If someone doesn’t want to be your friend because of your political beliefs, you should take it as a sign that you are wrong — not wronged. This week, as wildfire smoke blanketed the West Coast and protests against racist police violence continued across the country, a former nurse at a Georgia ICE detention center publicly accused a doctor there of forcibly sterilizing immigrant women: “Everybody he sees, he’s taking all their uteruses out,” the nurse said.
Her account was further bolstered by a detainee at the center, who told an advocacy group, “When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp. It was like they’re experimenting with our bodies.”
We need to remember those fires and orange skies, the state brutality, and vulnerable women’s bodies being torn apart the next time someone laments that hyperpartisanship is ruining the country. There is no room for moderation when the stakes are this high, but despite parties pushing policies that result in clear wrongs, “civility” discourse shows no signs of abating.
This week, as the president of the United States casually retweeted an account accusing Joe Biden of pedophilia and baselessly claimed that “it’ll start getting cooler” as smoke haze from California reached New York City, writers Bari Weiss and Johann Hari both waxed nostalgic for a time when friendships and romances blossomed across the aisle. “I don’t denounce my friends when I disagree with them,” Hari tweeted. “If you do, then you don’t actually have friends, you only have political alliances, and your life will be filled with anxiety and unhappiness.” (Never mind the anxiety that might come along with being “friends” with a person who doesn’t believe in your right to marry or control your own body.)
And just a day after a North Carolina man was charged with running his SUV into a Black Lives Matter protester, a political reporter at the Charlotte Observer reminisced about Biden’s “unlikely friendship” with late senator and bigot Jesse Helms. (Biden himself touted his relationships with segregationist colleagues in the Senate at a fundraiser last year, saying, “at least there was some civility.”)
It’s easy to bemoan the lack of politeness in politics when you have no real skin in the game.
But how can anyone possibly whine about a lack of understanding between those on opposite ends of the political spectrum while one party embraces the support of a conspiracy theory cult claiming Democrats are literally baby-eating Satanists? How can you get drinks with someone who doesn’t believe in climate change while California burns? Why would anyone want to chum around with a person who believes that Black people’s right to live without fear of police violence is somehow controversial? Or that the virus that killed your parents is overblown or a hoax?
The answer is simple: These calls for bipartisan amicability in the face of unrelenting injustice are a reminder that the life-and-death issues so many Americans face are often just cocktail-hour talk for others. It’s easy to bemoan the lack of politeness in politics when you have no real skin in the game.
That’s why the conversation around civility and finding middle ground is almost never driven by marginalized people, but instead by the powerful. As The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer put it last year, “Societies are constantly renegotiating the boundaries of respect and decency. This process can be disorienting; to the once dominant group, it can even feel like oppression. (It is not.)” When a restaurant owner politely asked Sarah Sanders to leave because of the Trump administration’s inhumane family separation policy, for example, it wasn’t just anyone who argued that Sanders “should be allowed to eat dinner in peace” — it was the editorial board of the Washington Post. If we’re going to abide by a social contract, it’s important to note who wrote it.
When marginalized people are killed or jailed or have their bodies legislated, it’s never considered an issue of civility — just politics. But when powerful people are held to public account or shunned, it’s about the downfall of polite society.
The truth is that no one is more responsible for political division right now than the GOP — their extremism grows by the day while they abide and protect a president who flouts laws and norms. With all that we’re facing, there is no space for politeness in politics. Perhaps if someone doesn’t want to be your friend because of your political beliefs, you should take it as a sign that you are wrong — not wronged.