- Robert Reich’s take on what the two US political parties think of each other, and my interpretation of conservative thinking;
- About Pete Hegseth and how he sees moral purpose in war as a weakness;
- Another item about parental rights, concerning social media; and my thoughts about this complex subject.
Another take on the spectrum of human nature.
Robert Reich, 10 Mar 2026: Why do Americans hate each other while Canadians love each other?, subtitled “Could it have something to do with our politics? With the sociopath in the Oval?”
There’s at least two parts to the piece: how the two US political parties regard each, then why this should be. And then, how this plays out in contemporary politics. The first and second points fascinated me the most:
A survey released last Thursday by the Pew Research Center finds that 53 percent of American adults describe the morality and ethics of our fellow citizens as “bad” (ranging from “somewhat bad” to “very bad”).
This puts Americans way out front of other nations on the we-hate-our-compatriots scale. In the 24 other countries polled by Pew, most people called their fellow citizens somewhat good or very good.
At the opposite end of the spectrum from the United States is Canada, where 92 percent say their fellow Canadians are good, while just 7 percent say they’re bad.
Why are we so down on our fellow citizens? It may have something to do with our politics.
Some 30 years ago, my dear friend the late Republican Senator Alan Simpson told me Democrats viewed Republicans as stupid and Republicans viewed Democrats as evil.
Then:
“I’d rather be in the stupid party,” he chuckled.
I asked him why Republicans saw Democrats as evil.
He took a deep breath. “Religion.”
I said I didn’t understand.
“It’s the Christian right,” he said, as if talking to a five-year-old. “Since Reagan, my party has been a magnet for religious conservatives and Christian fundamentalists, where it’s all about good and evil. Too bad, pal. You’re on the evil side.”
Reich doesn’t go into this any further, but I understand completely.
First, I wouldn’t call Republicans (or conservatives) stupid; I just think they tend to be a tad simple-minded, to think in absolute, binary terms, as I’ve said over and over again in this blog. Black and white, good vs. evil; no ambiguity, barely some shades of gray but no color. Male and female, for purposes of having children, no other arrangements between adults possible. How everything that exists is *for* something. Bible good, all other books bad. And every other contrast that exists must fit into the good vs evil model. White vs. non-white. And so on.
So given the propensity to divide everything into opposites, if the Republican/conservative side is good, then the other side must be bad, even evil, by definition. They don’t *really* (necessarily) think that Democrats are immoral or demonic or seeking the destruction of the nation, but their thinking has only two spots, and so the evil side is where Democrats must land.
Of course this is nonsense. The range of human nature is a spectrum, not two polar opposites. But accusations of evil rile up the simple-minded crowds.
Reich goes on to describe how Trump increasingly rants about “radical left lunatics” and “domestic terrorists” about anyone who objects to any part of his own agenda. And of course Iranians, according to some Republicans, are scum who should be wiped from the Earth. They’re not white; they’re not Christian. Therefore.
For more than a decade, Trump has told us that certain other Americans should be feared: among them, Democrats, liberals, Mexican Americans, Muslim Americans, Black Americans, transgender people, and LGBTQ+ people. All are presumed to be the “enemy within.”
As Barack Obama said at Jesse Jackson’s memorial on March 6, “Each day, we’re told by those in high office to fear each other and to turn on each other, and that some Americans count more than others, and that some don’t even count at all.”
Is it any surprise that a majority of Americans now describe the morality of other Americans as “bad?”
But is all this just my subjective point of view? Wouldn’t a Republican say that it’s obvious that anyone who doesn’t support Trump and venerate the Bible is “radical left,” a threat to the nation, and therefore evil?
Any objective evidence behind any of this? Yes: Republicans lie a lot more than Democrats. See Adair. Lying is not a problem for them. Their positions do not conform to reality. Their sensibilities about good and evil are very flexible.
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In related topics, we’ve already seen that conservatives think empathy is a weakness, apparently because concern for others interferes with the business of becoming a billionaire. Here are some posts here about empathy. The second item, from May, in particular. And an item on the March 2023 post *defines* evil as the absence of empathy, whereas contemporary conservatives would turn that around.
So does this item fit in here anywhere? Yes it does.
NY Times, Pentagon Memo by Greg Jaffe, 12 Mar 2026: How Hegseth Came to See Moral Purpose in War as Weakness, subtitled “Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bellicose and vengeful rhetoric describing the military’s war in Iran grew out of his experience in Iraq.”
Long before President Trump chose him to lead the U.S. military, Pete Hegseth described the moral calling that had compelled him to volunteer to serve in Iraq.
He was working on Wall Street in the summer of 2005 and had read an article about an insurgent who blew himself up, killing 18 Iraqi children. “To me, that was the face of evil,” Mr. Hegseth told The Princeton Alumni Weekly, adding, “That sent to me a signal that I need to do my part not to let that ideology win in Iraq.”
He deployed to the war-torn city of Samarra a short time later.
In recent news, the US military has bombed an elementary school in Tehran and killed over 100 girls. Presumably Hegseth isn’t so concerned as he was 20 years ago.
Today, Mr. Hegseth describes the mission and moral purpose animating the war in Iran, now in its second week, in starkly different terms. The goal, he said recently, is to unleash “death and destruction from the sky all day long.” Instead of seeking justice, U.S. forces are pursuing vengeance against an implacable foe.
Sounds like OT rhetoric to me — i.e., here we are back at primitive thinking suitable for a black and white world. Vanquish anyone in America’s way.
For decades, presidents and their secretaries of defense have framed American military interventions in altruistic terms. Even though the truth was often more complicated, they cast U.S. troops as liberators bringing democracy and freedom to those living under tyranny and oppression.
Mr. Hegseth has largely dispensed with that talk. His bellicose, at times vengeful, rhetoric reflects his belief that the United States’ lofty goals in Iraq and Afghanistan caused the military to lose focus on its main task, killing the enemy, and led to costly defeats in both wars.
In his view, the U.S. military’s strength is not rooted in its high ideals, humanity or moral purpose, but rather its ability to punish adversaries. Anything that distracts from that singular mission, he has said, is weakness.
Also recently there is Hegseth’s disdain for rules of engagement, which some have connected to Kuwait shooting down three US jet a couple weeks ago.
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More about parental rights. As mentioned a couple days ago. That items was about MAGA wanting to dictate how trans kids are treated, despite whatever their parents might want. Is this case the same, or different? He seems to be again rejecting the notion that parents alone can control what their children do. The difference is in the consequences.
Washington Post, opinion by Ramesh Ponnuru, today: The myth of absolute parental rights, subtitled “Age limits inspired by Australia law won’t hamper role adults play in raising children.”
Australia has banned kids under 16 from social media, leading an international trend. Politicians such as Democratic presidential hopeful Rahm Emanuel and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) say the United States should join it. Their advocacy reflects a growing consensus that social media’s negative effects on kids’ mental health and social lives outweigh the benefits. Most American adults now agree that the platforms should require age verification, according to a survey taken in October.
Psychologists Jonathan Haidt and Ravi Iyer argue that governments should not only legislate an under-16 ban, but provide no parental opt-out: “Don’t make parents’ jobs even harder by giving their kids one more thing to beg for.”
I’m familiar with Haidt’s arguments; see here.
The writer goes on to describe other ways in which the government limits what children can do, despite whatever their parents might approve of or not: buying liquor, cigarettes, guns, driving cars. Buying porn. And so on. (And aren’t the movie ratings, like R, an extension of the same idea?)
On the one hand, this essay seems to support government control over parental rights, and in fact the writer is the editor of National Review, a high-end right-wing journal. Fitting. (The right-wing is against government interference in private matters except when they’re not, i.e. when they want to impose conservative values upon everyone.)
But isn’t there a difference between this case, about social media, and the case a couple days ago, about outing trans kids? I think there is. Restricting social media (and those other things) from children are arguably to protect their safety from things that may harm them. The case about outing trans kids seem to stem from conservative animosity to trans people, and therefore to allow schools or the government to ‘out’ them and thereby shame them into rethinking their identity — or suppressing it.
It’s not a simplistic issue. I think I’ve wondered before, do parents *own* their children? That is, do parents have the right to make all decisions about their children’s lives, at least until age 18? Existing laws suggest not. And to think so is to deny any degree of social responsibility. Children grow up to become adults, and to become part of society, and any suppression of their ability to do that would seem to me selfish, on the part of the parents, at best.
