This is Holy Week for those of us in the ancient churches of the East. Thus, I am spending lots of time at my local parish as we march through many hours of ancient prayers, scriptures and liturgy. Yes, we are hearing more than a few prayers for peace in Ukraine and for the victims of that hellish fratricidal conflict. Will there, at the very least, be a ceasefire for Pascha (Easter)?
At the same time, my “Crossroads” partner — Todd Wilken of Lutheran Public Radio — was on the road to attend a funeral, so we didn’t record the podcast at our usual time. That should go live here at GetReligion tomorrow (mid-day Saturday).
Thus, I would like to point readers to a “think piece” that I have had in the hopper for some time now. It’s an opinion essay by Damon Linker that ran at The Week with this headline: “The noble and needful philosophical tradition of bothsidesism (no, really) — A call for equanimity in a polarized time.”
The term in question — “bothsideism” — is closely linked with another hot-button word that is frequently used as a semi-curse in social media. That would be “whataboutism.” Click here to read Merriam-Webster on that.
My interest in “bothsideism” is rooted in journalism theory, as opposed to pure political science.
During my days leading the Washington Journalism Center, two of the key lectures focused on four models of the press that dominate journalism debates in religious circles. For some people these days, discussions of balance, fairness and even accuracy — think the “American model of the press” — are one jump away from “bothsideism.” Here is a bite of an essay based on those lectures (.pdf here):
The American Model fit well with other American values — promoting a lively public square in which citizens could believe that their views would be treated with respect. It was possible, reading coverage over a period of time, to see which newsrooms were striving to be accurate and fair-minded. This approach meshed with a liberal approach to the First Amendment, as well.
Yes, this is a challenge for journalists as they do their work. I’ll be blunt. I think the most important skill in journalism is the ability to accurately report the views of a person with whom you disagree. Journalists are supposed to strive to show respect to people on both sides of hot- button debates.
This brings us to Linker. Readers will want to check out the whole essay (here’s that link again), but let me share a few chunks of his work. Here is the overture:
Nothing will open a pundit to anger and abuse like pointing out that both sides in our politics have a point — or a specific blind spot. That's especially true now, in our era of political polarization, and when one of our two major parties remains in thrall to a demagogue who provoked an insurrectionary riot against the national legislature to keep himself in power after losing a presidential election.
If ever there was a moment when drawing hard distinctions and rendering severe moral judgments would seem to be necessary, it's now.
Yet the opposite may in fact be true. Maybe the present — more than other, less rancorous moments — cries out for greater efforts at understanding "both sides."
This doesn't mean embracing moral equivalency. I've probably devoted more of my writing to denouncing former President Donald Trump and his intellectual apologists than to any other single subject in my eight years as a columnist. I also sometimes sharply criticize so-called "woke" trends in the culture along with other forms of progressive overreach.
The big idea is that America is in urgent need of political discourse, and journalism is part of that, in which participants use tactics other than, in Linker’s blunt words, “jumping up and down, pointing and shouting, ‘Oh my God, this is dangerous and evil!’ “ Here at GetReligion, we would say that we need more journalism that doesn’t plunge into “Kellerism” (click here for background on that term).
Here is another bite that is sure to infuriate some readers:
These days, punditry and even more ostensibly measured forms of analysis, like scholarship, tend unapologetically to take sides in political disagreements and disputes. Some commentators do little more than write repeated variations on "Why Donald Trump is so dangerous" or "How the Democrats became the only party to favor democracy."
One column on such topics is essential. Several published over time, in response to a string of discrete events, can be useful. But more than that and punditry begins to resemble special pleading for one political faction: Saving democracy in America requires not only voting consistently for Democrats but also supporting their entire policy agenda and never criticizing the party or its leadership, including the president. To do otherwise is to will an authoritarian future.
This leads us to Thucydides, Aristotle, Alexis de Tocqueville and, yes, Ross Douthat — in that order.
The key is that a Douthat column — “So, You Think the Republican Party No Longer Represents the People” — was accused by many, in a rather predictable manner, of whitewashing the evils of the Trump-era GOP.
Linker says Douthat is certainly trying to “complicate” some current stereotypes about the political, moral and cultural right. I would note that it is crucial to understand that Douthat is a Catholic and cultural conservative, as opposed to being a GOP loyalist.
What is crucial, for Linker, is the effort by Douthat to:
… show both that skepticism of mass democracy is longstanding on the American right and that it has more recently mixed with other ideological strands that are far more affirming of majoritarianism. This leads to what, for me, is the column's high point: Douthat's take on the alarming events of Jan. 6 and Trump's words and deeds leading up to it.
Although it has become reflexive for journalists like myself to say things like, Trump is an authoritarian because he attempted to foment a coup to keep himself in power despite losing the election — I did so at the start of this very column — this is not how Trump himself and his most devoted supporters understand the situation. Never once did Trump say, I should remain president despite losing the election. He said, instead, I should remain president because, despite what corrupt Democratic officials and the media say, I actually won.
That is, Trump claimed democratic legitimacy. That doesn't mean he was anything other than delusional or deliberately lying in doing so. He did in fact lose the election. (Note that Douthat describes Trump's claims as a "deception" and a form of "toxic dreampolitik," so there can be no doubt about where he stands on the matter.) But it is nonetheless illuminating to be reminded that Trump's political rhetoric presumed the legitimacy of democracy (or at least the distinctive American blend of majoritarian elections with counter-majoritarian institutions like the Electoral College).
Is it automatically “bothsidesism” to pause and attempt to at least understand what millions of Americans were, for better and for worse, trying to say about that ugly moment in U.S. history? Would it have helped if journalists had spent more ink accurately covering the various camps involved in that drama?
Discuss. And read it all.
MAIN IMAGE: Illustration used with a Merriam-Webster essay on “Bothsiding.”