Ghouls

The Democrats can't wait to celebrate the death of a political opponent.

Lindsey Graham’s sudden death caused the ghoulish cretins on the left to slither out of their dens once again. I’ve come to expect any death of a conservative or a Republican to result in grotesque hatred spewing from the left – and yes, without fear of contradiction, I can state that most of this behavior does come from the left. It has become who they are.

When I look at things that some find disagreeable today that were once entirely unremarkable, I find myself wondering where the line is between principled disagreement and conditioned reflex. At what point does opposition cease to be the product of reason and become little more than an autonomic response? When does “I disagree because I think you’re wrong” quietly become “I disagree because you’re the one saying it”?

That is not a trivial distinction. It is the difference between a healthy society/republic and dysfunctional ones.

Once people drift into the mindset of “I’m against it because you’re for it” or “I’m for it because you’re against it,” the possibility of persuasion begins to disappear. Facts become secondary. Evidence becomes negotiable. The merits of the policy no longer matter because the policy itself has become little more than a tribal flag. Supporting or opposing it is no longer an exercise in judgment; it is a declaration of identity.

At that point, the opposition is no longer directed at the proposal. It is directed at the person proposing it.

It is how you get assassinations of Charlie Kirk, corporate executives, and multiple assassination attempts on a sitting president.

Somewhere over the past several decades, our politics became intensely personal. We no longer assume our political opponents have different priorities or different solutions to the same problems. Increasingly, we assume they possess different moral character. A disagreement over tax policy becomes evidence that someone hates the poor. Concern over illegal immigration becomes proof of racism. Questions about government spending (even obviously wasteful spending or massive fraud) become attacks on compassion. Likewise, advocating larger government is portrayed not as a philosophical difference but as evidence that someone desires socialism or tyranny. Every issue is elevated into a moral indictment.

That is a dangerous evolution because democracies depend upon something deeper than elections. They depend upon the shared belief that those with whom we disagree are still legitimate participants in the process. Once disagreement itself becomes evidence of evil intent, compromise is no longer difficult; it becomes immoral. If your opponent is genuinely wicked, why should you negotiate? Why should you even tolerate his participation?

History offers no shortage of examples of where that road eventually leads.

What makes this even more fascinating is how frequently the positions themselves change while the tribal loyalties remain fixed. Policies that one party championed a generation ago are now condemned because the other party adopted them. Ideas once considered common sense suddenly become unspeakable, not because their substance changed, but because the political jerseys changed. The principle quietly exits through the back door while the tribe stays put.

Human beings are social creatures. We naturally sort ourselves into groups, and those groups become part of our identity. There is nothing particularly unusual about that. The danger comes when loyalty to the group replaces independent judgment. Once that happens, people begin outsourcing their thinking. Instead of asking, “Is this true?” they ask, “Whose side is saying it?” The answer to the second question often determines the answer to the first.

That is not skepticism. It is intellectual surrender.

Social media has accelerated this process by rewarding outrage, certainty, and conflict. Algorithms do not profit from thoughtful nuance. They profit from engagement, from clicks and eyeballs, and nothing engages quite like anger. Every controversy becomes another opportunity to convince us that our political opponents are not merely mistaken but fundamentally malicious.

Before long, entire populations begin viewing each other not as neighbors who vote differently but as existential threats and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that civil society cannot endure indefinitely under those conditions.

The irony is that many of the policies we now treat as moral absolutes were, until recently, subjects of ordinary debate. Reasonable people argued them, compromised, revised their positions, and moved on and enforcement of laws resulting from those policies were unremarkable. Today, many of those same discussions immediately descend into accusations about motives rather than examinations of evidence.

Elected officials can’t wait to whore themselves out in front of a CNN or MSNBC camera to immediately plant a false narrative about any number of issues because that’s how the game is played now.

They have become remarkably good at clairvoyance while becoming increasingly unwilling to consider facts – or even wait 24 hours until those facts can be determined.

Breaking this cycle does not require surrendering deeply held convictions. Quite the opposite. It requires enough confidence in those convictions that we are willing to test them honestly. It means asking whether we oppose an idea because it is actually flawed or simply because we dislike the person presenting it. It means extending to our opponents the same charitable assumptions we instinctively extend to ourselves. We all believe our own motives are more complicated than our critics imagine. Perhaps theirs are, too.

It also requires rediscovering a habit that seems almost quaint today: separating intent from outcome. Good people can advocate policies that produce terrible results. Bad people can occasionally support policies that accomplish genuine good. Judging ideas on their consequences rather than our assumptions about the hearts of those proposing them is far more difficult than assigning moral labels, but it is also far more likely to produce wisdom.

Perhaps the simplest test is one we should ask ourselves before reacting to any controversial issue: “If my side had proposed this exact same policy, would I still oppose it?” If the honest answer is no, then the disagreement probably isn’t about the policy at all—but good luck in getting the vast number of people who believe emotional reasoning is actual reasoning to come to the table.

A free and civil society depends not on unanimous agreement but on the ability to disagree without assuming corruption, hatred, or evil. The day we lose the capacity to distinguish between being wrong and being wicked is the day we stop having political opponents and start creating enemies. History suggests that is a distinction free people ignore at their own peril.