I’ve been saying in recent years, as in this 2017 post here, that our politics has become existential to many on both sides. Existential politics is very different from political polarization. There can be sharp differences between parties when they are polarized without politics becoming existential. When politics instead becomes existential, people believe the country and its values will be destroyed if the other side gains power. Acceptance of “the loyal opposition,” a critical element in democracy, becomes less widely shared. It’s no longer tolerable to accept election losses on the rotation-in-office theory that your side can win the next time around; by then, it will be too late. Adherence to the norms, principles, and even laws that undergird democracy becomes naive, a fool’s game when the stakes are so high.
A perfect illustration of this mindset on the right side of the spectrum comes from the recent revelation of John Eastman’s interview with Tom Klingenstein, Chairman of the Claremont Institute. For those who have not seen it, here’s an excerpt of some of Eastman’s comments:
So I, I don’t want to give as much magnanimity of thought to either one of them. But, but let’s assume the standard version and that Nixon is magnanimous, certainly not in 1960, but also not in 2000 were the stakes about the very existential threat that the country is under as great as they are. I mean, we’re not talking about, you know, handing over to John Kennedy instead of Richard Nixon who’s gonna deal with the Cold War.
Um, we’re, we’re, we are talking about whether we are gonna, as a nation completely repudiate every one of our founding principles, uh, which is what the modern Left-wing, which is in control of the Democrat Party, believes that we are the root of all evil in the world and we have to be eradicated. This is an existential threat to the very survivability, not just of our nation, but but of the, uh, example that our nation properly understood provides to the world.
That’s the stakes, and Trump seems to understand that in a way a lot of Republican establishment types in Washington don’t. And it’s the reason he gets so much support. In the hinterland, in the flyover country. People are fed up with folks, you know, get along, go along while the country is being destroyed.
And so I think the stakes are much bigger. And, and, and that means a stolen election that thwarts the will of the people trying to correct course and get back on a path that understands the significance and the nobility of America and the American experiment is really at stake and we ought to fight for it.[quote ends here] Eastman goes on to say, essentially, that he would not have done what he did in 2020 back in the close elections of 1960 or 2000. That’s because the stakes, in his view, were not existential in those earlier elections. In other words, we were in normal political time. But in his mind, the entire effort to overturn the election, centered ultimately on Jan. 6th, was justified now because today’s circumstances have become existential.
The view that politics has become existential is what drives a lot of the breakdown of norms and the view of the other side as the enemy that we see in much of our politics. People rarely use the word “existential” as explicitly as Eastman does here, but that’s what characterizes their view and the motivation for their actions.
Here are links to all three parts of Eastman’s interview. The comments above come from the third interview:
The John Eastman Interview: Part 1