A Liberal Reader Criticizes Us for “Both-sides”-ism

Recently we wrote about a PBS reporter who shared false information about Donald Trump. Some of our liberal readers were angry with us. This email is a good example of the criticism we received (slightly edited): 

You seem to equate Trump and his campaign as being the same as Democrats. Why do you focus on Woodruff’s mistake but you don’t mention the constant barrage of mistakes or blatant lies on the right? Do you think pro-Trump and anti-Trump are equal in their threats to our democracy? Why not show all the lies of Fox News journalists? 

If I didn’t know better I would say the Heritage Foundation put you up to this. I will be unsubscribing.

This reader saw us as making a false equivalency — also known as “both sides”-ism. 

This is a common objection we get from people on the left and the right. The language will differ but the underlying objection is the same: “The other side is so bad; why aren’t you focusing more on them?”

Many people view us as “helping the bad guys” — or even as just “the bad guys.” This is a dynamic anyone involved in conflict resolution will recognize. We get it; fears and emotions are high. When you perceive yourself and the things you care about under threat, a focus on seemingly trivial things on “your side” can seem clueless — an insult to your intelligence. You might start to wonder if we have a hidden agenda.

Toxic polarization is a complex problem and many people contribute to it. People on the left contribute and people on the right contribute — and, due to our distorted views of each other, it’s easy for us to contribute without even knowing it.

We can see that many people contribute to our divides even as we think, “My political opponents contribute more.” 

We believe it’s vitally important to create persuasive messages to people across the political spectrum about why they should care about reducing our political division. It won’t help if only one side does the work. Everyone has to roll up their sleeves in order to change this toxic dynamic. So, we must examine polarizing behaviors from people across the political spectrum. Doing that helps all people with any political belief see that they have an important role in healing division — and ultimately solving problems.

Let’s imagine we focused only on examining the polarizing behaviors of one political group. If we did that, we’d no longer be persuasive to people in that group. They’d see us as entirely partisan — and they’d be right. We’d simply be preaching to the choir. We’d be another cog in the engine of polarization. 

Consider: if you’re politically liberal, we think you’d like it if more Trump voters embraced the cause of reducing political toxicity. We think you’d wish that more conservatives would do that even as they continued to be highly critical of liberals. And vice versa: Conservatives who want to reduce toxicity hope that liberals could agree with them on that — even as they remain highly critical of conservatives.

Conflict has a way of blinding us to the myriad of ways that we and others amplify the conflict. We must try to keep our anger and fear from getting in the way of reducing toxicity and improving the world. 

Science and common sense tell us that we have a lot of influence on people similar to us, our “in-group” — but little influence on the “other side.” This change starts with us (hence the name) — and then radiates outward.

We hope you won’t give up on this work. We hope you won’t walk away. 

Read more about how this work can unintentionally trigger people and drive them away.

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