J. Peder Zane: The rise of gut politics

A very liberal friend recounted his daughter’s pushback after he gently questioned the tactics of anti-Israeli protestors on campus. “She didn’t disagree with me,” he said, “but said that my concerns were unhelpful because they undermined efforts to stop the war.”

I just nodded my head; it was, after all, his daughter. I guess I could have complimented her: Her brief response perfectly distilled the deeply illiberal impulse that has undermined our democracy: gut politics.

This pervasive mindset frames political questions as moral issues that only have two sides: good and evil. It replaces the never-ending task of sifting and sorting the complex mysteries of human behavior to arrive at a tentative understanding with the certainty of feeling — I know I’m right.

Once you decide you’re on the right side of a problem — or, better yet, of history itself — you don’t have to defend it. You dismiss critiques as ignorant moral blindness and “You just don’t get it,” and replace the exchange of ideas with the refrain, “Let’s just not talk about it.”

Gut politics doesn’t stop there. It’s so dangerous because it wants its way. It rejects the notions of trade-offs and limits, compromise and discussion. These are our demands. It quashes dissent by framing the ends as beyond debate, casting honest questions as dangerous obstructions on the road to utopia. You’re undermining our efforts to stop war.

Gut politics turns its practitioners into aggressive reactionaries. Once you know just know you’re right, there is little incentive to keep thinking and learning. Your goal is not to examine your beliefs but to impose them.

In fairness, adherents of gut politics do have reasons for their beliefs. But their rejection of the liberal tradition that has been the cornerstone of American society — the embrace of open inquiry, the knowledge that progress hinges on the often-messy battles in the marketplace of ideas — leads to increasingly lazy thinking and growing authoritarianism.

During the covid pandemic, for example, government officials and news outlets downplayed reports of negative responses to force everyone to get vaccinated. They ignored the predictably terrible impacts of “remote learning” on school children and lockdowns on business because they just knew everyone should remain isolated.

As it shuts down honest debate in the name of truth, gut politics replaces the exchange of ideas with name-calling. Every critic becomes another Hitler — so there’s no point in trying to reason with them.

Gut politics bullies some into silence — why risk the wrath? — while, ironically, prodding determined resistors to embrace their own version of it. When official channels refuse to tell the truth, conspiracy theories often take flight. This, in turn, empowers the powers that be, turning their demonization of critics into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Our best hope for defanging this divisive and illiberal ideology is to resist the urge to fight fire with fire. Instead of deploying our own version of gut politics by seeking to silence and shut down its dangerous adherents, critics must have faith in America’s liberal tradition. It has the power to make our nation, and each of us, the best version of ourselves. As Jesus’ disciple Mark asked, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”