic. Until you consider their argument, be willing to acknowledge that they may be right, even though they’re on the left.
Even a blind pig finds an occasional acorn. He’s a pig – okay? – not a devil.
