Democrats are about to filibuster Neil Gorsuch. Republicans will respond with the “nuclear option” – they will change the rules of the Senate to allow Supreme Court Justices to be confirmed with a simple 51 vote majority (as opposed the 60 that are currently required to end debate and confirm a Supreme Court Justice).

Democrats won’t gain anything substantive by this. Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed – even though he is a hard-right ideologue and even though he refused to answer even the most simple questions during his confirmation hearings. Indeed, if after this fiasco, Justice Ginsburg dies or Justice Kennedy retires, then there will no longer be any reason for there to be even a hint of bipartisanship during the confirmation process and no reason for President Trump not to appoint someone even further to the right (or perhaps the alt-right) then soon-to-be Justice Gorsuch. If Democrats don’t filibuster Gorsuch this same outcome might still result if Republicans use the nuclear option to confirm President Trump’s next nominee – but it’s also possible that three or four Republicans might cross the aisle to preserve the filibuster if President Trump appoints an extremist to replace Justice Ginsburg.

Democrats suggest that they will benefit by filibustering Gorsuch because in a hypothetical future where they control both the presidency and the Senate, they will then be able to use the death of the filibuster to appoint hard-left ideologues to the Court without having to worry about Republican opposition. Of course the country as a whole is not hard left or hard right, so a guarantee of more extremists on the Court is of questionable benefit to the country. Moreover, Democrats do not currently control the Senate (and given which seats are at stake in 2018, are likely to be further away from control after the next election), and could not win the presidency during the last election against the least popular candidate in the history of polling. Even when, at some point in the future, the Democrats do control both the Senate and the presidency, the nuclear option will remain on the table if Republicans unreasonably filibuster qualified leftists.

Why then are the Democrats filibustering Gorsuch – a nominee that even they admit is qualified (if also an extremist)? Well, for one because they’re mad about the Republicans breaking tradition and stealing a Supreme Court seat from them. President Obama appointed Merrick Garland – a respected moderate who both parties admitted was extremely qualified to the open seat on the Supreme Court, and rather than confirming, or even voting on his nomination, the Republican-controlled Senate waited 293 days without having a single hearing, in order to keep the seat open and allow President Trump to appoint an ideologue. This broke all tradition, and, on the face of it, the Senate’s constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent to presidential nominations. Even more egregiously, multiple Republican Senators promised to block all future nominations and keep the seat open another 4 years if Hillary Clinton had been elected President – a decision that would have fundamentally broken the Court – our third branch of government.

That being said, while Democratic anger might be understandable, it doesn’t justify taking actions that harm the country. And truth be told, anger isn’t even the primary reason Democrats will filibuster Gorsuch. The primary reason is the rising power of the far left. Taking inspiration from the Tea Party movement – a movement made of the angry and the extreme that radicalized the Republican party while at the same time making it incapable of governing (witness the failure of the Republican healthcare bill) – the far left is taking action to radicalize the Democratic party. To the extreme left and extreme right “fighting” is evidence of ideological purity (their highest and only standard for a politician) and “governing” is evidence of complicity with the enemy (the 3/4 of the American people that are neither hard right nor hard left). There are leaders on the left who understand that filibustering Gorsuch will ultimately harm their own substantive goals – but between their desire to lead an angry base and the benefits of whipping up anger to increase donations, they are unwilling to be the cooler heads in the room.

Democrats are not alone, of course, in their willingness to push the Senate to extremes. Republicans will be the ones who actually implement the nuclear option and take the next step toward destroying the aspects of our government that protect minority rights and allow for the bipartisan compromises that reflect the desires of the large bulk of the American people. They say they are doing it because the Democrats carried out the nuclear option for other nominees in 2013. Democrats say that they did that in response to Republicans filibustered an unprecedented number of Obama appointees, in violation of an agreement limiting the filibuster of nominees to extreme circumstances – an agreement made in 2005, when the Republicans threatened the nuclear option in order to break a Democratic filibuster of 10 Bush nominees.

Both parties could point further back as well. The Democrats point to the Republicans blocking dozens and dozens of Clinton judges in order to keep those seats open for the Bush Administration to fill. The Republicans point to Roe v. Wade. The Democrats point to Citizens United.

Ultimately, both sides are increasingly willing to disregard precedent and process – the rules traditions that allow our government to function, in order to obtain short term wins for themselves. They do that because their base – the far left and the far right – both believe that the other side is the enemy and that winning is all that matters. If you’re fighting pure evil, what does it matter if you do some evil along the way?

That mindset though is not only destroying our government and our country, it is also wrong. The extremists may have taken control of our political parties, but they do not represent America. Half of voting Americans support Democrats and half support Republicans. Of those, many are not hardcore Republicans or Democrats, but moderates who are befuddled by having to reluctantly vote for their side’s extremists just because the other side’s extremists are even worse. Many Americans don’t vote at all – and most of them are also not extremists, but instead are undecided, apathetic, or just unwilling to choose between two sets of people who seem increasingly detached from reality or from the interests of our country.

How things happen matter. The American system of government is designed to prevent change from happening quickly. Federal laws have to be passed by two legislative bodies – each made up of Members with different constituencies – and signed by the President. Many things – from ratifying treaties, to changing the Constitution, to over-riding a presidential veto, to impeaching and removing a President require super majorities. Even when one party controls both the Congress and the presidency, the traditions of the Senate, chief among them the right to unlimited debate, otherwise known as the filibuster, ensure that the minority party can influence and sometimes block actions in the Senate.

This system allows a determined minority to stand athwart the tides of history and obstruct, delay, and stop a majority from imposing its will on our nation. Often this minority is wrong. And the outcome of this process is almost always ideologically impure. But the founders designed this system for a reason. A country must be made up of people who fundamentally believe in the same overarching goals. Temporary tyrannies imposed by a recent majority do not unite us – instead they only anger the other half of the population, delegitimizing our government and dividing our people. Our system provides a democratic way to work through these divides, to allow passions to cool, and to broker compromises that move our country forward united. But this system is only as strong as our politicians – who must resist the demands of their extreme supporters to break it.

Each time there is another escalation in the war between the two parties over who can obtain the next temporary political advantage by destroying a long-held tradition or rule that makes our democracy work, the aggressor justifies it by pointing to the previous acts of the other party. So long as both parties continue to treat governance as war, this escalation will continue.

Either party can break this cycle, by stepping back and acting in accordance with our rules and traditions even when the other party does not. This would require politicians with real courage though, not the pretend courage of taking an extremist position but the actual courage it takes to stand up to the extremists in their own party. Unfortunately, such courage is in short supply.

If there are a courageous few who are willing to stand up to the extremists, compromise is still possible. Democrats could allow Gorsuch to be confirmed, and Republicans could promise not to invoke the nuclear option should the Democrats filibuster someone ideologically equivalent to Gorsuch who President Trump appoints to fulfill the Kennedy or the Ginsburg seats.

This is a compromise that would require courage from only 5 Democrats (in addition to those who have already declared their opposition to a filibuster) and 3 Republicans. Unfortunately, I doubt there are 8 Senators with that much courage any more.

I do not believe the cooler heads will prevail, but I hope that I’m wrong. Both parties should step back from the brink and act first to defend the rules and traditions that made our country strong. Even if one party will not do so – the other party still should. Escalation may feel good and may satisfy the liberal or conservative base. But we are all Americans and when we hurt our country in order to hurt the other side, we hurt all of us.