As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
The Politics of [Hypocrisy]
Hamurabi
MiamiRegistered User regular
MiamiRegistered User regular
So in watching the rhetoric of the GOP primaries (and the coverage thereof), it's not hard to notice generous use of the time-tested practice of calling out hypocrisy. Newt Gingrich claims that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (and the politicians -- aka Democrats -- in charge of those entities) were primarily responsible for the housing crisis and ensuing financial meltdown and recession that followed; Newt Gingrich was also paid handsomely by those entities for work as a consultant-cum-"historian" (not to be confused with lobbyist). Mitt Romney has historically held different opinions at different times on things like abortion, public healthcare, and other wedge issues; he's claimed all along in the current primary season to be a died-in-the-wool Reagan Republican.
The natural first reaction is to name and shame these politicians (and many others, on both sides of the aisle) for acting in contradiction to their purported beliefs. A secondary reaction might be cynicism at the empty rhetoric of public figures generally.
But what about a third option? Is it so outlandish to conclude that what politicians actually do doesn't matter so much as what they say?
I think most of us would agree that, ideally, the goal of Politics is to actively and civilly debate potential solutions to the challenges of our times (inequality, the efficient distribution of scarce resources, aspirational values, etc.) and to arrive at a broad consensus after equal consideration of all viable* points of view. In this idealized vision of politics-as-it-should-be, ideas are preeminent, and more banal considerations (political coalition dynamics, reelection campaign considerations, fear of political reprisals, etc.) secondary or non-existent. Whether or not this is actually the case (and I realize it isn't) is unrelated to whether or not this is how things should ideally play out.
*I use the term "viable" pretty loosely. I mean "viable" in the conventional political context, as in ideas that have enough popular support to be feasible. I also mean "viable" in the sense that the ideas themselves are practicable without radical alterations to the status quo; while such alterations would not in themselves necessarily be bad, they would require change so complete that it would raise issues beyond the scope of the challenge at hand.
So really, what is the logic behind throwing contradictory statements or actions back in the face of a public figure? Let's say Candidate XYZ campaigns on a platform of "Murder is wrong," but in the months before the election, it turns out XYZ brutally murdered someone several years ago. Is the idea of "Murder is wrong" suddenly discredited? I think most people would say that it isn't, and so clearly ideas are not necessarily coterminous with individuals.
A response might be that the hypocrisy in itself discredits the individual, and shows them to be morally compromised and as such unworthy of the public trust.
Well, did going on national television and saying that he "Did not have sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky" fatally reduce Bill Clinton's ability to govern? Was the Founding Fathers' championing of Enlightenment liberal values overshadowed by their owning of slaves?
tl;dr: I guess what I'm really asking here is, "Okay, politicians are often hypocrites. So what?"
EDIT: Oh, I completely left out something I meant to make sure came across:
I draw a clear distinction between acting contrary to values, and acting contrary to policy positions. Having a secret homosexual relationship while opposing gay marriage is a completely separate phenomenon from supporting neoliberal values but implementing policy to drastically increase state involvement in the economy. In one case, the purported political goal isn't being manifestly undermined; in the other, it is being undermined. If someone put me in office to make sure The Gays couldn't get married, and I voted against gay marriage every time it came up but continued my torrid secret affair with Dave the Congressional Page, I wouldn't necessarily be acting contrary to what I promised my constituency; if I was elected on a deregulation/privatization platform but voted in favor of, say, nationalizing the oil and gas sector, I would definitely be acting in a manner contrary to what I promised my constituency. Doing the opposite of what you were elected to do is different from, and much worse than, simply not upholding my purported values in my personal life.
The natural first reaction is to name and shame these politicians (and many others, on both sides of the aisle) for acting in contradiction to their purported beliefs. A secondary reaction might be cynicism at the empty rhetoric of public figures generally.
But what about a third option? Is it so outlandish to conclude that what politicians actually do doesn't matter so much as what they say?
I think most of us would agree that, ideally, the goal of Politics is to actively and civilly debate potential solutions to the challenges of our times (inequality, the efficient distribution of scarce resources, aspirational values, etc.) and to arrive at a broad consensus after equal consideration of all viable* points of view. In this idealized vision of politics-as-it-should-be, ideas are preeminent, and more banal considerations (political coalition dynamics, reelection campaign considerations, fear of political reprisals, etc.) secondary or non-existent. Whether or not this is actually the case (and I realize it isn't) is unrelated to whether or not this is how things should ideally play out.
*I use the term "viable" pretty loosely. I mean "viable" in the conventional political context, as in ideas that have enough popular support to be feasible. I also mean "viable" in the sense that the ideas themselves are practicable without radical alterations to the status quo; while such alterations would not in themselves necessarily be bad, they would require change so complete that it would raise issues beyond the scope of the challenge at hand.
So really, what is the logic behind throwing contradictory statements or actions back in the face of a public figure? Let's say Candidate XYZ campaigns on a platform of "Murder is wrong," but in the months before the election, it turns out XYZ brutally murdered someone several years ago. Is the idea of "Murder is wrong" suddenly discredited? I think most people would say that it isn't, and so clearly ideas are not necessarily coterminous with individuals.
A response might be that the hypocrisy in itself discredits the individual, and shows them to be morally compromised and as such unworthy of the public trust.
Well, did going on national television and saying that he "Did not have sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky" fatally reduce Bill Clinton's ability to govern? Was the Founding Fathers' championing of Enlightenment liberal values overshadowed by their owning of slaves?
tl;dr: I guess what I'm really asking here is, "Okay, politicians are often hypocrites. So what?"
EDIT: Oh, I completely left out something I meant to make sure came across:
I draw a clear distinction between acting contrary to values, and acting contrary to policy positions. Having a secret homosexual relationship while opposing gay marriage is a completely separate phenomenon from supporting neoliberal values but implementing policy to drastically increase state involvement in the economy. In one case, the purported political goal isn't being manifestly undermined; in the other, it is being undermined. If someone put me in office to make sure The Gays couldn't get married, and I voted against gay marriage every time it came up but continued my torrid secret affair with Dave the Congressional Page, I wouldn't necessarily be acting contrary to what I promised my constituency; if I was elected on a deregulation/privatization platform but voted in favor of, say, nationalizing the oil and gas sector, I would definitely be acting in a manner contrary to what I promised my constituency. Doing the opposite of what you were elected to do is different from, and much worse than, simply not upholding my purported values in my personal life.
Hamurabi on
0
Posts
A phenomenon that is exacerbating the ubiquity of hypocrisy in politics is the ridiculous levels of polarization and demagoguery demanded by the voting public. There was a time, not all that long ago, when Republicans and Democrats would cross the aisle for compromise that would ensure both parties advanced good ideas that people could go along with. However, any politician today that would gladly announce a willing partnership with an opposition member to advance core platform issues would be looking for a new job at the end of their term. Politics today, especially on the right, is about rote purity; realities about compromise and nuance are not what the hoi polloi wants to hear, because the hoi polloi are complete fucking idiots, by and large.
For example, just last election cycle Mitt Romney was touted by such party-respected demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity for the exact thing that has arguably hurt him worst in this election cycle: his willingness to legislate sweeping healthcare reform. Nothing about Romney's policy has shifted on that subject, largely because there was nothing to shift. The healthcare system Romney developed with Ted Kennedy (gasp! aisle crossing! burn it with fire!) and was already in place in Massachusetts was to be the model for reform all over America, and was seen by the GOP Greek Chorus of Talking Heads as THE alternative to more left-leaning single-payer "socialized" health reforms. It protected the private healthcare industries while still making care easier and cheaper to obtain, and people thought it was great. Enter Obamacare, and in the ensuing fight to pass it through Congress it shifted radically from its inception as a single-payer system to . . . . (drumroll) . . . a system that respected and maintained the private healthcare industries while making coverage easier to obtain. Wow, that sounds like almost exactly what Romney, the Genius, had in mind and had already implemented in Massachusetts! Yes, there were nuances of difference, but the greater points remain intact.
And now, it's the one thing that consistently hurts Romney in the eyes of core GOP voters, other than his religion, and knowing this he has had to rearticulate his position and to the eyes of many (and possibly rightfully so) this has seemed like waffling. Is it waffling? I honestly don't know. I don't know how a politician is supposed to deal with a such a paradigm shift in the narrative focus that strong; how does a politician deal with the fact that his opposition candidate used his idea for political gain, and his constituency took this as a wholesale failure of the same idea they were chomping at the bit to support just a few years earlier? Obama has polarized the conservative electorate so strongly that all they can do is BE AGAINST HIM. It doesn't matter if Obama blazes a trail of policies so 100% conservative that it would make Reagan blush, REAL conservatives have to keep moving further right.
Romney has to court that vote if he's going to win. He has to. And if the base keeps moving the Overton Window for him and the rest of the party, thems the breaks. Is that hypocrisy? I guess, technically. But only in as much as he still wants to run for president.
I think it's as simple as people turning their noses up at the "do as I say, not as I do" attitude on display by many politicians. If you have a candidate who is campaigning on a strict pro-life platform, and it's revealed that they or their spouse had a secret abortion, it's natural to question the candidate's commitment to the ideals s/he is preaching.
The murder example is a good trivial example of the first kind. Maybe a politician committed murder. That doesn't mean he can't run on a platform that murder is wrong. The individual may have a conflicting past on the issue, but the issue itself and the general support of it does not maintain some ongoing hypocrisy. The anti-murder platform and its political support do not have some general, ongoing, inherent hypocrisy.
The other kind of hypocrisy can have various kinds of examples, but includes things like a politician who is running on a platform of lowering taxes, criticizing other politicians in the process, and yet maintains a solid voting record of actually raising taxes. It doesn't just have to be about voting records, though. A politician who is running on an "I'm the outsider" campaign while being a career insider is a hypocrite, or at least disingenuous. A politician running on a "close the loopholes" campaign while still personally exploiting those loopholes... even that I think is different from the murder example.
Perhaps not two kinds, but I guess a continuum that needs to be considered rationally. Some hypocrisies are trivial and meaningless. Some are blatant dishonest platforms. Many are somewhere in between.
Are you suggesting that lying about blow jobs ISN'T an impeachable offense?
I . . . just don't . . . what . . .
Right, but does that mean that even though they may be the most qualified candidate technically (ie. have the most experience governing, are consistently able to reach compromises with their opposition, have the best academic/professional credentials, etc.), their hypocrisy immediately disqualifies their candidacy, or diminishes their appeal as a candidate?
Right, there is a definite distinction between the two types of hypocrisy, in my mind; in both cases you're not 'walking the walk,' but in only one are you actually going back on or undermining a stated political objective. Because the constituency who elected you to office presumably thought you would actually implement the policies you ran on, you're actively undermining the foundations of representative democracy.
Now, I understand that politics is not Politics, and that once elected, representatives basically never get 100% of what they want, but there's a difference between playing ball and having to compromise... and doing the exact opposite of what you promised you would do, even without being forced to by politics.
Well as Ross pointed out, there's a desire (real or perceived) amongst the electorate for their leaders to display a certain amount of ideological purity. Otherwise how can you be sure that they're not just blowing smoke up your ass in order to get elected? That once they're in office they won't go back on all those campaign promises?
I also think there's a distinction between "governing effectively" and "representing my ideals as a constituent." In some cases those things are mutually exclusive. Witness the Tea Party furor over the debt ceiling increase.
A somewhat more left summary:
I think Obama has muddied the water merely by being an elected black man.
I hate to play this canard, but it's all that I can really see that has added in so many intangibles into calculations around his presidency. We are in a situation where the platform is being driven by the constituency, not the candidates, and while that kind of populism may seem desirable, it's so totally and utterly not.
Having the party core dictate the position of the Overton Window is potentially very dangerous because the public is wont to develop positions without having the benefit of knowing how jack-shit works in politics. Also, they're wont to being pants-on-head retarded. But that's usually tempered in the electoral vetting process, because at some point a candidate comes along and properly explains why the opposition's policies are less than desirable and how he/she would change them.
With Obama, that's just not good enough for them. You have to be against HIM, as a living breathing human, and anything shy of that is tantamount to betrayal. It's why people are still going to townhalls and calling Obama a secret Muslim and a socialist and a non-American; they're against his very existence. That keeps kicking that window rightward, and the candidates quite simply can't keep up.
I disagree. The idealized purpose of democratic mass politics is to legitimize outcomes of a process that is not, on the whole, an intolerably terrible filling in the sausage we call government. Of this, coalition dynamics are an inextricable element. The opposition must recognize that they have legitimately lost - that they cannot claim any governing mandate. There is no demand for equal consideration; we explicitly construct formal institutions which actively favor any status quo. There is certainly no demand for consensus (indeed many systems demand that non-ruling parties play the part of an opposition for the sake of doing so, especially in non-proportional systems where minority viewpoints may receive no consideration at all otherwise).
Ideas are the contested territory between coalitions but they are not, in the end, the ultimate consideration: when your favored ideas lose, you do not grab a rifle and deny the right of the ruling party to rule. And you might lose, all the time: sometimes demographics are just against you. If we expect such permanent losers to accept this - and we do - then we must not be expecting them to participate in politics based on a pre-eminence of ideas. Ideas are the stuff of revolutions, not peaceful democratic exchanges of power.
Is that really the constituency though, or is it driven by the political goals of the party officials? You don't need to look much further than Mitch McConnell's quote about "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president" to see that, even if they didn't originate the sentiment, the top players in the GOP are riding that wave for all it's worth. At this point they're in a feedback loop with their own base.
That's pretty much the "so what". The hypocrisy people get annoyed about isn't a lack of perfection. ("He told a lie once, yet he believes in the Ten Commandments!") It's when politicians advocate "rules for me, but not for thee", when they argue That's Different or My Misspent Youth to explain why they don't follow the rules they argue everybody should, and perhaps especially when they claim that those rules mean they are a better choice than Otherguy for the office in question.
obsolete signature form
replaced by JPEGs.
It says a lot about a party when their number one goal isn't to get policies legislated, but just win elections.
It says even more about that party when shame doesn't prevent them from saying that aloud on TV.
Rigorous Scholarship
We're not just judging a selection of policy in our elections (american ones, anyway.) We are also judging the people actually charged with enacting that policy. We're not only evaluating a set of policy positions, we're evaluating what they'll prioritize, how committed they'll be, etc.
If you are a republican concerned about abortion, for example, you probably don't like Mitt Romney much. He's currently saying all the right things, and maybe in a parlimentary system that would be enough for you. His 'hypocracy' on the issue matters not because you necessarily think mitt romney is lying, but because you don't think he really cares that much.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
well, their goal is certainly enacting policy
it's just not policy most people would particularly like, so they find something else to talk about
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Well an impeachable offense does need to be an actual crime or misdemeanor.
And I don't think everyone agrees that it should be entirely up to the house what they consider it, but then who else is going to determine it?
That doesn't make sense to me. If the ideal purpose of Democracy is to simply lend arbitrary legitimacy to any and all workings of government then Fascism actually does a much better job at this then Democracy. Fascism plays on a lot of negative human traits and exploits them to create a system that while incredibly unfree and unrepresentative can be said to be extremely effective at gaining legitimacy. Only, instead of tricking people into thinking something's legitimate, fascists just go the more efficient route of killing their opposition or torturing them into submission which historically speaking? It's been the number one way to get and keep a government running. If Democracy is not meant to serve as an ideal compromise between a technocratic good and serving the will/whims of the governed then I really don't know why we would even want to bother with it. Because if we're just talking about effectiveness then again, brutal violence, torture and repression has the best track record. No it won't secure a single ruler or single ruling body forever, but if you look to these things not just as tactics but rather are representations of an overall megalomaniacal governing philosophy? Well, Megalomania in some form has been what almost all governments until recent times were based upon.
1) Doing something right now you are advocating against right now
2) Advocating for/against something that you previously did/did not do without admitting you used to be wrong.
1 is shit like cheating on your wives while touting the sanctity of marriage. Or fucking another man in an airport bathroom while saying gay sex is bad and you shouldn't do it.
2 is because people change their minds or learn or whatever, but you have to actually change your opinion, not just just change your actions because of circumstance.
Both are wrong for the same reason: because it's someone using their legislative power to say "This is wrong/you have to do this/you can't do this/etc" while they themselves do it.
It's saying "My rights are different then yours. I am more then you, so I'm allowed, but you are lesser then me so you are not."
It's also being a fucking liar, which cuts at the very root of the democratic process.
And yet he's advocating and legislating to enforce those rules!
Except they've said and shown they want to take actions counter to their goals simply to win elections.
I think it's actually a pretty well thought-out system. I'm okay with how the Clinton impeachment played out. Impeachment but no removal was a pretty good end result.
Rigorous Scholarship
Uh, the point of democracy is that you don't resort to violence. As in; it's not a battle of ideas and consensus because if that were the case then we wouldn't expect the loser to accept that their idea is not going to play a part.
Sorry I mix up house and congress sometimes.
The result was the right result, but the trial never needed to happen. It was a partisan witch hunt based in nothing but pure grandstanding.
I use "consensus" kind of interchangeably with "compromised outcome supported by a sufficient number of representatives to become legislation," which is a mistake I admit to readily; I don't mean "consensus" as in "every single person agrees to this specific, "pure" idea.
I have to disagree with this. I would say that ideas definitely hold practical currency, and just because someone wins the presidency and/or a (super) majority in Congress doesn't mean their opponents' ideas are entirely purged from Congress or any other representative body; they just become the minority, and only have two options: A) become obstinate and unwilling to compromise on their Ideas; or
In short, I disagree with the assertion that there isn't a place for Ideas in democratic, peaceful handovers of power.
(This is, of course, all in the context of an idealized Politics, and not the actual politics that we see here in the U.S. or other liberal democracies.)
I feel like this describes a particular subset of voters, and not necessarily all voters period. Sure, a lot of them are out to send a message to The Establishment, but that doesn't mean voting is an emotional process of 'message-sending' per se.
I could also be misunderstanding what you mean. :P
Why? Violence perpetrated by a nation state is considered inherently legitimate in any modern geopolitical sense. It's just that different factions invent different reasons for legitimizing or de-legitimizing the actions. Look at our various foreign policies regarding the middle east uprisings. We're training Syrian rebels, yet Egypt's military dictatorship has our full support. Both are brutally repressing the people, why do we support one and not the other? Business interests.
So violence doesn't de-legitimize your government or it's actions unless it's ineffective. The problem is, you can ALWAYS get violent enough to suppress people if you have no conscience and a cunning plan. Because especially if you have a good security apparatus? Torturing just the right amount of the population and cutting off their access to supplies will eventually wear them down. You might need to kill a large number of them, but eventually they'll fall in line unless there's a critical mass of organized support. The Middle East is only a hotbed because the U.S. Government can't go the full monty and begin massacring the civilian population wholesale, and making a bold statement about why. It's failing to be contained precisely because we haven't gotten violent enough. (It's not entirely that simple, there's more to just being violent, tactical/strategic use of violent tactics is essential to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt in a population.)
Which is to say nothing about whether or not we should ever do or support such things. But if you believe in arbitrary government and/or arbitrary systems of legitimacy then the quickest route to a functioning nation state is a philosophy of megalomania. If however, you believe in a greater sense of purpose or morality for a government. Such as the philosophies the United States was founded upon, to give example. Democracy as a system is most certainly NOT meant to be arbitrary or lend legitimacy to a bland sausage-making process. It's meant to reflect a greater truth that we create a nation-state to both obey the consent of the governed and also to at times act in the best interests of the governed even against their greater will. Because a nation-state as an apparatus has far more knowledge/power than a single individual. A good example would be how the state builds highways or funds fire departments and police stations. Would we stop if people stopped supporting that philosophy? If the evidence said they were still necessary? No! We'd try to educate the electorate on why these things are good and work to address the real concerns that might underlay their requests rather then merely doing whatever it is people vote for.
Democracy's election process then, of course, is simply a process to try and strike the best balance of those two things by making sure that there is a robust way to remove malefactors from power should things go wrong or to simply change/retool the process if it's becoming ineffective at achieving it's stated aims.
Basing policy on inherently moral value judgments (i.e. abortion, gay marriage, etc) while you yourself are violating the moral imperative of those values, makes you a hypocrite and you come off as proclaiming, "It's OK for me but not for thee." Witness "The only moral abortion is my abortion."
On the other hand, say a politician is advocating a tax increase on upper income brackets (of which he is a member). It's pointed out that he makes maximum use of deductions to lower his own tax bill at the end of the year. I'd argue that this isn't hypocrisy because no reasonable person would really expect someone to intentionally go against his own best interests by avoiding those deductions.
I don't see why anyone would think the second thing was hypocritical.
I guess you've never argued with a conservative and had them tell you, "Oh you think taxes should go up? Well then why don't you go ahead and write a check to the government Mr. FancyPants. No one's stopping you."
I get it all the time from my father-in-law.
I have, and I tell them why they're dumb.
Yes, even people I know in real life.
EDIT: I'm marginally more diplomatic in real life, of course. But I make sure to let the condescension drip through a little bit.
I did not say that ideas hold no currency; I said that they are not, as you claimed, the pre-eminent consideration. Indeed those secondary considerations which you mentioned are instead primary. If your opposition is willing to accept a choice between "compromise" and "shut out", then the primary consideration of forcing them to peacefully renounce any claim to leadership is already met - that you, already, have formed a governing coalition that acts without fear of violent reprisal via discontented mob or suppression following some future electoral loss. In short, you are already assuming the condition which you deny is necessary.
Of course ideas hold a place. But they are not primary; instead the identification of groups comes first. Being a flip-flopper is a damaging charge even when the politician so alleged is flipping toward a view that the majority holds - where it is unambiguously the case that the majority's ideas should be becoming strictly greater in probability of winning a democratic contest. We like even our opponents to be clearly so marked. It is for this reason that some apparently arbitrary types of hypocrisy are acceptable and even customary (e.g., condemning pork-barrel spending) whereas some other types are anathema: some types of hypocrisy compromise a politician's group identity whereas others do not.
When the, let's say, Representative from Texas condemns federal pork, he doesn't just gain support from people who oppose pork-barrel spending in principle; he gains support from people who oppose federal spending because the people who dominate government at a federal level are not like you, will never be like you, let's criticize and insult them. And so when the same Representative goes to DC and arranges for more pork for his district, the contradiction is nothing that matters to this group.
Which is far closer to the paternalistic fascism you say I am describing (I am not: as Julius said, the point is not to resort to unconstrained violence. We do not, for example, describe a society as democratic if it the winner regularly has the loser executed, even the observers agree that the contest itself is very fair).
Here's the flaw in your argument: violence by a nation-state is considered often legitimate (in a vague pre-United-Nations/other-international-institutions Westphalian sense), but violence by a subset of the nation-state is not - forcing a losing party to recognize that their identity as an American comes before their identity as, say, Republicans. Or Texans. Or Confederates. But we do not demand that people recognize their humanity over their nationhood. All the worse for humanity, of course, but such as it is.
If you vote based on ideas, it is indisputable that your vote has a virtually zero probability of being the marginal vote. So why would you vote? It costs you, presumably, a couple of hours you could have spent doing something else productive, perhaps even productive to the causes you support. If you are unenthusiastic about any of the candidates, why would you be any more likely to stay home than if you were very enthusiastic for one of the candidates, instead of merely voting for the one you dislike least?
Expressive voting as a hypothesis has the wonderful property of being able to explain voting behavior without complicated game-theoretic models of why people vote at all.
Isn't that more to do with demographics, though? Or do you mean purely in terms of, say, your probability of winning a lottery? How can you identify which was the "marginal vote" that caused an otherwise losing candidate to win/win enough votes not to be a loser (in alternative or proportional voting systems)?
As to demographics: I feel that's true more because the only demographic to consistently vote is seniors; if people my age were statistically more likely to vote, I doubt our vote "wouldn't matter."
If you do not grant an allowance of authority to government to act within the best interests of the governed then every decision requires near unanimous consent. More importantly though, if government reflects entirely the will of the governed then how do we prevent such horrors as Nazi Germany from re-emerging? There is some merit to the Tyranny of the majority arguments voiced within the original federalist and anti-federalist papers. There MUST be a quality that separates democracy from merely "mob rule." This doesn't necessarily mean it's found within our current interpretation of it. However, what defines paternalism?
When does a restriction become paternal by government? What qualities does it have? I see that term used repeatedly and I wonder now what salient qualia do illicit it? Because it seems to me it's often used whenever someone wants to label a restriction on their freedoms they may not like. However I'm sure there's something far more important to it then that, which I merely cannot see presently. So could you please specify?
In first world nations? Absolutely! but only when defined along the current political axis. Take violence against Occupy Wall St protesters. Considered absolutely legitimate by the majority of non-OWS sympathizers in a geopolitical sense. Why? Because OWS did not ascribe to current geopolitical norms. It was not Republican, it was not Democrat, and yet in America, a nation described by Democrat/Republican divisions. Similar in a way to say, the Kurds in Iraq who are neither Sunni nor Shi'a Muslims.
This also says nothing of third world countries ruled by one party. So really the only consistency here is that violence by a nation state is considered legitimate so long as there is no opposition force large and organized enough to mount a seemingly legitimate counterpoint. Otherwise, why is it okay for Iraq to hate on Kurds? Why can we hate on OWS protesters? Why can China kill those in Tibet? Each of these is considered legitimate, not to be confused with moral, but rather a legitimate exercise of a nation state's power that is not to be interfered with.
P.S. America is already devolving into those factions. Or if you haven't read yet on what happens to "Liberals" in states that were former confederacy areas I suggest you do. It's not all bad but there are a lot of really shocking stories of ostracism and violence. It's never really been dealt with. So I would fervently disagree with you on that.