According to one Web site, “the Internet retched” when the public learned that Senior White House Adviser Stephen Miller had married Katie Waldman, Vice President Mike Pence’s press secretary. But for most Americans, it was the Twitterati’s vicious mocking of the newlyweds that proved nauseating — and was all too symptomatic of our polarization.
Miller is one of the more controversial members of the administration. President Trump’s critics have (preposterously) labeled the Jewish adviser a white nationalist over his advocacy for reduced immigration. His bride was similarly lambasted when, while serving at the Department of Homeland Security, she had the unenviable job of justifying the separation of families of illegal immigrants at the border.
As far as Trump detractors were concerned, the match was made in hell. The fact that the nuptials took place at the Trump International Hotel with the president in attendance further infuriated the Twittersphere.
Most Americans agree with the basic thrust of Trump’s policy: that illegal immigration should be stopped. Yet Miller’s undeniable animus against immigrants, including refugees and those who arrive legally, has never been helpful to his cause.
But you don’t have to think well of Trump or even Miller to be put off by the no-holds-barred abuse the newlyweds received from social media and the mainstream press.
Stories about the pair’s coming together invariably focused on ideology — rather than love. On Twitter, former President George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer and fervent Never-Trumper Richard Painter called Miller “our Joseph Goebbels” and speculated about the bride: “Will she be our Magda Goebbels?” Filmmaker and sometime NYU teacher Barbara Malmet asked: “Is your wedding dress made from the tears of traumatized immigrant children?”
Talk about cruel tribalism. Then again, these are the times we live in: Political polarization is so deep that even and perhaps especially marriage and family are increasingly viewed through an ideological lens. Liberals can’t imagine marrying deplorable conservatives, so they pour scorn on conservative marriages.
Over the course of a half-century, the once-vast share of Americans who didn’t want their children marrying outside their race or faith has declined exponentially, according to long-term tracking polls. But the one prejudice that has shot up is resistance to marrying someone affiliated with a different political party.
By 2016, as Gallop reported, nearly two-thirds of those polled opposed political intermarriage. That’s more than double the number of those who held that opinion in 1958. In other words, the share of Americans with hostile views on political intermarriage is now far larger than those who feel the same way about race or faith.
Politics now plays the same role in American life once reserved for religion. And in this hyper-partisan moment — with the nation split between Republicans and Democrats and pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions — the divide cuts right through how we date and marry and even think about family.
So it’s no surprise that most dating apps and online services now let their customers screen out prospective soul mates by political affiliation.
There is a tragic element to this. Strong political differences can complicate relationships. But in the long run, political heat will dissipate and ideological arguments will be regarded as trivial as couples navigate the far more difficult challenges of rearing children, financing a family and just learning to live with each other’s limitations.
But as the #MillerWedding brouhaha shows, we are allowing our toxic partisan anger to poison our discourse about matrimony. Treating the differences between liberals and conservatives or those with differing views about Trump as an unbridgeable gap between two warring political tribes reinforces our inability to listen to our neighbors and friends with opposing ideas or to credit them with good motives.
The transformation of what — in a gentler era — used to be amicable if sometimes spirited differences over politics into a latter-day version of the Montagues and the Capulets or even the Hatfields and the McCoys makes America a much more ungovernable and unhappy place.
While perhaps only another Trump supporter would be happy marrying someone like Stephen Miller, we’d all be better off if politics stopped being a deal-breaker for dates and marriages. And for heaven’s sake, let the Millers enjoy their new life together.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org. Twitter: @JonathanS_Tobin