It’s the Stupidity, Stupid

BELL VIEW--Dehumanization: the process by which tribal politics justifies every excess. Donald Trump may be a crook, but he’sour crook in a crooked system. His policies may be cruel, but the cruelty is the point when those people are the victims. After all, they have no inner lives. They exist only to victimize us. 

This process of dehumanization devours itself in a vortex of tribal grievances. When I find it hard to identify with the interests of those who believe the answer to mass shootings is more guns, do I participate in the very process of dehumanization I find so disturbing in those people? 

Look, I try. Seriously, I do. I understand what it feels like to be left behind. As the blood drains from the emptying middle of the country and clots in ever-greater concentrations around throbbing urban centers, it can feel as if a culture is being destroyed by an enemy invasion. So guns stop being “guns” and become a culture in themselves. Immigrants stop being people and families and become rapists and gangs. Syrian parents digging their children out from under the rubble are jihadis and students asking for reasonable gun laws become the new Hitler Youth.

Trying to reach out and find some common ground with people who articulate these thoughts can feel like trying to breathe under water. Article after article tells us that vast majorities of the population favor reasonable restrictions on guns – but not the people I talk to. Every idea is met with a unified wall of resistance. Background checks? Restrictions on high-capacity magazines? Age restrictions? It all just sounds like “hand over your guns cracker!”

I’m stumped. Absolutely every issue facing this country has devolved into a zero-sum game of us against them. Trump is elected to undo absolutely everything Obama managed to accomplish. And when Trump finally leaves – I’ll work as hard as I can to undo everything he’s doing now.

Am I dehumanizing the other side? Or simply recognizing what I’m up against? I can’t tell anymore. I click on the Facebook profiles of the friends of friends I argue with over issues like this (and I do it, because it’s the only way I can have contact at all with the other tribe) and I see the dusty bric-a-brac and the horrible lighting and the faux-leather recliner chairs and I judge in my smug coastal way.

But at some point in time we have to admit that maybe the other side is really that stupid. Maybe they really are cutting off their own noses to spite our faces. And when we finally come to this realization, the only question left is: what do we do now?

(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.)