Us versus them

A spokesperson for incumbent New York State Senator John Bonacic recently described Sullivan County Legislator David Sager, who is seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination to run for Bonacic’s seat, as playing into the hands of the “New York City elites” with respect to his position on natural gas drilling (see “Sager rejects ‘elite’ tag” in last week’s newspaper.) As the article pointed out, one problem with the charge is that Sager is, in fact, Sullivan County born and bred. But what provides more interesting food for further reflection is the way in which this type of allegation stifles, rather than stimulates, the flow of ideas in the public debate.

We should hasten to note that it was not Bonacic personally who was the author of the quote, and also that one comment does not define an entire career. However, in a world that is becoming more and more stratified, it’s important to understand the power of language in civil discourse. There’s language that gives voters information they need to make an intelligent decision, and language that manipulates their fears and resentments. The “elites” comment provides an opportunity to examine the difference.

The first problem with the charge is that it argues against a position held by a speaker, not by examining the position, but by putting that speaker in a box labeled “bad”—or, more precisely, one that you believe your audience will identify as being bad. Sager has questioned whether we should be willing to sell out the rural quality of life for an industrial activity that he says benefits only a few. That gets him put in the same box as “New York City elites,” without any rational connection having been made. To the extent that people react negatively to the phrase, the position in question remains unexamined.

The type of negative reaction this phrase can be expected to create brings us to a more insidious problem associated with this type of rhetoric: it works by appealing to human beings’ innate tendency to identify themselves and theirs with “good” and the others who are different as “bad.” Into the “bad” or “them” box, we lump everything and everyone we don’t happen to like, starting with villains about whom there is a genuine consensus that they are evil, like Hitler, and going on to everyone who disagrees with us, or whose background is different from ours. Fascists, communists (even though, historically, fascism and communism are opposites), liberals, card-carrying ACLU members, Hollywood celebrities, people who eat arugula, city dwellers or, to use the phrase in a recent letter to the editor, “flat landers,” are all jumbled together in this same box. (Except, of course, the things in the box will be different for different people.) From this simplistic viewpoint, if you know one thing about somebody, you know everything. If someone questions the wisdom of natural gas drilling, one can supposedly infer that they are communist sympathizers, ask for Swiss cheese on their Philly cheesesteak sandwich, get welfare payments from the government—and belong to “the elites.”

The cost of this annihilation of distinctions is deadly. Two people who disagree stridently on one issue might very well find themselves in close agreement on another; but if they adhere to the us-versus-them system, they will never be able to benefit from an alliance on their common ground. The NYRI power line issue and the diverse coalition that was formed in opposition provide an important lesson in this respect. The incursion of that power line through our area was averted because of a partnership between groups of people, including Bonacic, regional and local government, property-rights advocates, businesspeople, environmentalists and land preservation groups. Such a coalition simply could not exist in the two-box world.

The American political process is becoming increasingly paralyzed and ineffective, as is apparent at the national level, where a 41-vote minority in the United States Senate can effectively block the will of a 59-vote majority by simply refusing to listen to, negotiate with, or compromise with the majority on anything. Matters have been made worse by the growing prevalence, at all levels, of rhetoric that strips reason of all but one distinction: us versus them. We think both Sager and Bonacic probably have some interesting ideas to offer on gas drilling as well as other issues, and hope that if they wind up pitted against one another they repudiate such rhetoric and concentrate on letting voters know what those ideas are.

[For more reflections on the use and misuse of political language, see this week’s “Peace and Justice Files” column on page 11.]

Dr. Punnybone

Pit Bull