House Divided: The Absolutists

     In a series of posts, I have been exploring the major divisions in American society, the “house divided,” and whether they could cause another civil war.  The most serious division of many may be more emotional than material.  It occurs among those Americans who hold absolute beliefs with unyielding values and lifestyles.  I call them “the Absolutists.”  And they can emerge from both the right and left wings of the ideological spectrum.

     The American people have become highly polarized in their increasingly partisan political views.  In the 1960s and 1970s, many Americans came to distrust government because of the war in Vietnam and Watergate.  Some wished to restore trust through social programs and liberal reforms, while others pursued a new trust by limiting government and encouraging private initiative.  The latter gravitated to the Republican Party and aligned themselves with social as well as fiscal and constitutional conservatives.  Some of them became Absolutists:  what they believed was “true” and what they said and did could be “trusted.”  And some even became mean.

     Republicans deeply resented the upset elections of Bill Clinton to the White House in 1992 and 1996, and they tried to overturn those elections with impeachment.  Then the Democrats bitterly objected to the alleged stolen election of 2000 in Florida that returned the White House to a Bush.  There followed eight years of unrest with the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in 2001, the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the economic meltdown in 2008. 

     Partisan politics got really ugly with the election of Barack Obama in 2008 and again in 2012.  Millions of Americans who lost their well-paying jobs in the Great Recession blamed Washington more than Wall Street.  Conspiracy theories abounded with people venting their anger on Obama’s economic recovery policies, Obamacare, and the apparent government favoritism for certain social and economic minorities over others.  Had the Absolutists of the left taken over the country?  With the surprising election of Donald Trump to the White House in 2016, both Republicans and Democrats came to deeply distrust the Federal government.   

     Another type of Absolutist emerged among some religious groups.  The most divisive issue became abortion.  The issue polarized opinions from those who asserted that all abortions were immoral, and therefore should also be illegal, to those who argued that most if not all abortions were justified at the personal discretion of the mother.  Another controversial social and legal issue concerned the marriage of gay partners.  People became exceptionally bitter and reluctant to compromise on political let alone religious grounds.  Added to this bitterness were those who held their faith so deeply that they objected to the ideas and behavior of other people who did not hold their same beliefs.  If a point of view becomes absolute, then should not everyone abide by the same principles?  Since the 1970s, some have pursued their political agenda aligned explicitly with their religious views.  No longer was the separation of church and state necessarily desirable.

     What has been lost among the Absolutists of both the right and left wings has been the social and ideological willingness to be hard-headed rather than hard-hearted:  to make accommodations and seek practical compromises so that people can get past their own states of mind and move on to productive jobs, careers, and lives without trying to tell other Americans how they should best live their own lives.  As I explained in American Ways, such accommodations in the past have bolstered individual freedoms, political stability, and great economic growth.  Otherwise the Absolutists may drag all of us into another civil war of interpersonal fights, localized violence and riots, political upheavals, and economic reversals.

© 2017 Stephen M. Millett.  All rights reserved.