NEW POLITICS: a WAR OF WORDS

"Balance, diversity, creativity - these are the elements of Republican equation. Republicans agree, Republicans agree heartily to disagree on many, many of their applications, but we have never disagreed on the basic fundamental issues of why you and I are Republicans. This is a party, this Republican Party, a Party for free men, not for blind followers, and not for conformists."

This quote, from Barry Goldwater's speech to the 1964 Republican National Convention, described a political party, and nation, accepting of diversity. ​The global conversation has since strayed from Goldwater's 1964 speech. Divisive language and confrontation are the 'new politics' of the 21st century.

'New politics' is disunity. It is the language of 21st century. Each label of an individual member of society results in the delineation of contrast with another person or group of people. Democrats are pitted against Republicans, capitalists against socialists. The connotations associated with these labels are so burned into the global mindset that the bias inherent in these words and labels automatically sets people for or against a cause, and by extension each other. 

The rift is ever-increasing and ever-expanding. News organizations and political parties use polarization to
'turn out their bases' and gain traction with party members. ​'New politics' is a BBC article published on June 24, 2019, entitled "Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Turkey's pugnacious president." It is the Fox News article entitled "Rep. Collins: We saw a dark day in the House, we saw Speaker Pelosi abuse her oath of office." It is the breakdown of the Brexit conversation due to a failure to compromise. It is brand politics. Republicans claim that impeachment, supposedly a solemn constitutional check on the President, is being used to turn out the Democratic party's base. The polarization between the parties is so intense that the true merits and facts of impeachment cannot be discussed in any objective manner by the leaders elected to govern the United States. 

The only way to resist the war of words is to abandon these fraught labels.  When one party declaims a position simply based on the source, we must step back and evaluate the position and not just the speaker. We must find a way to have common conversation as a society and not continue to exist in the internet- and cable TV-based echo chambers that reflect our own opinions and amplify our factionalism. The only way to avoid 'new politics' is to establish a global discourse.