They go low, we go high -- but why?
Anyone who hoped that 2017 might bring a change in the tone of our political discourse has by now been thoroughly disappointed. The remarkable degree of contempt that characterized the 2016 election has shown no sign of abating in President Donald J. Trump’s first days in office.
Contemptuous political discourse is not new, of course. What is new is the extent to which contempt has managed to slither into our daily experience of political conversation. Gone are the days when contempt for political rivals and their supporters was mostly communicated behind closed doors, in low tones not meant to be overheard. Whatever veneer of unseemliness we associated with contemptuous public speech has been stripped away. We are left with everyone’s raw feelings, on all sides of the political spectrum, exposed and expressed in contexts ranging from social media and public protests to confrontational signage and clothing.
Immanuel Kant once remarked that “no man in his true senses … is candid.” It wasn’t that Kant didn’t value truthfulness and sincerity in our interactions with others; he did. He realized, however, that the stability and progress of moral and political community depends on our being able to restrain ourselves from expressing publicly whatever we happen to be thinking or feeling. This is especially pressing when our inner thoughts and attitudes reflect contempt for our fellow human beings. Contempt, Kant recognized, is a very dangerous thing. The danger lies in contempt’s peculiar ability to dehumanize its target. Widespread public contempt has the potential to undermine the moral basis of all human relationships and, indeed, of human community itself.
A fundamental feature of contempt is that it is globalist, meaning that it is directed at the entire person, rather than just some aspect of that person. It is thus unlike other negative attitudes, like anger. If I express anger toward you, I am engaging with you. If I express contempt toward you, I am dismissing you. The distinction is crucial.
In his essay, “Freedom and Resentment,” P.F. Strawson described it as the difference between a participant attitude and an objective attitude. When we view others with a participant attitude, we regard them as fellow moral agents, accountable for what they say and do. When we view them with an objective attitude, we see them not as agents, but as objects to be managed or perhaps obstacles to be overcome. Contempt functions by shifting the targeted person from a participant relationship to an objective relationship. It aims to alter someone’s status by diminishing their agency. This is how contempt accomplishes its dehumanizing work - by marking its target as unworthy of engagement and thus not a full member of the human community.
Contempt is frequently overt, but it can also be very subtle. Sometimes it hides itself under superficially polite language and behavior, with the real meaning recognizable only to its targets. Often it is put forward as merely good-natured fun or, in the parlance of 2016, “locker room” talk. It is troublingly easy for contempt to cover its tracks. It is also troublingly easy for listeners to take up another’s contempt without realizing it. This is particularly true when contempt is expressed as mockery.
When Trump mocked the physical appearance of the New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, even his most fervent supporters struggled to come up with plausible defense of their candidate. Finding themselves unable to defend imitating a person’s disability, they were reduced to attempting to argue that Trump was not actually imitating Kovaleski at all. The public was largely unconvinced. We know contempt when we see it.
Trump and his supporters are responsible for much of our current glut of contempt, but they are hardly the only perpetrators of it. Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment qualifies as contempt, although her subsequent expression of regret undid some of its effects. Opponents of Trump have also directed plenty of contempt at both Trump himself - as we saw in some of the signs brandished at Saturday’s marches across the country - and at the people who voted for him, particularly rural voters without much education. Contempt has been injected into our public space from all sides.
Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to conclude that all expressions of contempt are equally bad. Contempt occurs in the context of social relationships that are themselves characterized by power differences. Those power differences have a profound effect on the shape of contempt and its effectiveness in diminishing the agency of its target. A contemptuous protest sign directed at the president is not on par with a contemptuous remark made by that president.
As every adolescent knows, certain people wield much greater social power than others. The source of that power in middle school may be mysterious, but the effects of it are obvious enough. A suitably socially positioned 12-year-old has the power to make a classmate persona non grata.
Adult relationships are less obviously, but equally, characterized by social power differentials, and we ignore these at our peril. Some people are well situated to dehumanize others; some people are more vulnerable to dehumanization than others. This means that not all contempt is the same. Contempt expressed by the socially powerful toward the socially vulnerable is a much greater moral danger than contempt that flows in the opposite direction. As president, Trump occupies a position of exceptional social power. Contempt bolstered by such power becomes far more effective and hence, far more threatening to our grounding democratic values.
Trump is broad-minded about the targets of his contempt; just about anyone who criticizes him seems to be fair game. Nevertheless, his tendency to treat members of much less powerful social groups with contempt is particularly troubling. Trump’s imitation of Kovaleski reinforced a specific social inequality that most people now recognize as morally abhorrent; namely, the marginalization of people with disabilities. In characterizing Mexicans as rapists and women as objects of sexual gratification, he has engaged in the same kind of marginalization.
Trump’s standard method of responding to critics includes denigrating their appearance, denying their intelligence and calling them total failures. He thus treats them as objects to be scorned and dismissed, rather than as fellow human beings worthy of basic respect. This is what makes it contempt and not merely colorfully expressed criticism.
It may seem as though the best response to Trump’s contempt is to return it in kind, treating him the same way he treats others. The trouble, though, is that contempt toward Trump does not function in the same way that his contempt toward others functions. Even if we grant that Trump deserves contempt for his attitudes and behaviors, his powerful social position insulates him from the worst of contempt’s effects. It is simply not possible to disregard or diminish the agency of the president of the United States. This means that contempt is not a particularly useful weapon in the battle against bigotry or misogyny. The socially vulnerable cannot wield it effectively precisely because of their social vulnerability.
The better strategy for those who are already disempowered is to reject contempt on its face. Returning contempt for contempt legitimizes its presence in the public sphere. The only ones who benefit from this legitimacy are the people powerful enough to use contempt to draw the boundaries of the political community as they see fit. Socially vulnerable people cannot win the battle for respect by using contempt as a way to demand it. In an environment where contempt is an acceptable language of communication, those who already lack social power stand to lose the most by being its targets. The only real defense against contempt is the consistent, strong and loud insistence that each one of us be regarded as a full participant in our shared political life, entitled to hold all others accountable for how we are treated.
Privately expressed contempt may be cathartic. Publicly expressed contempt, however, is perilous. As Kant recognized, it threatens the foundations of our political community by denying the central moral idea on which that community is based - that everyone has a right to basic respect as a human being. Contemptuous political discourse, with its pernicious effects on mutual respect, should never have become mainstream. For the good of our country, we must make every effort to push it back into the shadows where it belongs. Let us hope that our new president will cooperate.
Source
My summary: At Saturday's protest march, one of the chants I heard was "They go low, we go high". (Sometimes it was chanted by people carrying signs making fun of Donald Trump's hands, hair, or other physical attributes, but never mind that.) This opinion piece from the New York Times avoids moral arguments for "going high" and explicates a very practical reason: we're engaged in asymmetrical war. Contempt as a tactic works better when you are the President of the United States than when your target is the President of the United States, so an environment in which contempt, disdain, and dismissal are normalized inevitably favors the powerful.
Mods: having trouble finding good tags for this. "public discourse"? "respect"? "strategy"? "politeness"?
Should we worry that none of those tags exist yet? :-)