Disagreement on facts and political discord cause damage

It clear and undeniable that the 2020 election is not over for the most of America's radical right. It may never be over for them. Some want some kind of revenge. Some want the ex-president put back in power right now. Some choose to believe that false crackpot conspiracies are real and true. One bit of crackpottery holds that the ex-president still is in power and is still running the country, with a plan to purge tens of thousands of deep state Democratic socialist pedophiles from government and restore God to his rightful role as a infallible dictator acting through his chosen vessel, the sacred ex-president. 

There's plenty tearing American society apart. To rationalize its main talking points, the radical right sweeps aside inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning. This is raw and primal. In the process, it undermines civility and democracy. The Washington Post writes on how a formerly united area in Montana has become bitterly divided. Some people are dying because of that. As usual, toxic social media is part of the mess:

KALISPELL, Mont. — By the time the third teenager had died by suicide since the start of the school year, the Flathead Valley was desperate for unity. The community had been jittery for months.

Supporters of former president Donald Trump, adamant that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election, were driving through town in pickups lined with Trump flags, Confederate flags and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags featuring a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike at government intrusion.

The coronavirus pandemic had cleaved neighbors into camps for and against masks. A popular Facebook group featuring wildlife photos and local events had degenerated into a forum for politics, bullying and suspicion of the new people moving here.

The October death by suicide of the ninth local teenager in 16 months prompted offers of counseling, training for teachers and visits from national suicide prevention experts. But it also whiplashed into partisan recriminations, as residents lashed out in public forums against the superintendent of schools for failing to impose dress codes and discipline, against parents for not securing their plentiful firearms — used in several suicides — and against the supporters of masks and other pandemic restrictions for stifling teenagers. An issue the valley might have rallied around, in another time, risked dividing it yet again.

“Our community is going through a divorce right now,” Mark Johnson, the mayor of Kalispell, told local officials gathered at city hall to find a path forward from the tragedies, recounting a high school student telling him the hostility around him was a reminder of his parents. “The adults are arguing about what’s right and what’s wrong,” he said in an interview. “The kids are watching it happen. They don’t feel they’re on firm footing.”  

Hostility over the November election, the coronavirus and social movements have left a trail of bad blood among old-school Republicans, backers of the former president, increasingly vocal Democrats and out-of-state transplants, convulsing everything from the school district and the public library to daily interactions.  

Local businesses, politicians and ordinary people now find themselves navigating angry confrontations, and a nuanced political tradition of splitting tickets on Election Day has given way to partisanship that propelled a Republican sweep of races for governor, president and Congress in November for the first time in two decades.  

Even the Independence Day parade shifted this summer from a once-revered slice of Americana to another battle in a culture war. As thousands packed Main Street in Kalispell, the 26,000-population county seat, the Flathead Democrats’ float with a rainbow gay pride flag was heckled the length of the parade. A horse-drawn wagon bearing a “Trump 2024 No More Bulls---” flag rushed toward it, leading the Democrats to fear injury. Someone smashed the plate glass window of a bookstore along the route, then crumpled the gay pride flag displayed inside.  

Ultraconservatives newly in power backed two candidates for state office in 2020 with misdemeanor criminal records. One was Greg Gianforte, who pleaded guilty to a charge of assaulting a reporter during his campaign for the House back in 2017. (He would later be elected governor after an endorsement from Trump, who praised Gianforte’s violence.)  

Politics has animated Tammi Fisher for most of her adult life, and ever since Bill Clinton’s affair turned her away from the Democratic Party, she’s been a conservative Republican.

No one would mistake the outspoken former Kalispell mayor for a big-government liberal. But Fisher, 45, is aghast at what her party has become as Montana’s tradition of political independence gives way, as she sees it, to being just another Trump red state. “The extremists have stolen everything,” she said. “Our community has lost community,” 

Kevin Geer, who leads a local congregation of 4,000 at Canvas Church in Kalispell, said in an interview. He’s angry, too, at extremists he says are polluting religion with ugly politics: “They’ve hijacked the conversation.”

Questions: 

1. Is it reasonable to believe that, in general, the Republican Party and ex-president supporters are more intolerant and aggressive in their rhetoric and other behaviors than the rest of America's political spectrum?

2. Should people opposed to the ex-president refrain from expressing their opinions in public, e.g., displaying a gay pride flag, and instead just keep quiet to avoid provoking bad behavior from the radical right? Or, would keeping quiet make no difference and Montana's traditional independence would still be obliterated and replaced with hard core radical right partisanship? 

3. How much responsibility, if any, does the ex-president, the GOP and their enablers, e.g., Fox News, bear for fomenting the usually disinformed terror, rage and hate that now flows copiously from the radical right and most of the GOP's rank and file? Or, is the terror, rage and hate a falsehood and mostly or completely non-existent, with those bad feelings being grounded in facts, truths and sound reasoning instead of disinformation?  

4. Is it reasonable to label the current Republican Party as a whole as extremist, ultraconservative, radical right or fascist? Or is the GOP just doing conservative politics as usual?