Popular political discourse in America resembles neither debate nor discourse. Instead, popular political "discourse" in America most closely resembles a shouting match in which volume and bombast are equated with "winning" debate. Even those political participants with the education, training, and experience to argue persuasively and with logical consistency tend to participate in the shouting match rather debating (in any commonly understood definition of the word). Presumably those who know better engage in the shouting match do so to pander to the marketplace for political "discourse" which is dominated by the shouting class.
Ultimately, the shouting class is a dispiriting example of an immaturity and selfishness that pervades America. Immature because the shouting class has not yet developed the adult understanding that one can neither know everything nor always be right. Selfish because the shouting class will not extend the courtesy and respect of accepting another viewpoint. There is an onanistic self-reflexivity about this. The panderers essentially tell the shouting class exactly what they want to hear: confirming every suspicion and bolstering every belief. The shouting class in turn becomes more demanding and strident in their desire to have their suspicions confirmed and beliefs bolstered which seems to render the class more rigid, insular, and suspicious.
The weird and frustrating thing about this is the upside down tribalism it creates. Thinking their position is the only legitimate one and having confidence in their own inerrancy, groups in the shouting class (especially but not exclusively the far right) equate their beliefs with patriotism. Thus, to certain groups in the shouting class, one cannot be patriotic if one holds opposing views. Since there can be no patriotic individuals who hold opposing views, patriotism is conflated with nationalism. Hence, if there can be no patriotic individuals who hold opposing views, then there can be no true Americans who hold opposing views. Hence, America and Americans are implicitly (or explicitly in some cases) are defined as members of the group holding the same view. In this way, the tribal, the smaller group view, becomes the national. Once tribalism becomes nationalism, any dissent from the group's biases and beliefs is seen as seditious and as a mortal threat to the tribe. The right's characterization of President Obama as a socialist bent on destroying "America" would be an apt example. Conversely, any rhetoric that reinforces the group's preexisting biases and beliefs becomes patriotic and is not seen for the jingoistic, proto-fascism that it usually is.
The phenomenon is weird because jingoism seems to be so at odds with the philosophical underpinnings of the American republic. I recognize that my characterization of the shouting class makes the resulting jingoism predictable, but it still surprises me that there is such a large portion of the populace that has so poor an understanding of or a total disregard for what might be deemed "the American idea," our central political philosophy or our creation myth, if you will: that we are a republic born out of the idea that freedom requires that protection from tyranny, whether in the form of a monarch or a mob or an aristocracy; that the only just society is a plural one in which protecting the right to believe as one chooses is more important than enforcing a supposed right belief. This is why we have a Bill of Rights and why the Constitution prescribed the popular election of members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The very notion of jingoism seems directly opposed to the spirit of Enlightenment, compromise, and debate that produced our constitutional form of government.
The phenomenon is frustrating because it is puerile. To raise the volume of one's voice or the bombast of one's language in response to debate is not argument. It is childish. Not allowing one's opponent in a political debate to have the courtesy of silence while she speaks demonstrates a lack of manners, the same manners we teach our young children to abide by. To assume that one's opponent is un-American simply because he has a different vision of how to make America a better place is to adopt the absurd rigidity and lack of nuance that young children often demonstrate.
Perhaps some day civility and respect will be restored to American political discourse. Until then I will cover my ears and remain steadfast in my belief that we cannot act like children forever.
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