Only the public can fix divisive political rhetoric

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Let’s have a conversation about political rhetoric.

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While the primary examples I use will be about U.S. politics, Canada is influenced by politics south of the border, although there are some key differences.

On July 13, former U.S. president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was shot and wounded in a likely assassination attempt at a political rally in Pennsylvania.

Given that the official investigation is ongoing and that the shooter is dead, we don’t know the motives of the shooter to an absolute certainty, but given what is known this is by far the most likely explanation.

While many people were horrified by the violence, as they would have been had U.S. President Joe Biden been the target, an alternative response fell under two polarizing extremes.

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The first can be broadly described as the “next time don’t miss” argument.

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This statement, whether meant to be a joke, was essentially a call for violence, the only qualification being that the violence should only be directed at politicians the speaker disagrees with.

The divisiveness this view encourages is straightforward.

Second, given that one civilian died and two were injured by gunfire during the shooting, was a perspective of having no sympathy for someone who attends a Trump rally.

The underlying assumption and logical progression of thought here goes like this: Donald Trump is an insurrectionist — see Jan. 6, 2021. Anyone who would vote for Trump is anti-democracy. This makes people angry and significantly increases the risk of violence at Trump rallies. If someone gets shot at a place that is likely to have a shooting, they have themselves to blame.

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This is basically a risk-aversion argument, similar to saying that a child robbing a convenience store who is shot or a woman walking alone at night in a bad part of town wearing revealing clothing, who is sexually assaulted, are authors of their own misfortune.

This argument, in short form, is that a bad thing happened, but the victims should not have been taking those risks in the first place.

Given that this is a highly divisive argument, we need to ask ourselves why are people saying such things?

To maintain some perspective here, while the comments described above are primarily coming from the ideological left — and have been widely criticized as blaming the victims — the ideological right in the U.S. has been making similar “blame-the-victim” arguments or worse for years.

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Indeed, there is somewhat of a double standard on this issue with the left expected to maintain a standard of civility in public dialogue not equally expected of the right.

In any event, such arguments are clearly divisive, no matter which side makes them, so why do they keep doing it?

The reason is that divisiveness works in U.S. politics and is often rewarded because promoting divisiveness is typically considered an appearance of strength.

On the other hand, not being divisive is often viewed as a weakness, so politicians are incentivized to be divisive.

While there is plenty of divisive political rhetoric in Canada as well, Canadians are more likely to disqualify political candidates that do not maintain at least a minimum level of political decorum.

Canadians generally have a lower threshold for “cringe” than Americans.

If Canadians want our politics to be less divisive, then all they have to do is refuse to vote for politicians whose rhetoric is divisive or listen to divisive rhetoric in the media.

Indeed, if people don’t want political divisiveness, all they have to do is stop rewarding it.

— Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp, teaches disaster and emergency management at York University and is the author of Continuity 101. He can be reached at info@prepared.ca.

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