To the Editor:
Nicholas Kristof has offered a cheerful, hopeful call to bridge our political divisions in light of a joint venture between the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution to reduce poverty (“A New Heart for the G.O.P.?,” column, Jan. 28).
The plan’s authors are splendid people, and their ideas are good. But where are the voters who would support them?
We know, not only from the Trump campaign, but also from the successes of Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and others, that pandering to the anxieties of lower-income, less-educated or older white voters is where we find the most energy today in American politics. The debate and the division are driven by the skillful manipulators of economic and cultural anxieties, both real and perceived.
Those most susceptible voters are, by now, immune to evidence and rational argument. Our media and political environment is built to reassure them hourly about how right they are, to more deeply fix them in a one-sided worldview.
We are past mere political division. We have embarked on a more visceral era in which emotion supersedes political discussion. A reasonable argument is no longer enough. Somehow, we must address those anxieties to reclaim the place of reason in our political life. We must abandon the idea that there are only two sides to our politics, a left and a right. Politics becomes something better when we look above the divide and see problems not from two sides but from all sides.
STEVEN P. MILLIES
Aiken, S.C.
The writer is an associate professor of political science at the University of South Carolina Aiken.
Note from KBJ: Politics will change when Democrats stop telling Americans, "Vote for me and I'll give you other people's money."
