The Key Dividing Lines In American Politics
Understanding where the fault lines are is the key to understanding the debate and what's going at a tumultuous period in our history. Here is one attempt to make sense of it all.
What is going on in America? It’s a question that’s being asked by more than a few people of all persuasions. Now granted, concisely explaining what’s going on in a nation of 330 million people, each one of them unique and unrepeatable, is admittedly a tall order. But as I get set to get on a plane for a family vacation to Ireland for the next couple weeks and unplug from these debates, this is my small attempt to make some sense of it all by exploring four noteworthy dividing lines.
It bears noting that most people will not fall neatly on one side of any particular dividing line. But these lines represent intellectual frameworks by which we process events and attempt to make sense of things. They are an interpretive key, if you will. If you use the wrong key, you won’t unlock the door to even begin to understand what’s going on.
It further bears noting that these dividing lines are all limited to political discourse and debate. That’s not to say those are most important—the title of this blog indicates I also see religious and cultural lines as even more explanatory. As a sports fan in New England, I’d like to think the divide between the Red Sox and Yankees is really telling. But of course I know that’s not true—and not just because both teams are terrible right now.
All of which is to say, for better and for worse, this post focuses exclusively on the dividing lines that are inherently political.
One final thing that bears noting—I don’t believe every dividing line I’m about to discuss is necessarily accurate. In fact, I’ve listed them in escalating order of importance. The first two are ones that are relatively unimportant but get an outsized place in our understanding of events. The latter two, while not necessarily catch-alls, move closer to accurately capturing what’s going on with American politics.
Enough with the buildup—here are four key dividing lines in American politics:
GETTING COLDER
Republican vs. Democrat
This dividing line absorbs all the media oxygen, but it has devolved into a completely staged fight. Pro wrestling matches have more competitive integrity than what passes for the “competition” between Republican and Democrat officeholders. It is purely superficial and will in no way lead anyone to a deeper understanding of what’s going on in America.
As evidence I would simply submit that each party has had their opportunities with the Trifecta (control of the House, Senate, and presidency) and the national debt keeps skyrocketing. The gap between the wealthiest and the middle class keeps increasing. The foreign wars roll right on. The cities keep deteriorating. But every two years, we all put on our Red and Blue jerseys for one Tuesday night in November and cheer our teams on.
I don’t write that to discourage participation. In fact, just the opposite. We’ve gotten active in local Republican politics precisely in the hope that this partisan paradigm of seeing the political world might actually be relevant one day. But October 8, 2023 is not that day.
Conservative vs. Liberal
This framework isn’t necessarily wrong, it’s just changed so radically, that it doesn’t resonate with me. The fact that the simple belief there are inherent biological differences between men and women is now considered “conservative”, or even “right-wing extremist”, tells you perverted the Right-Left spectrum has become.
For those of my generation (grew up in the 1980s, began voting actively in the 1990s), this spectrum tended to be defined by whether or not you thought the government or private sector was best suited to solve economic and social problems. Of course, a lot of people fell in the middle, but by understanding the conservative-liberal paradigm, you could at least understand the debate.
But what happens when the “liberal” position is that a teenage boy should declare himself to be a girl and walk into the female locker room? What happens when “the Left” holds a position that says a seven-year boy should undergo gender reassignment surgery because he might like the color pink?
What happens when the simple belief that the number of illegal ballots in an election is greater than the margin of victory constitutes “extreme conservatism”—or any form of political philosophy at all? What happens when not wanting to jam a needle into one’s arm to use a vaccine developed at “Warp Speed” is considered a position held by “The Right”?
Kari Lake came the closest of national figures to getting this during her gubernatorial campaign when she said the debates we’re currently having “aren’t about right vs. left, they’re about up vs. down.”
GETTING WARMER
Nationalist vs. Globalist
The first two segments are ones, that if followed, will leave people missing the plot. This segment is where we move into the “getting warmer” phase.
The nationalist side of our political debate says that the United States (or any other nation) should govern itself by what produces peace and prosperity for our own people. Not that we don’t care what happens elsewhere, but no nation—even one as powerful as the U.S. has been since the end of World War II, and certainly since the end of the Cold War—can or should take the responsibility for policing the world and preventing every last bad thing from happening.
On a related point, this also means that trade agreements should be structured so as to meet the needs of middle and working-class people in the U.S., rather than exporting our jobs around the world.
The nationalist vs. globalist debate reaches its peak when it comes to the role international institutions should play. As a prime example, those of us on the nationalist side are ready to say it’s time to dissolve NATO. Those on the globalist side want to expand it. A pure globalist would readily defer to organizations from the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and others. Nationalists believe that ultimate decision-making power must reside with the nation’s elected officials.
This is the debate that is at the heart of the current division within the Republican Party, with Trump forces on the nationalist side and the most vocal opposition being on the globalist side.
There are, of course, voices between the two sides, but understanding this basic spectrum is a good interpretive key to the debate itself. It’s why people who may be reasonably considered “conservative” are often at odds in our current moment.
Outsider vs. Insider
This framework is the closest to being the defining feature of our public life in 2023. How about we start with one simple fact—the overwhelming majority of politicians who go to Washington D.C. get substantially richer during their time there. It’s this framework that leads to the construct of The Deep State, or as I prefer to call it, The Iron Triangle (government, corporations, and major media).
The political class in this country has mastered the art of creating staged fights based on the frameworks noted above, particularly the first two. Based on these fights, we tear each other apart, damage relationships and get poorer. They laugh and grow wealthier. The song Rich Men North of Richmond accurately captured outsider sentiment. And it was issues related to this framework—not “right wing rebellion”—that drove this past week’s move to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
If you understand this paradigm and its primacy, you’ll understand why Donald John Trump holds the loyalty of so many of us—because he lost wealth since going into politics. Admittedly, all things are relative, and I doubt DJT has missed too many meals, but facts are facts—he just fell off the list of Forbes’ richest people.
If you understand this paradigm, you’ll further understand why Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. commands at least the respect and interest of those of us who might otherwise disagree with him on issues on the more conventional spectrums. RFK Jr. has incurred public ridicule and exclusion by those—notably his own family—who would otherwise hold him in the highest of esteem.
THE FINAL BATTLE LINE
These four frameworks, in escalating order of importance, are the general dividing lines in American political discourse. I would like to submit there’s a fifth—one that will likely grow even more important.
We the people have been lied to by those in power. Lies that go beyond the normal realm of broken campaign promises, prevarications, and the comfortable half-truths that come with getting enmeshed in a heated debate. I’m talking serious lies. Lies about national security needs that trigger long and dangerous wars. Lies about medical care that led honest people to try untested remedies without informed consent—a violation of the Nuremburg Codes. Lies about what is being taught to children in public schools. Lie upon lie upon lie, and those lies go well beyond government and cover people with authority in all walks of life.
It's these lies that are the real Swamp in American public life. And while the last three years have laid a lot of it bare, I think it goes back much farther. How much farther, where it started, and who the guilty parties are is another subject and one that must be explored if we’re ever to get healthy and whole as a country.
Thus, I submit that the fifth dividing line in American politics will ultimately be this—
Who is ready to challenge everything they think they know? Who is ready to consider that the paradigms under which they operate and interpret events are in fact, based on falsehoods?
Surrendering everything and essentially telling Almighty God, “I give this all to you, only give back what is true and real”, can seem like a scary thing. But as one who has tried it, let me just say this—you live through it, and you feel better on the other side. It’s the lies we believe that fuel our anger (or at least a good chunk of our anger) because we can’t really make events fit into the false mental framework those lies create.
Challenging what you think you know is, in reality, an exciting process. And as American lives through what I think of as its “Veritas Moment” (veritas is Latin for “truth”), it’s going to be necessary if we’re going to keep up with the plot.
Those of us who believe in the Catholic Church have a great gift—the conviction that God has revealed a dogmatic structure and sacramental life that is built to last until the End of Time—no matter how much of today’s immense ecclesiastical corruption can work to obscure that. If we believe in these basics of our Faith, we have all we need to let everything else go.
Our friends in different Christian traditions have the Gospel to hold onto. Whatever you believe has permanent and eternal value, cling to it. We are entering The Churn.
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WHAT WE BELIEVE
Over the past couple of years, I’ve had the good fortune to be joined by my friend John Tuturice, with his theology and philosophy masters degrees, to join me for discussions on what we believe. Whether it’s a simple belief in God, in His Only Son, or the full revelation that is the Church, John and I discuss it all here.
Whatever you believe or wherever you’re at on your journey through what St. Therese the Little Flower calls “the passageway to eternity”, I hope there’s even a little something here you might find valuable. We know from the Gospels that merely touching the hem of His garment brings healing.
THE CASE FOR GOD
THE CASE FOR JESUS CHRIST
THE CASE FOR THE BLESSED MOTHER
THE CASE FOR HOLY MOTHER CHURCH