Op/Ed: '5 despicable, amoral factors' contribute to low civility in Indiana and nation

The recent violent attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband by a home intruder wielding a hammer and the subsequent shocking commentary by various right-wing personalities illustrate how very low public civility has fallen in America. The intruder at the Pelosi home has confessed to police that his attack resulted from an attempt to kidnap and traumatize Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives.

In the immediate aftermath: Donald Trump Jr. bizarrely tweeted a photo of his recommended Halloween costume of men’s underwear and a hammer; Elon Musk tweeted that the Pelosi attack was a gay tryst gone bad; and Kari Lake, Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, mocked the Pelosi attack at a political event.

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How has American political discourse descended so deeply into derisive crudity and violence? Let me posit five contributing factors: misogyny, racism, a thirst for power, unprincipled opportunism and an abandonment of empirical facts (popularly known as the post-truth world).

Misogyny has been evident on the periphery of American politics since Hillary Clinton became a lightning rod for Republican ire as she was given prominent roles in her husband’s presidency in the early 1990s. This culminated with Donald Trump’s ceaseless “lock her up” rants during the 2016 presidential election. Nancy Pelosi has been the target of similar virulent verbal attacks by Republican since becoming one of the most effective speakers of the House in a generation. Apparently, many men feel threatened by a powerful, successful woman.

Racism has run deeply in the American psyche for over 300 years, coursing through slavery, Civil War, the Jim Crow era, civil rights disputes and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. However, the election of Barack Obama seems to have reenergized racist sentiment. Such sentiment is largely sotto voce: Imagine! The insolence of a Black man to aspire to the presidency is intolerable: they have gone too far!

But it no doubt exists, nonetheless. And racist sentiment has reemerged irrepressibly in antisemitic diatribes and even physical attacks. Antisemitism is the oldest of mindless, racist tropes that are reflexively voiced in times of economic or political stress. It should be deeply shameful to express antisemitism, but, sadly, that apparently is not an effective restraint.

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Unprincipled opportunism is not a new feature of American politics, but it has been taken to previously uncharted depths by former President Trump. He recognized the undercurrent of restive resentment among white America that was smoldering during the Obama presidency, and he seized the opportunity to reaffirm that resentment with attacks on immigrants and Hillary.

Thus, Trump parlayed his celebrity and willingness to exploit social resentment into the White House. His presidency was rife with attacks on the press, on the “deep state,” and most damagingly, on truth itself. Any unwelcome fact was met with the epithet “fake news.”

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Trump is such an adept propagandist that, when Democrats decried his repetitious, baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him through pervasive voter fraud as the “big lie,” Trump subsequently co-opted the term to attempt to undermine the general consensus that Biden won the election. Trump and his followers have since transitioned to the “big steal” terminology.

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But unprincipled opportunism, combined with a seemingly unquenchable thirst for power, doesn’t end with Trump. This combo has pervasively become the prominent characteristic of much of the Republican Party today. Trump created an unruly political base who drank in his incessant assertion of false facts and baseless claims of stolen elections.

Many Republican politicians who undoubtedly were well aware of and troubled by the falsity of such claims nonetheless felt pressured to parrot the same false claims or lose primary elections to more extreme candidates who unabashedly adopted such false claims. If only we still had Republican stalwarts like Richard Lugar and John McCain who would have rejected such temptations as unpatriotic drivel.

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As a result, among the most prominent campaign issues for Republican candidates in 2022 is their promotion of the falsehood that America’s election apparatus is unreliable and subject to widespread voter fraud — Trump’s ultimate propaganda coup. Conservative voter acceptance of this falsehood, combined with the trend toward uncivil and even violent political discourse, has led frequently to harsh criticisms and even violent threats being leveled without cause against election workers and election officials in many states.

The five despicable, amoral factors driving the current political scene have brought us to a precipice as we approach the 2022 midterm elections.

Are we going to recognize the danger and step back from the abyss to buttress our support of America’s democratic institutions — which are the true source of freedom that so many Americans seem to desire? Or do we blindly jump over the edge, driven by ruthless opportunism into a nihilistic, authoritarian future that we, as a nation, have viewed disdainfully from afar since our founding? I know where I stand, and it is not with the second option.

Larry Kane is a retired environmental attorney who writes frequently on political issues.   

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Politics in Indiana and nation have sunken to new lows of civility