How MAGA Uses “Both Sides” to Protect Authoritarianism

This isn’t symmetry, it's sabotage. “Both sides” rhetoric disguises authoritarian harm as democratic dysfunction.

Introduction: Set the Trap

We are told, over and over, like a civic lullaby: both sides are the problem. That American politics is a pendulum swinging wildly between two equally flawed poles. That partisanship is the poison and centrism the cure. But this narrative, so beloved by cable news hosts and cocktail moderates, conceals more than it reveals. It is not a map of the landscape, it is a trapdoor beneath it.

False equivalence is the seductive lie that every sin has a mirror. That for every authoritarian overreach on the right, there must be a radical excess on the left. It promises symmetry where none exists. And it’s not just intellectually lazy, it is functionally dangerous. Because in the pursuit of balance, it allows tyranny to dress itself in the garb of democracy and go unchallenged.

The illusion of symmetry isn't neutral; it is partisan in effect if not intent. When a political movement begins tearing down the guardrails of democratic society, attacking the judiciary, inciting violence, undermining elections, and critics respond with “yes, but both sides…,” they are not evening the score. They are sanding off the very edges that define democratic accountability.

But why does this narrative persist? The answer lies partly in psychology. Humans crave coherence, predictability, and fairness, even when none exist. The theory of system justification explains how people defend the status quo even when it harms them, because chaos threatens their sense of control (Jost et al., 2003). Right-Wing Authoritarianism helps explain why so many voters are willing to obey a strongman while projecting that authoritarianism onto others (Altemeyer, 1996). Social Dominance Orientation shows how the pursuit of hierarchy masquerades as meritocracy while systematically disenfranchising others (Pratto et al., 1994). These psychological mechanisms, fear of threat, desire for order, defense of inequality, form the emotional architecture of modern authoritarianism.

And so, when confronted with the grotesque spectacle of MAGA’s behavior, censoring books, criminalizing healthcare, rewriting history, many Americans retreat into the safety blanket of false equivalence. If both sides are bad, then no side needs to be chosen. No side needs to be condemned. No side needs to be fought.

But make no mistake: false equivalence does not stand outside the political battlefield. It takes sides. It rewards the side willing to break rules and punishes the one still trying to follow them.

This article will dismantle the myth that Democrats and MAGA are simply two ends of a democratic spectrum. One side still believes in democracy. The other is weaponizing its language while hollowing out its institutions. We begin, then, with the authoritarian’s favorite tactic: manufacture a threat, then promise to eliminate it.

1. Threat & Scapegoat

Authoritarians rarely begin by marching in jackboots. They start with fear, not of themselves, but of others. The minority. The deviant. The different. Once a population is convinced that a vulnerable group threatens their values, safety, or children, the tools of repression become not only permissible but righteous. And no group has been more strategically scapegoated in recent American politics than LGBTQ+ people, particularly transgender individuals.

In recent years, Republican-controlled state legislatures have unleashed a wave of laws rolling back LGBTQ+ rights, especially targeting transgender people. In 2023 alone, state lawmakers (overwhelmingly Republican) introduced a record 508 bills aimed at restricting LGBTQ rights, and 84 of those were enacted into law (ABC News, 2023). These include bans on gender-affirming health care for trans youth, prohibitions on transgender individuals using bathrooms or playing sports, censorship of LGBTQ topics in schools, and “religious freedom” exemptions to allow discrimination (ABC News, 2023).

Such laws directly harm LGBTQ citizens: for example, denying gender-affirming care is opposed by major medical associations due to evidence it increases depression and suicide risk among transgender youth, whereas providing that care improves mental health (ABC News, 2023). The ACLU and human rights groups have condemned these measures as a “devastating… assault” on the safety and dignity of LGBTQ people (ABC News, 2023), noting that threats and violence against the community have spiked alongside the legislative attacks (ABC News, 2023).

By contrast, Democratic-led governments have generally worked to expand LGBTQ protections. Democratic governors in states like Wisconsin, Kansas, and Kentucky vetoed anti-trans bills or pledged to block them (ABC News, 2023), and in 2023 several Democrat-controlled states (e.g. Minnesota, Michigan, New York, California) passed new laws safeguarding LGBTQ rights (such as bans on conversion therapy and inclusion of LGBTQ people in civil rights laws) (ABC News, 2023). At the federal level, Democrats in Congress have pushed for the Equality Act – a bill to outlaw LGBTQ discrimination nationwide – and reintroduced it amid the backlash, although it has stalled due to Republican opposition (ABC News, 2023).

This stark contrast shows that the two parties are not “equally bad” on LGBTQ issues: one side is predominantly responsible for hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills, while the other side is largely trying to stop them. The difference has real human impact, as policies of exclusion contribute to stigma, mental health crises, and diminished rights for a vulnerable minority.

From a psychological perspective, this weaponization of fear fits cleanly within the framework of Right-Wing Authoritarianism. Altemeyer (1996) outlined that authoritarian followers are highly susceptible to perceived threats and motivated to submit to authority figures who promise to eradicate them. The more exaggerated the threat, the more fervent the obedience. LGBTQ individuals, especially trans people, have been cynically framed as existential dangers to children, sports, bathrooms, and even freedom itself. It’s a grotesque inversion of reality, but one that activates deep fears about cultural decline, chaos, and norm violation, the bread and butter of authoritarian propaganda.

This also reflects authoritarian aggression, a key component of RWA, where aggression is sanctioned when it is directed toward people perceived to violate societal norms. Combine that with Social Dominance Orientation, a preference for hierarchical group structures and the subjugation of “inferior” groups, and you have the psychological foundation for cruelty masquerading as moral order (Pratto et al., 1994).

These attacks are not simply policy disagreements. They are the operationalizing of fear to justify exclusion, a manufactured moral panic that allows a party steeped in authoritarian instincts to cloak bigotry in the language of law. Meanwhile, the other side is attempting, imperfectly but sincerely, to protect those under siege.

And yet, we are told it’s “both sides.”

2. Order & Punishment

Every authoritarian movement promises safety, but always at someone else’s expense. They don’t offer justice. They offer control. And they dress that control in the robes of law and order. In the United States, this tactic has taken two forms: mass incarceration and reproductive domination. Both are framed as “necessary” for civil society. Both are rooted in fear. And both trace their political lineage to the modern right.

Mass Incarceration: The Myth of the Just Cage

Another area of divergent impact is criminal justice. Starting in the Reagan era, “tough-on-crime” and drug war policies (mostly championed by conservative politicians) led to an explosion in the U.S. prison population. The prison population truly exploded during President Ronald Reagan’s administration – doubling from about 329,000 inmates in 1980 to roughly 627,000 by 1988 (Brennan Center for Justice, 2021). This rise hit communities of color especially hard, as Black and Latino Americans were disproportionately targeted and incarcerated (Brennan Center for Justice, 2021). Reagan’s 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act exemplified the intentional racial harm baked into policy: it created a 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack vs. powder cocaine, leading to far harsher prison terms for crack (used more in poor Black communities) than for chemically identical powder cocaine (favored by affluent white users) (ACLU, 2021). Within four years of that law, the average federal drug sentence for Black defendants became 49% longer than for white defendants, up from an 11% gap before – a direct result of the racially skewed crack penalties (ACLU, 2021). In effect, federal prisons filled with low-level Black drug offenders serving long sentences, while more privileged offenders faced lesser punishment (ACLU, 2021). California’s “Three Strikes” laws to federal mandatory minimums (Brennan Center for Justice, 2021). The social harm has been enormous: generations of Black Americans were criminalized and imprisoned at far higher rates, devastating families and neighborhoods.

Today there is bipartisan acknowledgment that mass incarceration was a mistake (Brennan Center for Justice, 2021), and recent reforms (including by some Republican-led states) have slightly reduced prison populations (Brennan Center for Justice, 2021). But notably, it was largely Republican policies and politics that kicked off and sustained the prison boom. While Democrats like Bill Clinton did sign punitive laws (a point of criticism within the Democratic Party), the scale and intent of the assault on minority communities via the drug war was not equal on both sides. As the Brennan Center observes, politicians “from both parties” used fear and racialized rhetoric, but President Nixon (R) launched the War on Drugs and Reagan greatly accelerated it, doubling the prison population in eight years (Brennan Center for Justice, 2021). The resulting racial disparities in incarceration remain a lasting harm.

Political psychology explains how this could happen, not as a failure of reason, but a triumph of deeply ingrained psychological tendencies. Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) predicts a high level of submission to authority and a willingness to aggress against those seen as deviant or threatening. RWA is not merely a matter of personal belief; it is a motivated cognition that justifies harsh punishment as a moral necessity (Altemeyer, 1996). Combine that with Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), a psychological trait associated with support for group-based hierarchies,an d the result is a political worldview where imprisonment becomes not a last resort, but a righteous tool of social control (Pratto et al., 1994). When these two orientations converge in policymakers and their supporters, incarceration isn’t merely tolerated, it is celebrated.

Abortion Bans: Reproductive Control as Moral Order

Recent events have made the parties’ divergence on gender and reproductive rights especially clear. In June 2022, the conservative-majority Supreme Court (with Republican-appointed justices) overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion. Within a year of this decision (Dobbs v. Jackson), 13–14 Republican-led states enacted near-total abortion bans (AAMC, 2024), criminalizing abortion with few or no exceptions. By early 2024, 14 states had full bans in effect (all of them governed by Republican legislatures or governors) (AAMC, 2024). The impact on women’s health and autonomy has been profound: in those states, millions of women lost access to safe abortion, forcing some to continue dangerous pregnancies or travel hundreds of miles for care. Doctors report that bans have led to delays in treating miscarriages and pregnancy complications, putting patients’ lives at risk – essentially turning back the clock on women’s healthcare.

Economically, abortion bans also hurt women’s life trajectories. A long-term study by UCSF found that women who were denied a wanted abortion subsequently experienced significantly worse outcomes: they were 3 times more likely to be unemployed and 4 times more likely to fall into poverty compared to women who received an abortion (UCSF, 2022). They also had higher rates of serious health issues (like life-threatening pregnancy complications and chronic pain) and were more likely to stay tethered to abusive partners (UCSF, 2022). In short, policies that force women to carry unwanted pregnancies lead to greater poverty and health risks for those women and their children (UCSF, 2022). These harms are not accidental – they were foreseen by experts but ignored in the rush to satisfy an ideological agenda.

On the other side, Democratic-led states have responded by enshrining abortion rights in state law or even state constitutions (e.g. in 2022, voters in Kansas – a Republican-majority state with many Democratic voters – defeated an anti-abortion amendment; in Michigan, California, and Vermont, pro-choice amendments passed). Nationally, Democrats have nearly uniformly opposed abortion bans and introduced bills to restore Roe’s protections, though these fail due to Republican opposition in Congress. The stark partisan divide is undeniable: virtually all abortion bans post-Dobbs were passed by Republicans, while Democrats uniformly voted against such bans and sought to protect reproductive freedom. Again, “both sides” did not inflict equal harm – the curtailment of women’s rights has been a predominantly Republican-driven effort, with far-reaching negative consequences for women’s health, economic status, and equality.

This authoritarian urge to regulate women’s bodies is no psychological mystery. RWA research shows that rigid adherence to traditional gender roles and submission to religious or nationalistic authority often leads to hostility toward reproductive freedom. In authoritarian worldviews, the family must be hierarchically ordered, with men as leaders and women as vessels. Any disruption to that hierarchy, whether through feminism, LGBTQ rights, or abortion access, is perceived not just as social change, but as existential collapse. And those who believe they are protecting “God’s order” will inflict extraordinary cruelty without a second thought, because cruelty, in their view, is moral.

This is the paradox of authoritarianism: it enforces disorder in the name of order. It builds cages and calls them sanctuaries. It denies autonomy and calls it virtue. It strips women and minorities of rights and calls it justice. The difference between parties here isn’t stylistic, it’s structural. One seeks punishment as policy. The other seeks repair.

But still, we’re told: both sides.

3. Rigging the Referee

Authoritarians don’t need to burn ballots when they can rewrite the rulebook. The modern right has learned that democracy can be dismantled not by rejecting it outright, but by appearing to administer it, while quietly swapping out the mechanics underneath. If “law and order” is the authoritarian's promise, then “election integrity” is its disguise. The goal isn't to win fair elections. It's to make fair elections unwinnable.

The Suppression Blueprint

Republican policies in recent decades have also undermined voting rights and democratic representation, in ways that deliberately disadvantage certain social groups (particularly racial minorities). A key turning point was the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder ruling (decided 5–4 by conservative justices) which gutted the Voting Rights Act’s “preclearance” protections. Within hours of that ruling, Texas (under Republican leadership) announced a strict voter ID law that had been previously blocked as discriminatory (VPM News, 2023), and Alabama moved forward with a similar ID law. In the decade since Shelby, a wave of voting restrictions has swept GOP-controlled states. Notably, since the 2020 election, at least 104 restrictive voting laws have been enacted across 33 states – mostly Republican-controlled (VPM News, 2023).

These include voter ID requirements, cuts to early voting, purges of voter rolls, postal ballot limitations, and more. Such measures often disproportionately impact Black, Latino, young, and low-income voters. For example, strict ID laws can disenfranchise voters without driver’s licenses (who are more likely minority or urban dwellers), and reduced early voting or mail voting disproportionately burdens those who cannot take time off on Election Day. Republican lawmakers justify these rules with claims of “election security,” often invoking false allegations of fraud (as with President Trump’s baseless claims about 2020) (VPM News, 2023). But numerous court findings and studies have noted a racial and partisan intent behind many of these laws – they target demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic. In other words, these policies intentionally seek to entrench one party’s power by making it harder for certain citizens to vote. This is a clear harm to the fundamental right to vote and to fair representation, falling hardest on minority communities (the very groups the Voting Rights Act originally aimed to protect).

Democrats, in contrast, have generally pushed measures to expand voting access – for instance, many Democrat-led states have adopted automatic voter registration, universal mail-in ballots, longer early voting periods, and restored voting rights to ex-felons. At the federal level, Democrats passed H.R.1 (For the People Act) and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in the House in recent years, which would restore and expand voter protections, but Republicans in the Senate blocked these bills. The difference is clear: one party is largely trying to add barriers to voting (often in ways known to target minorities), while the other is trying to remove barriers and make voting easier. The “both sides” argument fails here – the current assault on voting rights is concentrated in one side’s actions. Indeed, analyses show that since Shelby, all the states formerly under preclearance (mostly in the South) enacted new restrictions once freed of oversight, and those were all under Republican control (VPM News, 2023). The harm from these policies – voters turned away for lack of strict ID, reduced polling places in minority areas causing long lines, purged voters unable to vote, etc. – is real and intentional.

It’s worth noting that threats to democracy also include extreme gerrymandering (which Republicans have taken to new extremes in states like North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Texas, diluting the voting power of Democratic-leaning minority voters) and tolerance of anti-democratic extremism (such as many Republicans’ refusal to certify the 2020 election results). While gerrymandering is practiced by both parties to a degree, in the 2010–2020 cycle the most egregious partisan maps were drawn by GOP legislatures, creating structural biases in the House and state legislatures. Again, the effects are not symmetrical – one party has more systematically sought to entrench minority rule (government control without majority public support) through manipulations of electoral rules.

The Psychology of Suppression

To the authoritarian mind, democracy is not sacred. It is strategic. Voting becomes a vulnerability to be gamed, not a right to be honored. System justification theory helps explain how voters can rationalize, even support, these anti-democratic tactics. People will often defend existing hierarchies even when they are unfair, because the alternative (uncertainty, instability, change) is more threatening (Jost et al., 2003). So when voters see others disenfranchised, they may believe it’s justified, that those people weren’t “real” Americans anyway, or didn’t follow the rules, or were part of some corrupt machine. It doesn’t feel like cheating; it feels like restoring order.

This is where Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) converge. The authoritarian follower doesn’t need proof of fraud , they need the feeling of threat. The social dominator doesn’t need fairness, they need power. Combine the two, and you get what researchers call “Double Highs”, individuals high in both RWA and SDO, who are the most supportive of anti-democratic policies, especially when those policies preserve their group’s dominance (Duckitt & Sibley, 2010).

These people don’t just tolerate voter suppression. They cheer it.

And still, we are told: “both sides.”

4. Looting the Treasury

Authoritarianism doesn’t just come in uniforms and rallies. Sometimes it wears a pinstripe suit and calls itself “fiscal responsibility.” While the public is distracted by scapegoats and cultural grievance, another, quieter project is underway: siphoning wealth upward and hollowing out the social contract. And for over four decades, this redistribution by design has followed a familiar partisan pattern, one where cruelty is budgeted and inequality is the point.

The Economics of Inequality: By Design, Not Accident

From the Reagan years onward, Republican economic policy has centered on tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation, justified by “trickle-down” economics. The research record shows these policies have consistently increased inequality and failed to deliver broad-based benefits. Reagan’s massive 1981 tax cuts (which halved top income tax rates) coincided with policies to weaken labor unions and deregulate finance – and these were followed by a sharp rise in income inequality that has persisted (Jacobs, 2014). A longitudinal analysis by sociologists finds that shifting from a Democratic to a Republican president after 1980 is associated with a ~3% increase in income inequality (as measured by family income distribution) (Jacobs, 2014). The study attributes this to deliberate policy choices: Republicans embraced an anti-union, pro-rich agenda – for example, Reagan’s administration aggressively undermined unions, leading to a steep drop in unionization that removed a key force for higher wages among working-class Americans (Jacobs, 2014). Reagan and subsequent GOP presidents also pushed tax changes that favored the affluent (cuts to top rates, capital gains, estate taxes) while sometimes raising burdens on lower-income groups (Jacobs, 2014). The result was that under Republican leadership, the rich pulled farther ahead, and the economic distance between the wealthy and the rest grew (Jacobs, 2014).

Democratic administrations, in contrast, have tended to raise taxes on the rich or at least not cut them as aggressively, and to support higher minimum wages and other redistributive measures. For instance, President Bill Clinton in 1993 raised the top income tax rate, and President Obama in 2012 let high-end Bush tax cuts expire – modest steps that slightly reined in deficits and inequality. Perhaps more telling is the overall economic performance: by many metrics, the U.S. economy has performed better under Democratic presidents than Republican presidents since Reagan. Growth is a complex phenomenon with many factors, but a report by the non-partisan Joint Economic Committee documents a striking pattern: of the last 11 U.S. recessions, 10 began under Republican presidents (U.S. Congress JEC, 2024). Meanwhile, job creation has heavily skewed toward Democratic presidencies. Since the early 1980s, total job growth under Democratic presidents has exceeded 50 million jobs, compared to about 17 million under Republican presidents (U.S. Congress JEC, 2024). This includes the fact that Republican George W. Bush presided over weak job growth and the Great Recession (2008), and Republican Donald Trump actually left office with fewer jobs in America than when he started (partly due to the pandemic crash) (U.S. Congress JEC, 2024). In contrast, Democratic presidents (Clinton, Obama, Biden) oversaw periods of significant employment gains and lower unemployment on average (U.S. Congress JEC, 2024).

Democrats also tend to invest in the middle class (e.g. Biden’s infrastructure and industrial bills, or Obama’s stimulus), whereas Republicans often promote austerity or corporate-focused tax breaks. Notably, the national debt has ballooned largely due to unpaid-for tax cuts under Republicans – partisan tax cuts benefiting the wealthy and big corporations have been a major driver of debt in the past two decades (U.S. Congress JEC, 2024). The 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts and the 2017 Trump tax cut together added trillions to the debt while skewing the benefits heavily to the top 1% (for example, an analysis showed 83% of the 2017 tax law’s long-term tax benefits flow to the wealthiest 1% of households) (CBPP, 2023). In sum, Republican economic policy since Reagan – often dubbed “neoliberal” or “supply-side” – has reliably meant greater gains for the rich, stagnant wages for the working class, and larger deficits, exacerbating income inequality (Jacobs, 2014).

Democratic policies have not eliminated inequality (indeed, Clinton’s own embrace of financial deregulation in the 1990s also contributed to inequality (Jacobs, 2014)), but Democrats have been more likely to pursue progressive taxation and social spending that mitigate inequality. The differences are measurable in outcomes like income growth by income level: political economist Larry Bartels found that historically (post-war to 2005), lower- and middle-income Americans saw higher real income growth under Democratic presidents, while under Republican presidents, the richest saw vastly larger gains than everyone else – reinforcing inequality. Thus, the idea that “both sides” produce the same economic results is false: inequality has consistently risen faster under Republican leadership (by design), whereas periods of narrowing gaps or broad-based growth have tended to align with Democratic governance (Jacobs, 2014).

The Withered Safety Net

A telling case study of how policy choices translate to harm or help for vulnerable people is the fate of the social safety net. In the Reagan era, Republicans characterized welfare and food assistance as fostering “dependency,” and substantially cut programs for the poor. Perhaps the most consequential shift came in 1996, when a Republican-led Congress (with Newt Gingrich at the helm) passed welfare reform, signed by Democrat Bill Clinton. This law – the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program – imposed work requirements and time limits on cash aid and turned funding into a fixed block grant (which does not automatically expand during recessions or with population need). The result has been a far weaker safety net for very poor families. In 1995 (pre-reform), about 3/4 of poor families in some states received cash assistance; today, in many states, fewer than 1 in 10 poor families get aid (NC Newsline, 2024).

Benefits are also meager and have eroded over time (never adjusting for inflation) – for example, a TANF cash benefit for a family of three is often only ~16% of the federal poverty line, far lower than it was in the 1980s (NC Newsline, 2024). Studies show that after the 1996 welfare overhaul, deep poverty (families living at less than 50% of the poverty line) actually became more prevalent. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the number of children in “deep poverty” rose after welfare reform – by 2016, more children were in extreme poverty, in part due to the loss of robust cash assistance (NC Newsline, 2024). In other words, the 1996 policy changes “contributed to a rise in nationwide deep poverty” (NC Newsline, 2024).

This illustrates an intentional harm: lawmakers sought to dramatically shrink welfare rolls, and they succeeded – but the cost was pushing the poorest families further into destitution, with little to no income. Supporters claimed more single mothers would find jobs, but many who left welfare (or were deterred from applying) remained in poverty, often cycling through unstable, low-wage work. The data show that extreme child poverty and material hardship (like hunger and utility shutoffs) worsened for the most vulnerable families post-reform (NC Newsline, 2024).

Healthcare as Gatekeeping

A more recent clear example is the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 and its Medicaid expansion. The ACA, passed by a Democratic president and Congress, expanded Medicaid to millions of low-income adults, substantially reducing the uninsured rate and improving access to care. However, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority made the expansion optional for states. As a result, many Republican-led states initially refused to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government would pay nearly all the costs.

This decision had life-and-death consequences: research shows that Medicaid expansion saved lives, while non-expansion left people uninsured and at higher risk. A comprehensive study in 2023 found that states which expanded Medicaid saw a significant reduction in mortality – by one estimate, about 27,400 lives were saved from 2010–2022 due to Medicaid expansion (TIME, 2024). Conversely, states that rejected expansion (concentrated in the South with Republican governors/legislatures) for many years left millions without insurance; economists from the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that restricting Medicaid “has the real human cost of more people dying than otherwise would have” (TIME, 2024).

The refusal to expand was often openly ideological – some Republican officials said they didn’t want to “expand welfare” or hoped to see the ACA fail. In tangible terms, this meant poorer adults in those states had no coverage for preventative care, cancer treatments, or chronic disease management that their neighbors in expansion states received – a clear instance of policy harming health outcomes.

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The Psychology of Economic Cruelty

What explains a political movement that repeatedly engineers policies to favor elites while stripping protections from the vulnerable? The answer is Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), the psychological desire to maintain group-based hierarchies. High-SDO individuals believe the strong should dominate the weak, and their policy preferences reflect that belief (Pratto et al., 1994). Combine this with system justification, and you have voters who rationalize economic cruelty as “deserved”, the poor are lazy, the uninsured are irresponsible, the hungry are “dependents.” This is how inequality is moralized, and weaponized.

False equivalence erases the intent behind these policies. It pretends the results were accidents. They weren’t.

But still, we are told, “both sides.”

5. The Bench That Tilts the Field

It is often said that the courts are the last line of defense against tyranny. But what happens when the court itself becomes the architect of it?

In the conservative imagination, the Supreme Court is the impartial referee of the American experiment. In reality, the modern Court has become an ideological instrument, a lever pulled by one political faction to entrench its worldview under the guise of neutral constitutionalism. And like all authoritarian tactics masked in legality, it is far more dangerous precisely because it pretends to be fair.

The Supreme Court’s Role in Social and Economic Harm

When examining intentional harm in policy, it’s important to include the influence of the U.S. Supreme Court, which in the past few decades has often had a conservative majority handing down decisions aligned with Republican policy goals. These decisions have had far-reaching negative societal impacts:

• Campaign Finance and Political Power: In Citizens United v. FEC (2010), the conservative justices struck down limits on independent political spending by corporations and unions. This unleashed a flood of money (especially from billionaires and corporate interests) into elections, amplifying the political voice of the wealthy. In the decade after Citizens United, undisclosed “dark money” groups spent about $963 million in elections – compared to only $129 million in the decade prior (OpenSecrets, 2020). Outside spending by super PACs and independent groups has skyrocketed, often drowning out candidates’ own messaging (OpenSecrets, 2020). Notably, Republican candidates and causes have benefited more from this big-money era – conservative outside groups outspent liberal groups by roughly $2.8 billion to $1.7 billion in the decade after the ruling (OpenSecrets, 2020). The result is a democracy more influenced by wealthy donors and special interests (like fossil fuel companies, pharmaceutical lobbyists, and ultra-rich ideologues). This tilts policy outcomes toward those interests, which can harm the public at large. Both sides are not equally culpable here: the decision was delivered by the conservative bloc, long pushed by Republican-aligned advocacy, and most GOP politicians celebrate the ruling while most Democrats condemn it. The harm – corrosive effects of money in politics and reduced transparency – stems from a judicial philosophy favoring deregulation of campaign finance.

• Voting Rights: As discussed, Shelby County v. Holder (2013) – a 5-4 conservative decision – nullified the preclearance formula of the Voting Rights Act, enabling a rush of state voting restrictions. The Court majority (all appointed by Republican presidents) argued racism in voting was mostly solved; the immediate response by GOP states enacting ID laws, cutting voter registration drives, etc., proved otherwise (VPM News, 2023). Later, in 2021–2022, the Court further weakened the Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial gerrymandering and vote dilution. The cumulative effect is less protection for minority voters’ rights, entrenching discriminatory electoral systems. Again, this harm – making voting harder for certain citizens – is linked to the ideology of the justices (conservative) and the party that appointed them.

• Labor Rights: In Janus v. AFSCME (2018), the conservative Court ruled 5-4 to outlaw “agency fees” for public-sector unions (fees that non-members paid to contribute to collective bargaining costs). This decision – long sought by Republican anti-union activists – financially crippled many public unions, reducing their membership and resources (for example, AFSCME… lost over 200,000 fee-payers and members in the years after Janus). By weakening unions, Janus contributed to lower bargaining power for workers and likely dampened wage growth for teachers, firefighters, and other public servants. Strong unions historically reduced inequality; undermining them, which has been a consistent Republican policy objective, has the opposite effect. Janus is a prime example of using the Court to achieve what legislatures (mostly Republican-led) had in many states already pursued with “right-to-work” laws – the end result being lower union density and therefore lower worker power. This benefits corporations and strains the middle class. No Democratic lawmakers or leaders supported the Janus outcome, whereas it was celebrated in Republican circles.

• Reproductive Rights: The Dobbs decision (2022) overturning Roe v. Wade was mentioned above – it was decided by the six conservative justices (all GOP-appointed), over the dissent of the three liberal justices. The direct consequence is that millions of women lost a 50-year constitutional right, and many have since suffered health emergencies or been forced to give birth against their will. The Court’s action enabled Republican state lawmakers to impose those severe bans. Thus, the conservative Court majority is directly complicit in harms like women with ectopic pregnancies being denied prompt care, or child rape victims being forced to carry pregnancies in states like Missouri or Ohio. The intentionality is again evident: the result aligns with a long-term Republican policy aim (ban abortion), achieved through judicial appointments. Meanwhile, Democratic-led states and Congress members have been scrambling to protect reproductive healthcare (e.g. setting up funds to aid interstate travel for abortions, attempting to codify Roe federally – which Republicans block).

• Civil Rights and Discrimination: The current 6-3 conservative Court has also curtailed affirmative action in education (the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions rulings ended race-conscious college admissions, which many fear will reduce opportunities for Black and Hispanic students) and carved out exemptions allowing businesses to deny services to LGBTQ people (303 Creative v. Elenis, 2023). Each of these reflects a regression in civil rights protections, largely aligned with conservative ideological goals. While opinions on affirmative action vary, it’s notable that the push to end it came almost entirely from the political right; the harm will likely be fewer minorities in elite colleges and subsequently leadership positions – reinforcing racial disparities. On LGBTQ discrimination, the Court’s direction (allowing some religious or free-speech based refusals) undercuts anti-discrimination principles that Democrats generally uphold in law.

Authoritarian Legalism in Action

What binds all these decisions together is not just conservative ideology, it is authoritarian legalism: the use of court rulings to give undemocratic outcomes a veneer of legality. The authoritarian doesn’t reject institutions; he hollow them out and wears them like a skin suit.

The conservative justices who handed down these rulings were not neutral umpires. They were deliberately chosen by Republican presidents and vetted by right-wing legal networks to enact outcomes the GOP had struggled to achieve legislatively. It is judicial capture, not judicial review.

And behind this is a deeper psychological pattern: system justification. Conservative voters and leaders often justify these rulings, even those that harm women, minorities, workers, or the poor, because the outcomes restore perceived moral or social order. This is especially true when layered with Social Dominance Orientation, which sees hierarchical inequality not as a bug, but as a feature, a sign that things are working as they should (Pratto et al., 1994).

False equivalence collapses under the weight of this record. The Court has become the institutionalized weapon of one movement, and its rulings have systematically harmed the rights, power, and well-being of marginalized Americans.

But still, we are told, “both sides.”

6. How “Both Sides” Became a Shield

False equivalence is not just a lazy argument, it is a weapon. In the hands of those seeking to defend the indefensible, it becomes a rhetorical force field, a way to neutralize accountability by drawing an imaginary line of symmetry between two profoundly unequal phenomena. MAGA partisans, and the broader American right, have mastered this technique: when confronted with racial discrimination, they pivot to affirmative action; when pressed on authoritarian overreach, they retort with vague allusions to “Democratic hypocrisy”; when their candidate incites violence or dismantles norms, they whisper solemnly, “Both sides are corrupt.”

But this isn’t a good-faith misunderstanding of political nuance, it’s a calculated maneuver. The goal is to blur distinctions, not clarify them. It’s to make people throw up their hands and declare, “They’re all the same,” when in reality, one side is actively dismantling democratic safeguards and weaponizing disinformation, while the other, flawed though it may be, is generally trying to preserve them.

The Psychological Machinery Behind False Equivalence

The success of this tactic lies partly in human psychology. Cognitive shortcuts, known as heuristics, make symmetrical explanations feel intuitively fair. It’s easier to believe that every group shares equal blame than to confront the discomforting truth that one group may be deliberately eroding foundational rights.

Research into collective narcissism reveals how this works at the group level. When people are deeply fused with their political identity, especially one that frames itself as under siege, they become hypersensitive to criticism and more likely to perceive opposing groups as morally corrupt (Golec de Zavala & Lantos, 2009). To admit fault, even abstractly, feels like betrayal. In this context, invoking “both sides” becomes a psychological salve, it offers moral absolution while maintaining group loyalty.

Compounding this, right-wing authoritarian followers tend to exhibit cognitive rigidity and a higher need for order (Altemeyer, 1996). These traits make them particularly prone to adopting simplified narratives that reaffirm in-group superiority. False equivalence becomes an ideological tool, not merely a rhetorical one, it prevents dissonance by suggesting all moral failings are evenly distributed, even when one side is punching down and the other is calling it out.

The Bullshit Factor: Why Facts Don't Matter

In a political environment dominated by emotional reasoning, bullshit spreads faster than facts. Pennycook et al. (2015) found that individuals less inclined toward analytical thinking are more likely to believe pseudo-profound but meaningless statements. This is especially relevant when considering how slogans like “What about Hillary?” or “Obama did it too” can derail complex conversations with misleading but emotionally resonant retorts.

Importantly, susceptibility to this kind of rhetorical nonsense correlates with traits like right-wing authoritarianism and conspiratorial thinking (Pennycook et al., 2015). These traits do not distribute evenly across the political spectrum. The notion that “everyone is equally biased” may feel safe, but it is statistically untrue. Some groups are demonstrably more vulnerable to disinformation, less willing to revise beliefs in light of evidence, and more likely to reject out-group perspectives (Kahne & Bowyer, 2017).

Manufactured Myths and Political Gaslighting

This false equivalence strategy extends to policy debates as well. Take the GOP’s ongoing efforts to suppress the vote, especially among marginalized communities. When called out, Republican lawmakers often point to isolated examples of Democratic gerrymandering or historic wrongs committed by southern Democrats, conveniently ignoring that those Democrats were conservatives in all but name, and that the parties have long since realigned. It is rhetorical sleight of hand: replacing timelines with talking points.

Similarly, MAGA partisans frame their rejection of election results as justified skepticism, ignoring that the effort to overturn the 2020 election was unprecedented in its scale and coordination. Equating that with, say, isolated protest slogans about “not my president” in 2016 is not just dishonest, it’s historical malpractice.

As Moffitt (2016) explains, modern populists thrive by staging perpetual conflict with institutions, even as they infiltrate and hollow them out from within. When caught, they point fingers outward. The logic becomes recursive: if everyone’s corrupt, then no one’s accountable. The more outrageous the act, the more useful “both sides” becomes as a smoke screen.

The Price of Equivocation

This strategic ambiguity corrodes public understanding. A 2017 study found that false news spreads significantly faster and reaches more people than factual reporting, especially among politically polarized individuals (Vosoughi, Roy, & Aral, 2018). Those who share misinformation often aren’t seeking truth, they’re seeking confirmation, solidarity, and psychological security. And when “both sides” narratives dominate, even moderates are lulled into a cynical stupor that treats active harm and passive error as moral twins.

This is not merely a culture war problem, it’s a structural threat to democratic stability. When authoritarian actors can escape scrutiny by invoking their enemies' imagined sins, the public loses its ability to discern danger. The result is not balance. It’s impunity.

7. Conclusion

The Parallel That Breaks the Republic

There is no balance on a tilted scale. What we are witnessing in modern American politics is not the dysfunction of two equally culpable parties, but the corrosion of one by a will to dominate, deflect, and destroy. The "both sides" narrative, so comforting in its symmetry, so seductive in its simplicity, collapses under the weight of evidence, history, and lived consequence. This is not a political spectrum. It is a fault line, and one side is actively trying to crack it open.

We have seen, in painstaking detail, that Republican-led policies since the Reagan era have not simply been conservative, they have been structurally regressive, strategically cruel, and increasingly authoritarian in style and substance. They have slashed taxes for the rich under the guise of freedom, while shackling the poor with austerity and blame. They have dismantled civil rights protections and weaponized the judiciary to suppress votes, control women’s bodies, and silence labor. They have flooded the discourse with propaganda and bullshit, appealing to grievance and fear rather than reason and fact.

This is not a mirror image of Democratic excess. It is a hijacking of democracy itself. And yet, in the face of such clarity, too many Americans retreat to the easy fiction that all politics is theater and all players equally corrupt. But neutrality in the face of inequality is complicity. False equivalence does not elevate dialogue, it euthanizes it.

To mistake the party fighting to expand voting access, increase healthcare coverage, and tax the rich a bit more fairly for the party banning books, curbing speech, and criminalizing autonomy is not balance, it is blindness. And blindness, in a democracy, is fatal.

Let us be plain: democracies do not die because tyrants rise. They die because good people look away. Because they cannot tell the difference between a flawed reformer and a demagogue. Because they let “both sides” bury the truth in noise.

So we are left with a choice. Not between left and right, but between democratic vigilance and democratic decay. The parallel ends here. One path leads to pluralism, fallible and unfinished. The other leads to the consolidation of power by those who fear the future and resent the present. There is no middle ground between authoritarianism and the messy, glorious experiment of self-government.

And there never was.

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