California conservative: America’s far right has no monopoly on destructive extremism

Americans’ confidence in our social institutions — government, churches, universities, corporations and the media among them — has been declining for decades and may be reaching a natural conclusion: A loss of belief in the American experiment itself.

We are less secure financially, emotionally and socially than we have been at any other time since perhaps the Great Depression. As a result, we face a mental health crisis, with exploding rates of depression, suicide, obesity and opioid addiction.

Unfortunately, the declining belief in institutions is being replaced by ever more extreme ideologies, many with dubious ties to the truth.

Extremism has provided a false sense of community united by grievances, simple answers and illusory purpose for those alienated by a changing world. Misinformation, online radicalization, authoritarianism and populism have all grown into a global phenomenon.

But the problem is also evident at the local and state level. Warring partisan and ethnic tribes have overrun the battlefield of ideas required to make democratic institutions work.

The cancer of extremism has metastasized from a violent attack on our nation’s capital on Jan. 6 to the shouting down of local elected officials in our own communities.

In the recent past, Sacramento has seen a state senator, Dr. Richard Pan, shoved on a downtown street. We saw an anti-vaccine protester hurl blood at legislators under the Capitol dome. California school board leaders are asking Gov. Gavin Newsom for protection as increasingly raucous meetings are punctuated by threats and verbal abuse.

The home of Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg was surrounded by angry protesters who threw rocks, destroyed homemade artwork in his front yard and chanted the names of his children. Left-wing activists also planned a demonstration at the home of City Manager Howard Chan. A poster publicizing the event featured a photo of Chan with his name in a red font resembling dripping blood at a time when attacks on Asian Americans were spiking in California and across the nation.

Our community is not immune to the forces of institutional destruction and growing extremism; we are ground zero for it.

The far right attacks government, universities and the media with the same zeal with which the far left attacks corporations, churches and the military. It is as if Barry Goldwater’s immoderate maxim — that “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” and “moderation in the defense of justice is no virtue” — has gone from textbook example of political extremism to instruction manual on modern public discourse.

Half of America believes that the inequities in our institutions are foundational. Extremism on the American left is increasingly consumed with the idea that the country’s slave-holding origins and white patriarchy make redemption, even reform, impossible.

Meanwhile, extremism on the American right holds the opportunities and outcomes of previous generations are a birthright that has been taken from them.

Both are united by their shared lack of belief in — and commitment to — our institutions. With that loss, we have also lost the anchors that keep members of our society committed to each other and to something bigger than ourselves.

Anthropologists and primatologists have long noted that one of humanity’s greatest evolutionary traits is empathy. The road back from this place we’ve entered requires that we find a way to believe in one another’s success again, either by reforming our institutions to meet modern society’s needs or by replacing them entirely.

As an advanced species, we established institutions to provide for the common welfare. In short, we believed in helping ourselves by helping one another. We’re finding that as we detach from one another socially and separate economically, as we disassociate from our social obligations to our neighbors and as we find false comfort in extremism, we’re not just destroying the institutions we’ve lost faith and trust in. We’re now destroying ourselves.

This story was originally published October 13, 2021 at 5:30 AM with the headline "California conservative: America’s far right has no monopoly on destructive extremism."