The Old Grey Lady just ain't what she used to be
American democracy faces many challenges: New limits on voting rights. The corrosive effect of misinformation. The rise of domestic terrorism. Foreign interference in elections. Efforts to subvert the peaceful transition of power. And making matters worse on all of these issues is a fundamental truth: The two political parties see the other as an enemy.
It’s an outlook that makes compromise impossible and encourages elected officials to violate norms in pursuit of an agenda or an electoral victory. It turns debates over changing voting laws into existential showdowns. And it undermines the willingness of the loser to accept defeat — an essential requirement of a democracy.
The article goes on making hay on how "political sectarianism" is making our politics untenable. This is a fact, as far as it goes. But the piece is also one of the most audacious exercises in "both sides" to ever hit the pages of the Old Grey Lady. Mr. Cohn pulls data set after data set reflecting that large numbers of Americans consider their political opponents "the enemy", without diving into why that is, or the genesis of such a state of affairs.
Let me make it easy: It's the right wing's lurch into outright fascism which is to blame, and where the onus for the break up of the Republic will lay if it comes to that.
Of course the country is politically riven in an almost-civil-war-like fashion. But to address the visible symptoms without diving into the root causes is par for the course for the journal whose editor famously declared that they're not the fucking Resistance.
A few weeks ago, NBC News main anchor pleaded with his colleagues to be loyal to the truth, not to the golden calf of "objectivity". This piece is one long, lascivious dance in the desert before the glittering idol. Today's right wing is the same right wing which thought we chose the wrong side in World War II. It's the same right wing which abandoned the Democratic Party and moved to the GOP after the civil rights movement. It's the same right wing which abandoned any pretense of principle to embrace a corrupt authoritarian who promised it permanent power. But the liberal-left is to blame as well, of course.
Mr. Cohn writes: "It is not easy to accept being ruled by a hostile, alien rival." But who first crossed that Rubicon where political adversaries weren't just citizens with differing opinions, but enemies with antithetical worldviews which had to be crushed under a boot of authoritarianism. Despite what the most unhinged of the right says, Joe Biden is not going to take away anyone's arsenal. Democrats don't want to establish a left-liberal dictatorship, suppressing the ability of its opponents to vote. It's the Republican party which is fully on the side of dispensing with democracy, or neutering it, to gain and keep power. It's the right which stormed the Capitol, not Black Lives Matter. All of this is self-evident: one party believes in democratic ideals, one sees them as impediments to "saving" the culture. That dichotomy never ends well. But for the likes of Mr. Cohn, it's all an intellectual game, and both sides are blinkered and should see the errors of their ways—but, of course, most of the blame accrues to the left, for not acknowledging the right's self-described fears of extermination.
One cannot prescribe a treatment without analyzing the root causes. Even Mr. Cohn admits this:
In a survey conducted in January, a majority of Republican voters agreed with the statement that the “traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.”
It's Republicans who are more inclined to use violence as a political tool. How is the state to deal with this? And how are we to deal if, God help us, Republicans come back into power, and a majority of them see us as a conquered populace to be subjugated, not fellow-citizens to be governed? Because President Joe Biden isn't acting as a military governor of red states, whereas whoever the Republican throw up as a candidate would campaign on treading on Democrats as a defeated enemy. This is not hyperbole; it's a mere reading of the evidence of our eyes.
Being loyal to the truth, as Mr. Holt implored, would mean this: There is a sectarian divide in this country, and it's being driven by the right. Any other formulation is another entry in the "both-sides" ledger. At this point, I don't think the New York Times' political writers know how to do anything else.