Polarization in America has become less about disagreement and more about survival for many, and Auron MacIntyre argues that we often take the easy route by labeling our opponents mentally unwell. This piece looks at why that shortcut is dangerous, what it hides about rival moral systems, and why pretending the problem is illness leaves the country headed toward a winner-take-all future.
There is a familiar instinct at work when something shocks us into disbelief: we want an explanation that removes agency. MacIntyre captures that reflex in plain terms: “This is understandable when it comes to horrific crime. Someone like a serial killer is so violent and twisted that it’s hard for us to comprehend their actions, and there is certainly a fair amount of mental illness that plays a factor,” MacIntyre says. Calling evil behavior a symptom keeps us from confronting unpleasant political realities.
That same instinct gets misapplied to politics, where complex, moral disagreements are reduced to pathology. “But today people often use this explanation when it comes to political disagreements.” When debates over policy and values become moral caricatures, it becomes easy to dismiss opponents rather than engage them.
Some topics inflame this tendency because they trigger visceral reactions and moral horror. “Abortion, hatred for Christians and white people, the mutilation of children to turn boys into girls — these beliefs are so horrible that they can only possibly be explained by a malfunctioning brain,” he continues. When people hear positions framed that way, their first response is shock, then a rush to explain away motives.
MacIntyre pushes back on that shortcut by pointing at a harder truth: sometimes your opponent is acting out of a coherent set of values that simply conflicts with yours. “The other option is that some people have a very different set of values that drive them to pursue goals that we view as evil. The average American would like to avoid this truth, because it comes with an unnerving conclusion: Your political enemies aren’t crazy; they are sane people who hate you and want to hurt you,” he adds. That interpretation is less comforting but more accurate for many fights.
Admitting that opponents are rational actors with opposing goals forces a different kind of politics—one built around strategy instead of consolation. MacIntyre notes that believing a person must be mentally ill because you disagree is a way of ducking the harder task of confronting those goals. He sums this up bluntly: “is far easier than addressing the alternative.”
The stakes of this misdiagnosis are enormous because it lets parallel moral universes grow without real contest. “The idea that half of America is crazy because they don’t share your political views is obviously absurd,” he says. “The truth is much darker. We’re at least two societies, with mutually exclusive understandings of morality and purpose, trapped in one country.” If those worlds are internally consistent but incompatible, compromise becomes nearly impossible.
MacIntyre traces how institutions that were theoretically neutral allowed this drift to proceed until it became obvious and dangerous. “The theoretical neutrality of the liberal system allowed this drift to occur under the surface, but the differences have become too extreme to ignore. Both sides have their own internally consistent understanding of the world, but they’re entirely incompatible with each other,” he explains. When systems no longer overlap on core premises, politics turns into existential contest.
That reality yields a grim conclusion about the direction of national conflict: someone will prevail and impose their norms. “One side is going to win and one side is going to lose, and the winning side is going to impose its way of life on the other. There is no way to avoid this reality,” he continues. “And obscuring the truth with comforting fictions about mental illness only ensures that you’ll be on the side that loses.”
If you follow commentators who critique cultural shifts and defend traditional institutions, there are plenty of places to hear this argued with energy and clarity. For those paying attention, MacIntyre’s point is a call to stop treating political disagreement like a medical problem and start treating it like a strategic contest where values and power matter.
