“Jonathan Rausch wrote the following at
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/rethinking-polarization
Here is my response:
“It is too bad I missed Rausch’s talk at ASU. I go to those lectures frequently. Mark Lilla spoke there about ID politics and my wife button-holed him for 20 minutes, explaining how she, an African-American, has been dealing all her life of 77 years with the largest ID group: White people. Rausch takes a tack I see very often, presenting “both sides” as if my calling for observance of asylum law is not different from the GOP announcing that I am for open borders. My Trumpster neighbor and I reached agreement rather quickly about immigration but he also believes as a fact that all the professors at ASU are Communists. He watches nothing but Fox and dropped out of high school in the 60s.
The problem is I cannot reach every Trumpster; after all, I have only managed to get to one issue with my neighbor. Black Lives Matter wants to end extrajudicial killings of Black people but Evangelicals want to ignore the separation of church and state in our public schools. They tell outright lies such as schools cannot practice Christianity on school grounds (tell that to the sponsors of Christian clubs on campuses). Many of my friends are liberals and Democrats; I do not hear them telling lies. Building on the fear and resentment of Whites in 1954 and of Evangelicals (my cousin is an evangelical minister and all my wife’s family are evangelicals) of an America no longer dominated by Protestant Christians, the GOP created a juggernaut based on hate and lies. I simply do not see the equivalence between the two parties.
I might add that marrying into a Black family 55 years ago from my working-class White background, I found that all the “compromises” go one way: Blacks are supposed to adjust to the way White people do things.
Nevertheless, a great and prodigious article.
Pat Barrett”
