The Schoolmarm has never pretended that rhetoric on the right and the left are equivalent. Sure, both sides commit a lot of the same types of errors. But certain types of errors are more common on one side than the other. It’s a complicated topic, but here are a few principles.

Political theorists would start with the broadest difference of all: the left is often advocating for societal change, while the right is often resisting it and wanting to respect tradition. (Historians refer to this as the “progressive” impulse and the “reactionary” impulse.) Meanwhile, other scholars point to different fundamental values each side tends to emphasize: for example, caring and fairness on the left, and loyalty and respect for authority on the right.

Political scientists have also pointed out that Democratic rhetoric has tended to have a more “operational” focus (let’s solve everyone’s problems) while Republicans have tended to focus more on symbols and ideology. In the Trump era, these patterns were partly drowned out by rawer tribalism on both sides, amplified by social media. But these patterns will continue.

Much of the rhetoric today is aimed at tearing down the other side, and so we can also look at the nature of the put-downs most commonly used. At a crude level, the other side is often portrayed—whether implicitly or explicitly—as either (a) Stupid, (b) Crazy, or (c) Evil. Both sides insinuate all three jabs at the other side, Stupid most frequently. However, the right more frequently portrays the left as Crazy (e.g. “they want to completely dismantle society!”; the “woke mind virus”), and the left more frequently portrays the right as Evil (e.g. “they want to hold on to their dominance over weak or vulnerable groups!”)

Here we have barely scratched the surface of this topic. At any rate, the Schoolmarm definitely finds the need to attribute certain mistake types more frequently to the left, and other mistake types more frequently to the right. However, she will never say that one side is worse than the other, or that one side’s misbehavior is more excusable than the other’s.