Gazette-Mail editorial: Can caustic rhetoric be toned down?

One of the biggest problems is that the administration in power got there by using divisive rhetoric and playing off of Americans' fear while stoking anger and demonizing the opposition. Supporters might not see it that way, and maybe that's not what really engaged them. Maybe they only cared about the promise of a better economy or the idea that something had to change and that's what was being offered. To everyone else, though, the promise and execution of mass deportations, the pardoning of insurrectionists and constant bleating about the "radical left" is extremely divisive and not an easy thing to just get over. 

Now, to an extent, some of these things are performative. But the performance is there for a reason, and there are plenty of people who want their government to follow through on cruel policies that erode democracy. When a political party cynically courts a certain cohort, they'll find they're eventually expected to deliver. 

Some inherent hypocrisies also need to be addressed. This week, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the administration would be "going after" Americans for "hate speech." Other countries have hate-speech laws, but the U.S. does not. Bondi's declaration flies in the face of the First Amendment and, oddly enough, Kirk would've likely been among the first to point this out.

In fact, a past social media post by Kirk on this very topic began circulating after Bondi's blunder, reading, "Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There's ugly speech. There's gross speech. There's evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free."

It would be nice if hateful rhetoric was never encouraged or used. And there are often consequences for such things, but threatening to jail Americans over it is a long step too far. The suggestion of such a thing also does little to calm the tone of discourse. 

Perhaps most difficult for people to understand in addressing the current landscape of political discourse is just how much time a lot of these perpetrators of violence spend online. There's often a rush to blame one side or the other when an incident like Kirk's shooting occurs, which, in itself, is something that has to change, but it's also often not as simple as right or left. 

Some of these individuals do nothing all day but post and read memes, consume online media -- where the guardrails of responsible discourse can be significantly lowered, if they exist at all -- and chat with people they don't know. 

While many Americans, especially those around age 40 and up, might think in terms of right and left, with a few pockets of variance in or around those categories, it becomes extremely fragmented and subcategorized online. Although it might seem contradictory, there also can be a degree of nihilism about the entire political process. 

So, when mainstream media pundits try to make sense of scrawled phrases on bullet casings or divine a theory from social media posts to justify who they're blaming, they're sometimes operating entirely in the wrong context. Taking the time to better understand that context is often not considered. 

One thing that would help dramatically is if everyone, from talking heads to your uncle on Facebook, slowed down and took the time to process real information as it is released from reputable sources like law enforcement and media outlets that are doing actual reporting instead of speculating. That world doesn't exist right now. 

These and other hurdles can be cleared, but it's not going to be easy. For many, it requires unlearning just about every instinct that has been developed through consuming cable news and social media. It requires acknowledging individual hypocrisy, which is a hard thing to do. Are Americans willing to put in the effort?