Crossing a line

Last year, one of the more unsavory figures in American politics, Maxine Waters, did something especially unsavory when she encouraged members of the "resistance" to publicly harass members of the Trump administration.

Joaquin Castro recently did something even worse when he tweeted the names, employers and business interests of Trump donors from his district and accused them of supporting racism.

A line that should never have been crossed is now completely erased with public officials not just encouraging the harassment of other public officials but also ordinary citizens who have political views they disagree with (in this case supporting a president they despise).

Encouraging harassment is the proper interpretation, for there are no more charitable ones for what Castro did. At a time when political polarization has reached dangerous levels, Castro decided that the best way to combat what he calls hate is to encourage more of it. That the hate was directed against some of his own constituents (including as it turns out, some of his own donors), people he had promised on assuming office to serve, made it even more deplorable.

Castro's defense -- that such donor information can be compiled from the public record and legally disseminated -- was both disingenuous and irrelevant because it fails to address motive; more precisely why he, an elected official, felt it necessary to be the compiler and disseminator.

At the least, Castro's behavior suggests that leftists now view roughly half of the electorate as sufficiently evil to deserve whatever they get, including being harassed as they go about their daily affairs and perhaps fired from their jobs and their businesses protested and boycotted, maybe worse (there is always a worse). Because they have the temerity to exercise their First Amendment rights in ways that Castro disapproves of.

Within this context, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., someone whom presumably knows a bit of what he speaks, got it precisely right when he pointed out that "People should not be personally targeted for their political views, period." He might have added that it becomes even more egregious when it is public officials doing the targeting, in a way representative of the very kind of fascism they claim Trump represents.

Perhaps Castro and his friends will next suggest that Trump voters be branded with the word "deplorable" on their foreheads so that they can be more readily identified and persecuted.

The incident is more than just another step in our downward spiral into political civil war, however, because it also illustrates a truth which has gradually emerged over the course of the Trump era: that the reaction to Trump might ultimately turn out to be more dangerous to our democratic culture than the man himself.

Trump might indeed be the threat to democracy that his critics suggest, but it is also possible that an opposition to Trump that adopts the kind of ends justifies the means approach illustrated by Castro is an even greater threat; that the true test of the sturdiness of democracy is not its capacity to elect good leaders, but how we react when it doesn't.

Trump will be gone someday, but the behavioral patterns that many are adopting in opposition to him, and justifying by reference to his awfulness, will likely continue, to the great detriment of our democratic order.

Along these lines, does anyone truly believe that the radical tactics embraced to oppose Trump will be suddenly abandoned when it comes to future Republican presidents of presumably much lesser offensiveness? Or that Republicans can't in turn pick up on them when it comes to resisting a Democratic president?

The delegitimization of political differences cannot be easily overcome, and if you assume that anyone who supports whomever you oppose is evil, you have abruptly declared a large portion of the electorate to be unworthy of respect and decent treatment as human beings.

To enshrine such beliefs in our politics would be vastly more corrosive to the health of our republic than anything Trump has been accused of doing.

The hunch is that people voted for Trump for a range of reasons, most significant of which was that he was in their eyes the lesser evil. And that they will vote for him again next year if the Democrats continue down their radical left path based on the same calculus. This makes them villains only for those who define villainy as dissent from their way of seeing things.

The most dangerous element in politics is always zealotry, because it flows from an exaggerated degree of certainty about how the world works and one's own moral superiority in it. It leads to one and only one sure outcome: the dehumanization of opposition.

Conversely, humility is a crucial democratic virtue because it contains the admission that you might be wrong about a great many things and that those you might be tempted to vilify might at least occasionally be right.

Confession: I've never donated to a political candidate in my life. But I might do so next year -- on behalf of the reelection of Donald Trump, a man I thoroughly despise.

Just to send a message to creeps like Joaquin Castro that their efforts at intimidation won't work.

Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.