Warning: 2018 political ‘civil war’ threatens, fueled by media
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Matt Rourke/AP
More and more voices are raising concerns that the 2018 elections will ignite a terrible clash between supporters of President Trump and his increasingly agitated critics in a partisan battle that has been brewing for years.
Stanley Greenberg, former President Bill Clinton’s pollster, is warning of a “civil war.”
Purdue University President Mitchell E. Daniels, former President Ronald Reagan’s political director and a two-term Indiana Republican governor, sees the nation dividing into feuding “tribes” that gravitate to tyrants who “bludgeon” opponents.
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In two separate reports, the two opposites come to a similar conclusion that the nation and even families are terribly divided and that the media has played a big role in creating the split.
Daniels is well regarded as level-headed and has been dubbed the best university president in the nation. He has used his commencement addresses to push for openness and understanding, but this year he noted a shift to “tribalism,” where sides cluster in cliques.
“It’s no longer just a matter of Americans not knowing and understanding each other. We’ve seen these clusters deepen, and harden, until separation has led to anger, misunderstanding turned into hostility. At the individual level, it’s a formula for bitterness and negativity. For a self-governing people, it’s poison,” Daniels told his students this month.
Among the culprits he cited were biased media, the “anti-social media.” Said Daniels, “Our various modern media lead us to, and feed us from information sources that reinforce our existing biases. They put us in contact with other tribe members, but rarely those who see things differently. We’re starting to resemble ominously our primitive forebearers, trusting no one outside the tribe.”
And he called that “dangerous,” warning “almost all of history has belonged to the tyrants, the warlords, the autocrats, the totalitarians. And tribes always gravitate toward tyrants.”
He didn’t name names, mention President Trump or former President Barack Obama, on purpose. The reason: both sides and their mouthpieces are to blame. “It’s a general phenomenon,” he said in an interview in which he bemoaned “there is no overlap anymore.”
Greenberg, meanwhile, reported on the national division since Trump’s election in his favorite target, Macomb County, Michigan, home to the long-ago “Reagan Democrats” and now the “Obama-Trump” voters.
The divide he found was worse than on Election Day and one many Trump voters complain about, where anti-Trump friends and even family members have written them off.
“Many Trump supporters have paid a high price for their vote choice in their own families. One white working-class man shared that he ‘lost contact with [his] own daughter because of the election,’” said Greenberg, noting that many are upset that the “resistance” doesn’t give a shred of respect to the office.
In warning of a “civil war,” Greenberg said Trump has become central to how people identify themselves. “Families dividing over the 2016 election reflects just how central feelings about Trump have become to people’s identities,” he wrote in his latest report on the unusual Michigan county.
Despite the concerns, Daniels expressed optimism that America’s youth will be able to change the tone.
Or maybe it was wishful thinking. “It’s possible this all goes out of fashion,” he said in the interview. If not, his goal is getting new generations to take charge. “You all,” he told his Boilermakers, “may have to be the ones to fix this.”
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