The power of voting in a state of polarized discourse
Baseball, America’s national pastime, merged forces with another American favorite: publicly shaming government officials. In his own nation’s capital during the fifth game of the World Series, President Donald Trump was booed by fans attending the event. Well, stop the presses. People don’t like Trump? No way!
It’s not surprising that people in Washington D.C. dislike the president, especially considering he got 4% of the vote in the district—literally only about 12,000 people voted for him—but what’s more alarming is the growing trend of bitterness in U.S. politics.
From booing the president on national TV to kicking out public officials from a restaurant, polarization has turned personal. It seems some Americans no longer just disagree with people about politics, but now actively loathe the other side.
Trump does not help this issue, actively engaging in name calling and attacks. But the danger of zero civility in politics can manifest itself in more than just boos and name calling.
Take the recent campaign against the former Rep. Katie Hill from California’s 25th congressional district. In a recent public scandal, Hill’s personal life and political career were simultaneously up- ended when the right-wing publication RedState published personal texts and even sexually explicit images of the now shamed congresswoman.
Other publications followed suit and more and more intimate snapshots have found their way onto the internet. Hill was already under investigation by the U.S. House Ethics Committee for claims of an extramarital affair. The images only sought to put personal pressure on her to resign.
In fact, over 700 personal images were unnecessarily released across the internet by people who sought to ruin her life over her politics. The congresswoman resigned on Oct. 27, just days after the investigation was announced and hundreds of her photos were released.
Hill was tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. As a result, the “evidence” is now publicly available for all to see. The same result could have happened if the same images were given to the U.S. House Ethics Committee first instead of the media. But, in today’s brutal political landscape, the most nefarious political actors have free reign to defeat the other side by any means possible.
This new phenomenon of doxxing— uploading people’s personal information online to publicly shame or cause them harm—has emerged thanks to the internet.
And the targets of these bitter attacks have not been limited to Democrats either. Last April, a Democratic congressional staffer, Jackson Cosko of D.C., pled guilty to federal charges of doxxing some of the highest ranking Senate Republicans. Sen. Mitch McConnell, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. Rand Paul and former Sen. Orrin Hatch were just a few of his high-profile targets.
Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California had to be reigned in by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for her own encouragement of political harassment. As NPR reported on June 25 of last year, the public has been personally targeting members of the Trump administration. Former Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, adviser Stephen Miller, and White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders have all “been forced out, heckled or denied service in restaurants.”
This hateful rhetoric of exclusion only furthers to divide all of us. Inclusivity and real dialogue should be promoted over telling groups, “You aren’t welcomed here.” On this campus, especially, we should all be careful of marginalizing groups and seek to discuss issues instead of attacking individuals.
Politics feels to be going more and more off the rails. The statistics even highlight this as the number of threats to members of Congress doubled from 2016 to 2017, reaching nearly 2,000, and daily death threats against the president continue.
Harassment, hatred, doxxing and violence: these are the fruits of our country’s rotten political climate, creating a toxic dialogue that normalizes a whole range of ugliness. Insulting one another and booing the president has helped to create a climate that tolerates harassment and violence against individuals.
Politics has always been a touchy subject, but lately things have only gotten worse. The internet allows for more unique ways of harassment and division, and at a time when our country is more polarized. Luckily, there’s an extremely easy way to civilly voice discontent: vote. If you hate the president so much, vote him out.
If you don’t like your congressional representative, do the same. We don’t need to stoop down to the lowest levels of propelling insults and making personal attacks on representatives in order to make political change.
Sen. Chuck Schumer said it best when he argued, “The best solution is to win elections, that is a far more productive way to channel the legitimate frustrations with this president’s policies than harassing members of his administration.”