Occasionally, a tragedy can wake us up and change our path. Perhaps, the political assassination of Rep. Melissa Hortman in Minnesota on Saturday can make us see what we’ve been denying – that political language can lead to violence.
Of course, our denial is not total. It’s likely that if we polled legislators in the United States, most would agree that harsh political language could lead to violence. But I’d bet that if they were asked to identify the kind of political language that could lead to violence, they would identify (1) only the most extreme rhetoric, and (2) mostly language used by the other side.
This captures what we call the two-part political blind spot – first, how toxic contempt is, and second, how much we all use it. We can’t change what people say until we change what they see. And that’s why we’re committed to piercing the blind spot.
Three years ago we launched the Dignity Index, an eight-point scale that measures how we treat each other when we disagree. In the scale, we identify four stages of contempt, ways of looking down on people, treating them like they don’t matter.
They are:
FOUR: We try to separate from “those people” – emphasizing our differences and denying our similarities. We say “we’re better than they are … they don’t really belong … they’re not one of us.” It’s “us and them” – never “we."
THREE: We insult the other side and attack their character. We take credit for the good things and blame them for the bad things. We say, “We’re the good people and they’re the bad people.” It’s “us vs. them.”
TWO: We don’t just say the other side is bad, we say “Those people are evil. They’re going to ruin the country if we let them.” It’s “us or them.”
ONE: We feel heroic for calling for violence and acting on it. We say “Those people aren’t even human. They don’t deserve to live. We have to kill them before they kill us.”
It is terrifying how quickly FOUR can descend to ONE – moving from “I’m right; you’re wrong” to “I’m good you’re bad” to “you’re trying to ruin the country and I’m trying to save it” to “we’d all be better off if you didn’t exist.”
When we talk about the dangers of contempt, people immediately try to carve out an exception for themselves and their views. They say, “But what if they really are ruining the country?”
We answer, you don’t have to insult a person to offer your plan or make your case. Anything you need to say to save the country, you can say more effectively if you cite facts, actions, decisions, and outcomes. Treating people with contempt doesn’t help hold anyone accountable. It creates a desire for revenge. It makes enemies for your cause. It distracts us from the facts – which means nothing gets solved and no one is held accountable.
“But it’s true!” we’re told – in defense of a message that’s expressed with contempt.
It may well be true. But even if you say something that is factually correct, even if you say something that is morally right, if you say it with contempt for the other side, you will increase our divisions, increase the chance of political violence, and decrease the chance that America will make it.
As a country, we are missing the significance of dignity and contempt. It’s a distinct dimension of speech that is different and separate from whether it’s true or false, whether I like the message or not, whether I agree with the speaker or I don’t. And it’s perilous to dismiss the importance of dignity – because it’s the dimension of our speech that can bring us together or tear us apart.
There are many national problems that citizens can’t directly address: the rate of inflation, the growth of jobs, the rise in the national debt. But language that encourages political violence is something every citizen can act on.
Politicians, political operatives, and media personalities use contempt because they think it will get them fame, wealth, power or a sense of belonging. The response is to make contempt backfire – and give political players the opposite of what they want.
