Hatred:

I realize that the Slate title “Why Americans Hate Democrats — A Dialogue” was chosen to be provocative, to perhaps be an ironic commentary on the post-9/11 “Why Do They Hate Us?” that some on the Left asked, and likely to be in some measure deliberate hyperbole. But I wonder if it might at least partly be earnest — whether it might reflect an unsound worldview according to which Americans focus their political lives around hatred more than they in fact do. And in any event I suspect that it might be counterproductive hyperbole: Titles, even ironic titles, do frame the way readers (and perhaps even the writers) perceive the issue.

When the Republicans lost the Senate in 1986, or the Presidency in 1992, I didn’t ask why Americans hate Republicans, and I suspect most Republicans didn’t, either. We asked why Americans voted against Republicans; the answers were complex (and controversial), but I take it that they had a lot to do with policies, the way the policies were articulated, and the personalities and actions of our standard-bearers. Republicans changed their policies, arguments, and standard-bearers; some circumstances changed to favor us; and the Democrats kindly obliged by erring politically in various ways. Now we’ve won — but I’m not sure that we would have won if we’d focused our thinking around “Why [Do] Americans Hate Republicans?,” even hyperbolically.

I’d say the same about most other claims of hatred. They often have a kernel of truth to them, as to the highest-profile cases. Some on the Left do hate America. Some people who oppose same-sex marriage actually hate gays. Some people hate fundamentalist Christians, gun owners, immigrants, the federal government, and so on. But I doubt that such claims would be accurate about Democrats or Republicans generally, or even Americans generally. Asking “Why Do Americans Hate [Group X]?” is likely, I think, to be an unhelpful distraction.