The loss of religiosity in modern democracies is not accidental, but is not necessarily enforced by some anti-christ movement. It comes naturally with progress when societies, like in Western Europe, become more educated and less susceptible to superstition. The reverse process of christianization is, on the other hand, not a natural process. It requires the use of the power of state to enforce “christian values”, re-invent christian ideas and customs as state values. Of course, at the expense of all other religions and agnostic ideologies.
So, at the end, the only alternative to liberal democracy is not communism, but religious autocracy, which in turn changes into fascism.
7
There is a conservative myth that liberals uniquely expanded the set of rights protected under the Constitution as Christopher Caldwell claims. But look at recent religious liberty and gun rights. The right wing on the Supreme Court totally reinvented religious liberty, with Scalia even turning his own opinion upside down. Now the Court claims the Constitution somehow privileges the particular beliefs of right wing Christianity. (In a prior case, where Scalia found no protection for religious liberty, the issue involved was Native American religion.) The newly defined "right" of religious liberty was activated only as a weapon to deny rights to others. Similarly, the Heller case discovered a new right to gun ownership that 200 plus years of Supreme Court cases never found. In this instance. the right wing bloc on the Court literally weaponized a political viewpoint with Constitutional protection that has no basis in the original meaning of the text in the Constitution. The rhetoric of gun rights often threatens the very notion of democracy with the attitude if elections don't go the "right" way there is a "Second Amendment solution." There is polarization because others have demanded that they have the same rights as white men, and the militant resistance of some white men to recognizing the rights of others. I guess conservative "originalism" means that originally only white man had rights, therefore any recognition of the rights of others is unconstitutional.
8
Ideologues don't make good friends or partners. Their voices have been magnified to an unhealthy degree in our political life. If one mentions compromise (which is part on any healthy relationship) the ideologues cry "murder" immediately. On both sides. Ideologies have a place, to help us think things through. But they don't work well in the real world. Ideology does not equal reality. (Here be dragons!). Real compromise, like in a good marriage, takes a lot of work and can be hard. Its absence has taken us to a frightening place. I'm not sure how we got here, but I wish for a different way.
4
Tsk, tsk, Mr. Douthat. The conceit in your’s and the cited works is thinking that there has ever been anything except polarization in the US. In fact, our history is marked by the very few occasions when there wasn’t polarization. Only the Era of Good Feeling, WWII, and briefly after 9/11 come readily to mind.
Okay, I get it. Conflict sells, so commercially you and the other authors are off the psychological hook. We are not in special times. Just the same old times that try men’s souls.
1
An interesting take.
Reading between the lines, Caldwell is a supporter of what is described as the First Constitution.
Under that Constitution, voting is limited to
White
Males
Over 21 years of age
and
Owning Substantial Property
No thank you.
Dan Kravitz
7
Two Constitutions, I think not. The original was founded on the principal that all men were created equal. This leaves no room for interpretation. Conservative, liberal or centrist (whatever that means), religious, nonbelievers need to agree on the truth instead of fabrications and outright lies.
1
I like the physical side of Mr. Douthat's model of the "Multipolarized America". Not surprising for a country made of diverse ethnic, religious, and cultural elements. Another aspect of polarization has lately arisen between the omnivores and militant vegans, between the radical Islamo-socialist Democrats and the reasonable center, and between the adherents of the 2nd Amendment and its touchy-feely opponents.
1
One important point that is not really addressed in this review is that one reason the judicial system has became so involved in social issues is due to the senate filibuster. Sensible legislation granting equality on minority issues or setting national abortion policy has been/is frequently blocked- particularly, but not exclusively, by the senators from The South. The filibuster essential dis-empowered the senate AND the whole legislative branch and the judiciary was put in an uncomfortable position of appearing to legislate morality, which delegitimized both institutions. From what we are seeing now I the judiciary is now the verge of being delegitimized as well. Ironically, John Roberts seems to understand this but given the recent ideological Supreme Court appointments, he may not be able to do anything about it. That would leave an all powerful executive. This may excite certain conservatives/reactionaries now, but if a Hugo Chavez type executive comes to power, they may rue the day...
Interesting read but I don't see many polarization's in the U.S. only one. Today's date is it A.D. or C.E. ?
The polarisation of politics is a global phenomena, America is not unique in this, so I wonder how useful it is to attempt an explanation based upon developments in US politics and interpretations of the constitution.
There appears to be an almost pathological human propensity to say/think, "I'm right and you're wrong." This binary reduction is manifest in many of facets of our lives, exacerbated by 'group differences' and the injustices perpetrated on minorities for sure - but not limited to that - for instance we also see it in conflicts between religious beliefs and 'truths' - another layer of differences with different spots.
This is where we need someone like John Ralston Saul to chime in and talk about the effects of corporatism (and fascism) on the modern world.
It seems to me that if everything is reduced to either 'this' or 'that' then we probably aren't asking the right questions ... and we're probably imposing an order on things that doesn't belong, or at least, doesn't adequately describe the world we live in.
3
Mr. Douthat:
More of the same old, same old from you. No matter where you start, you always end up with religion. Not God, mind you, just religion. Religion doesn't have to "wait for another column", it is in every one of your columns.
If religious zealotry is the answer to all our problems I can't wait for you to support putting John Brown on the twenty dollar bill.
Or was he on the wrong side of your pious ramblings? I suppose you will tell us he took affirmative action too far?
5
The entire proceedings were a farce because the most important voice was missing. This was a debate about America's first principles or if you prefer the term metaphysics.
What what is needed in a philosophical debate is a definition of language and all I remember as I paid the the price of complete attention was muttering where is Noam Chomsky or another equally proficient linguistic philosopher.
While the Democrats bandied about democracy the Republicans talked about the Federalist papers and the concept of a constitutional republic.
The Federalist society found democracy an anathema while Jeffersonian democracy is about the evolution toward a liberal democracy.
The metaphysics of the impeachment hearings should have been an understanding of what are America's first principles a debate well worth having we had an argument about nothing.
I live in a liberal democracy that evolved in our constitutional monarchy. Evolution happens each and every day. Russia and the USA are constitutional republics and require their best and brightest to serve the general welfare and unfortunately the debate not taking place is what is the general welfare.
I am not about to debate which is better as some will flourish and some will die under either type of constitution.
America was an enormous success until it became a nation of lawyers and the anti democratic Federalists and its champions of sophistry like Antonin Scalia turned the constitution into a weapon rather than a referee.
3
Fox News
“Alternative facts”
Widespread, increasingly crazy conspiracy theories. Pizzagate, anyone?
3
The polarization is generated in the media, and in particular social media - with the exception of international and some non-profit media outlets. Anger generates profit, and anger feeds division and ideological polarization. Per usual, Mr. Douthat sacrifices a simple and obvious truth - in this case being the fact that for profit news information outlets, which are the product of our unregulated capitalist economy, are more responsible for polarization in America than any individual psychological process of forming political ideologies.
2
Okay, one more theory on polarization, my own, blissfully freed from any basis in fact (grin). We are polarized into those who like to tell others what to do, and those who are sick of it of being told what to do. The former vote Dem, more or less, the latter Trump (I am not sure who votes Rep any more). The latter are tired of being told what they eat is bad (for them, for the planet; and that whatever food they switch to, in a year or so it will be bad, too); that they do not exercise enough; that their car is wrong; that they really should be riding a bike; that they are discarding too much plastic; that their childhood heroes were all really racists; that their God is dead; that their soda straws kill; that their Twitter post was X-ist (solve for any X); etc. Thus a bloc emerges that just doesn't want to told anything any more. I'm not in that bloc, but I surely can see its appeal.
2
I'm always irked when conservatives - like Mr. Douthat, whose column I never miss! - lump me in with the wrong crowd. I'm a liberal, and I oppose the Republican party because I am appalled by its brazen disregard not only for our institutions (as members' behavior in this impeachment attests) but, more specifically, for its equally unapologetic utter disregard for the citizenry. Who can name a single piece of legislation or public policy that the GOP has championed in the past several decades that was actually designed to benefit anyone except the wealthy? There aren't any. Because they don't do that. Ever. I oppose conservatism because it is focused exclusively on supporting the wealthy and the rest of us be damned. So I don't like to be assumed by conservative writers to number among a bunch of wild-eyed radical antifa types when I call myself a liberal. I was raised by teachers, members of the Greatest Generation, and I believe in an America that is true to its founding principles, in hard work and personal responsibility for myself and my property, in the need to be educated so as to be a productive, informed citizen and voter, in the necessity for compromise in the pursuit of good governance, and in the promise that all men truly are created equal. I oppose conservatives because they are not committed to that short list of simple goals. Conservative pundits should be sure to remember that.
4
"This “Second Constitution” is organized around the advancement of groups claiming equality, not the protection of citizens enjoying liberties." Yeah, those poor oven jockeys having their liberty stolen when they refuse to bake gay wedding cakes on religious grounds, while at the same time running a business that relies on public services and infrastructure paid partly with the taxes of gay folks, who often have neither liberty nor equality.
2
I suppose “why” matters if you believe that by understanding the “why” we can bridge the divide that separates us. I grew up in a place that was the absolute opposite of what I am and what I have come to value. I couldn’t have gotten out fast enough. My ticket out was education. I “went away to school”, as the homies put it back then. Borrowed the money to get the first of several degrees. I go back once a year to put flowers on my parent’s graves. The trip is like visiting an alien planet. Get in your car and drive through a rural section of this country. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men...
1
from Jason, below, "It's really quite simple; not all conservatives are racist, but if you are racist, you claim to be a conservative."
But the first kind, who supposedly aren't racist, have embraced the second kind, who are, to win elections. Why isn't that racist?
2
Well, the "Secretary of State" just received a tweet-medal from his Cadet-in-Chief, for Holding the Alamo against a reporter from NPR.
Heroism that should be inscribed somewhere -- perhaps, a re-issuing of the PhotoShopped Inaugural Crowd, done in ink-jets of red-white&blue. A Senator was heard to shriek that the Hacks were in Full Retreat and she'd compose a prayer on it, for the Tank Salute-to-the-Cadet next 4th of July.
These matters demand meditation. Is this 1933? 1933 BC?
1
If Ross Douthat could get through ONE SINGLE COLUMN without suggesting that all would be well if we returned to organized religion, I'd give his opinions more credence.
8
Can't you see Trump is a con-man and a chronic liar?? Oh, he exaggerates once in awhile, but who doesn't? Therein lies the source of 99% of the division. It's pretty simple.
1
The worst polarization:
Stupidity/Ignorance vs. Intelligence/Common Sense
Now that both sides are thoroughly out of the closet, the U.S. has officially divided into 2 nations.
2
Not one sentence, not one word, on the intrusion into our body politic of propaganda outlets like F(alse)ox and Sinclair and Limbaugh.
In the late 60's, early 70's, we heard our leaders call the war protesters, the civil rights marchers, the unionists, and others anti American, bums, hippies, welfare queens, and strapping young "bucks", alluding to the idea that these un American types were stealing from the real Americans.
It was Reagan who dismantled the Fairness Doctrine, giving rise to these propaganda systems (all devoted to the right wing viewpoint).
It was Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern (among others) who welcomed these young voices, these "radical" voices, to their campaigns.
The polarization we see today didn't just spring up organically from the people, it was planted, fertilized, and fetishized by the republican party.
And now we see the fruits of those policies and ideas embodied in our first dictator and we see the republican party in complete fealty to him.
4
Although I am dubious Douthat will have anything meaningful to say about religion, let's see if he can grapple with the data provided by Bartels.
Book reviews belong in the Books section
Presenting one sided arguments for or against books Ross has read to reinforce his views in a column. books he has read but not the readers of his column is shallow.
For a foreigner, watching the polarization of America is like watching Einstein get 1+1=2 hopelessly wrong. America knows that a lot of third parties, including actively hostile third parties, are making a fortune out of polarization.
Few countries know better what disunity means; the Civil War was one of America's most murderous wars. The memory remains like an active nightmare. That's what polarization does.
A united America, not the 13 colonies or the North and South, became America. The "united states" isn't merely a figure of speech, although it's becoming one at a nauseating rate.
Yet US media, alleged intellectuals, people who can't contribute to basic conversations, and just about everyone else give shelter, money, and comfort to the people creating and promoting the polarizations.
In full knowledge of the falsehood of the polarizations, America says, "Uh....duh....yeah...That's what I think, too,, golly gee hyuck" and blunders mindlessly on to yet more debacles.
This leads to a single question - Do you guys have a working brain cell left between you? Lose these polarizing morons, talk real business, settle the differences, and move on.
History isn't going to wait for you. This isn't "politics", it's national suicide. Get out of the hole, now, or be entombed in it.
Hmmm... I hope this isn't an omen. My Grammarly has a red line over the word America and says it's an unknown word. Anyone really want to think about that?
2
@Paul Wallis First thing for us to do would be to eject the Australian American-when-it’s-profitable Murdoch crowd.
Sorry, but that’s the place your rant touches down.
2
Born in 1979, Mr. Douthat never experienced the era when the Republican Party's ideology was located somewhere around that of the current "moderate" Democrats.
Mr. Douthat was a child when the Republicans began playing their long game of moving their party into a pernicious combination of economic libertarianism, jingoistic militarism, and pseudo-Christian religiosity.
In addition to pushing a worldview that uncritically worships the rich, promotes "teaching other countries a lesson," and invokes Jesus for things that he never would have approved of, this propaganda effort demonizes everyone to the right of Reagan.
In this worldview, the Democrats "want to punish success," win votes either by "busing illegal immigrants from precinct to precinct" or by "promising welfare mothers free stuff," and believe that all white males are evil.
To their everlasting shame, the mainstream Democrats did nothing to counter this barrage of negativity and tried to shush those on the left who fought back. We are living with the result.
2
More false equivalences. The GOP and the GOP alone has driven the division. In short, they do not believe in the concept of one person one vote, a precondition for any true republic. Moreover, they have welcomed as a bastion of their party, individuals who think the earth is 6000 years old, and others who argue that whites are the oppressed class. I am not saying that Dems don't have extremists in their party--but extremist are NOT admired. The reason conservative (nothing conservative about them) commentators insist on the both sides do it view, is that it enables them to ignore their complicity.
4
There are many pockets of sanity in America, neighborhoods, towns, rural areas and counties where an economic and racial mix resides in quiet harmony and the crime rate is near zero. Have you ever spent years in such a place? In my 73 years, I have made it a point to live in such places. Try it, you'll like it.
1
Can we please stop sobbing about the "declining and demoralized heartland"? People in the heartland are descended from people who got their land for free, along with all the infrastructure (railroads, telegraph, power) to help them flourish. Only farmers get paid for not working, get compensated if prices fall, or get reimbursement if trade deals go bad. They are not "declining and demoralized"; they are holier than thou toward people in NYC who are having a hard time making a living and somehow think people in NYC should get drug-tested for welfare while farmers getting welfare don't. And if their towns have been hollowed out by Walmart and Burger King it's because they let it happen by abandoning their locally owned cafes and hardware stores where the profits would have stayed in town and instead sent their profits to the Walmart family who are the riches people in the world. If everyone got a benefit comparable to the Homestead Act -- 160 acres of land -- they'd be as well off as farmers. If blacks had got their 40 acres and a mule they would have made a better come-back from centuries of slavery. But whites never allowed that to happen, and farmers sit on their piles and criticize people in cities for being in need of some help, too.
6
Yadda, yadda, yadda. There are a ton of angry, badly-educated white men who aren’t getting all the goodies they feel entitled to just for filling space and who are outraged that they can no longer kick minorities and women around. They are prone to constant outrage just like their current cult leader. Calling them deplorable just feeds their appetite for conflict. Snooty Douhat (I am elitist in my own very different way) wants to create a cultural divide, but that is just not what it is all about. It is straight out dyed-in-the-wool resentment.
5
@Chuck Burton Resentment seems to be one key in the polarization. Stronger on the right and taken advantage of. Now moving into the left unfortunately. Humans all feel resentment sometimes, but it has become institutionalized. Civility and kindness need to make a comeback. Maybe it's not really more religion we need, but rather adherence to some of the better tenets of religion, like "do unto others." I can't argue that community is important and we should preserve and build that too.
2
I rarely agree with Nancy Pelosi, but last week on Bill Mahr she remarked that hating the President was OK, that he deserves it, but hating the people who voted for him is wrong.
A more accurate title would be
The many polarizations of the Western World
Because it is not confined to America. It appeared in Europe in countries such as Poland (racially homogeneous), France (yellow Vests) the UK (Brexit), Italy (Salvini), Germany (Afd) to name a few
The bottom cause is globalization- the movement of wages those exposed to it towards the average, whereas increasing the wages of those not exposed to it.
The real wages of American workers have been stagnant for two decades. The wages of US physicians - a group nit exposed to global competition - have increased annually by 7% per year.
The result : Increasing inequality , the death nail of democracy
I.e. it a derivative of economic policies, characterized in El Pais titled "Paul Krugman: “No soy un santo pero estoy dispuesto a pagar más impuestos" thusly
" Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008, he is a prominent member of the club of progressive American economists, such as Joseph Stiglitz or Jeffrey Sachs; also, of that legion of democrats who did not see the ravages that globalization - together with robotization - would cause in parts of the American society"
https://elpais.com/elpais/2020/01/23/ideas/1579793914_392852.html
I see a great deal of polarization right here in the comments - lots of exasperation at the “Fake News” that is conservative news. Many on the right believe the liberal news is fake and clearly the reverse is also true.
Ross suffers from white innocence ("conservative whites feel under “demographic threat,"). Conservatives for some odd reason think they have everyone's benefit in mind, when in reality they want to control everyone's benefit and mind.
1
I have loved books for my entire life but wonder whether it is really necessary to “dissect” the polarization that threatens us. The simple answer is this: Roughly 30% of humanity are just dumb as rocks and mean. Where is evolution when you most need it?
5
We need a book by Klein covering hundreds of pages to tell us what was already known in the last century, that American politicians will play the race card to divide the country, like we need another nostril. The brilliant Jill Lepore has written the best piece on Democracy in this weeks issue of the New Yorker. She quotes (ND) W.E.B. DeBois from the 1930's:
"W. E. B. Du Bois predicted that, unless the United States met its obligations to the dignity and equality of all its citizens and ended its enthrallment to corporations, American democracy would fail: “If it is going to use this power to force the world into color prejudice and race antagonism; if it is going to use it to manufacture millionaires, increase the rule of wealth, and break down democratic government everywhere; if it is going increasingly to stand for reaction, fascism, white supremacy and imperialism; if it is going to promote war and not peace; then America will go the way of the Roman Empire.”
Want something to unite us all?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EPXCAv5UYAIjnhp.jpg
This was taken last night from Canberra, the capital city of Australia. This is the future. Except where it's floods or hurricanes or rising seas etc.
The time will come, no too far off, when all the tribalism and culture wars stuff will seem like an absurd waste of time. Which it already is.
4
Got to love a conservative book arguing that we're polarized because we were too nice to black people.
2
“Still, there is one book missing to complete the picture”
The Pentateuch? The Quran? The Vedas? The Tao? The Iliad?
C’mon, man. The suspense is excruciating.
1
I would take a contrarian view on America's polarization. While I understand the partisan polarization of the current moment, if we take a broader sociological stock of the country, you can argue that we've witnessed a major integration of American society in the past 25 years. If we simply take two empirical measures of social integration--residence and marriage--we find that more and more different types of Americans are living together and creating families together. In aggregate, since 1980, residential segregation declined by 12 percent in the U.S. At the same time, interracial households grew by 3.5 percent since 2000. Many conservative, southern states are experiencing the fastest-growing rates of interracial marriages, with Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and Georgia clocking in rates that are higher than the national average. Given the social integration of Americans, the intriguing question is, "Why is our political life more polarized?" As a sociologist, my sense is that a relatively small number of hyper-motivated and ill-intentioned Americans have captured our political life. For various ideological and even self-serving reasons, they have built an economy and an ecology of political polarization where careers and fortunes can be made on dividing Americans apart politically. If we have wiser political leadership, they would do something about it.
4
@UC Graduate Best comment to this column.
You can't seriously talk about polarization unless you ask whether people are willing to direct their skepticism inward. People who claim to be climate skeptics are merely pretending to be tough minded, because they tend to direct all their skepticism outward.
Truth is a potentially unifying element in society, and when you have a political party that ignores the overwhelming evidence that the current extreme climate change is human caused, and continues to claim that tax cuts will pay for themselves, then you have an artificial polarization rather than an authentic divergence of views.
And when you have a political party in lock step with a president who is a prolific liar, then that is another indication that a political party is artificially creating polarization where none need exist.
For me, the big change happened with the rise of Newt Gingrich, and his training of fellow Republicans to use emotion-laden language that was aimed not at disagreeing with a political opponent but at burying liberalism altogether under a sea of negative connotation. That weaponization of language, and refusal to consider the possibility that the other side had any legitimacy at all, has continued to this day among Republicans. It is rooted in insecurity, for acknowledging that the other side has validity is the start of a very slippery slope back to the pre-Gingrich era of Republican minority status.
4
I don't think Mr. Douthat distinguishes very well between causes and symptoms of partisanship. He loves talking about political theories, categories, ideas, patterns, etc. in the abstract. I think he misses or undervalues personal economic conditions as a motivating (though seldom explicitly identified) cause of partisanship.
Well, Ross how another interpretation? It's all about the economy. The Republicans lead us into the morass of '08, with BushII signing into law Gramm-Leach-Bliley, reducing regulatory oversight, justifying war by lying to the public (Dick Cheney) and sending us into two two decade long trillion dollar wars, which depleted not only the public's trust, but coffers too. Bin Laden, despite being dead, won that round. It forced America to take sides, and fear Islam. All the other sub currents you mention have been with us for a long time before now, however, there's nothing like an economic crisis to make everyone take their knives and forks out. That the only areas to fully recover after '08 are the two coasts, and Texas (as well as the Dakotas briefly) didn't make things better. The subsequent split of the economy into economic have and have nots based upon knowledge work has been a long time coming, but the Repubs after NAFTA did nothing to prevent it. In fact, their pushing, with Clinton's bone headed help, China into the WTO exacerbated everything. In 1980 in China your average annual income was $100; today it's $11K. In America, it's only risen by 9.2% for hourly workers regardless of race, religion, etc. Now that's polarization.
1
“ … there’s little evidence that American public policy actually transfers lots of money from whites to minorities …”
It is generally accepted that most academics are Democrats rather than Republicans. The Democratic Party has made support for unauthorized immigrants part of its platform. Academics who want to research how much money the government spends to support unauthorized immigrants know they would be stigmatized by the general academic community, by immigrant rights groups, and by much of the media for doing so. Consequently, academics chose to study topics that will not automatically put them on the defensive.
Some newspapers and other media do investigative reporting, but none of them have chosen to investigate how much the government spends on supporting unauthorized immigrants. In these polarized times, several members of the media support unauthorized immigrants so it is not surprising that they have not made these investigations.
Thanks to the fear academics have of their own community, immigrant rights activists, and the media and to much of the media’s blatant support for unauthorized immigrants, we simply do not know how much taxpayer money is spent on the unauthorized.
3
"Still, there is one book missing to complete the picture: All of these writers treat the dramatic religious trends since the 1960s, both secularization and institutional-Christian decline, as subsidiary to their major themes, and in fact the religious polarization of America is at least as important to the story as the polarizations they describe."
Douthat's own, "Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics". :)
"This “Second Constitution” is organized around the advancement of groups claiming equality, not the protection of citizens enjoying liberties."
That statement is why so many humanists cannot trust people with conservative ideologies and arguments:
Civil rights laws were not "about" "groups claiming equality" (although that argument might _seem_ logical).
Civil rights laws are about "civil rights": equal protection of liberties under the law.
6
Gridlock?? The President has made huge changes (terrible changes, but changes) in US foreign, trade, immigration, environmental, health insurance, civil rights, and tax policies. I only wish we'd had gridlock!
3
An exceptional opinion write up
It points out with clarity the complexity of the debate, and that dialogue between people from widely different backgrounds can enrich understanding
America is built on largely mutually exclusive principles—e.g., freedom and equality, or equal opportunity and non discrimination.
Worse our inability to listen well makes us see greater polarization than actually exist. It’s like we all became deaf. Take hot button issues like abortion or immigration. If we would actually listen we would find huge numbers of staunch democrats who oppose abortion because of their Catholic faith just as many Evangelical Republicans hold the same view. Most in both parties think some circumstances make abortion both necessary and legitimate. Few Democrats support open borders or illegal immigration. That’s more a Republican big business view looking to keep labor costs low. Few Republicans want to stop immigration.
In Hans Rowling’s great book Factfulness he suggest we look to the middle if we want to actually see where most people are. True for immigration and abortion. Another wisdom is that people on any side of a debate are mostly right. If you listen properly you will almost always find that to be true.
Our Constitution is built on the assumption that face to face discussion and debate and compromise lead to the best government. And the best kinds of citizens. We all could use some skills training. We might surprise ourselves.
2
@John Martin
“… compromise lead to the best government."
While the idea of compromising generally sounds good, in some cases it exacerbates the problem. In 1986, Democrats were dead set against amnesty for unauthorized migrants out of fear that the migrants would take jobs from working class Americans. But farmers wanted the migrants who were working for little money in their fields. Charles Schumer wrote a compromise bill that Reagan signed. It legalized just under 3 million unauthorized migrants and gave them a path to citizenship in exchange for ending any further illegal immigration.
Instead of ending illegal immigration, once and for all, the compromise encouraged migrants to come here without authorization, on the presumption that they, too, would eventually be legalized and offered a path to citizenship. The PEW Trust estimated that, in 2016, just under 11 million migrants were living here without authorization. Professors at Yale and MIT said that the number was more than double that.
Schumer and the Democrats want to again offer legalization and a path to citizenship to everyone who is here illegally, and say that as a compromise they will direct more money to keeping out any additional illegal immigrants. But experience shows that another amnesty would just inspire more people to gamble on coming here, with the expectation that they, too, will eventually be granted an amnesty.
1
It's always good advice to read viewpoints from different perspectives. Too many of us are locked into the echo chambers of our preferred positions and either uninterested or without the time to consider alternative perspectives.
We get it.
The issue this time on the matter of Donald J Trump is a different matter in my opinion.
In my opinion, the issue isn't even whether a president should be able to use the power of his office to serve his personal agenda. He shouldn't, but he did. Then he lied about it. Repeatedly. Then he directed the sliming of good people in order to cover his tracks. Repeatedly.
Those are just the facts. But they tee up the real issue.
The real issue of intense partisanship over the impeachment of Donald Trump is over truth and honest intellectual discourse. The partisans who apologize and defend Mr Trump are truly Orwellian in their logic and their prose. They know it.
They choose to assert fiction because the truth does not conform to what values they profess to believe.
That is an entirely new form of polarization.
7
The polarization of America is due to the accurately perceived reality of growing economic inequality which means the majority of people feel angry and are looking at a way of blaming someone for their anger.
2
As a working social psychologist who's published in this area, Douthat (and perhaps Klein) misunderstand the data about high-information voters.
The reality is, high-information voters get that way because they care about politics a lot. And people who care about politics a lot tend to be more extremely partisan: most "moderates" are just people who don't care, think, or know about politics very much. So the analysis ignores an obvious, important confound: political extremity.
Douthat also compares the real-world effects to an impossible counterfactual: a world where everyone agrees once they know all the facts. But contentious issues are contentious precisely because they don't work that way: two equally educated people can disagree strongly about an issue if, for instance, one prefers freedom to security and the other prefers security to freedom.
It feels silly to nitpick an article that (ironically) was clearly written for Douthat to assuage his cognitive dissonance, but shouldn't there be higher editorial standards?
8
@karp - Thanks for expounding on Klein's theory about higher information voters being more "bunker" prone. Your analysis makes sense, especially given the diversity of the voting public. It's interesting to note that Bernie Sanders now has jumped in the lead among non-white voters. This shows that Sander's magnetic pull is universal and supersedes traditional identity politics as he is critical of the inequity of the current status quo. Therefore, Sanders supporters are drawn to genuine solutions to the current broken system rather than attempts to appeal to specific identity groups. It is notable that Bloomberg is stepping into the race not as a replacement for Biden, but rather to ensure that Sanders isn't the Democratic candidate. He is hoping to get enough delegates so there is a brokered convention, triggering a second ballot so Sanders can be stopped if he gains too much momentum.
2
@Dunca I'm eager to learn what Sanders proposes to diminish polarization. As someone who will vote for him if he's the candidate, I'm troubled by what often seems polarization by his base, or at least a vocal part of his base. I'll still vote Blue no matter who, but I'd love to see this addressed. I agree with many of his positions, btw, so that's not the problem. I see attacks on various groups by his followers, including the elderly as a group, which is odd, given Sanders' age and his cohort that fought for civil rights. It's why I prefer Warren who has many of the same positions.
2
Of all the authors, I tend to agree with Lind the most. We're fundamentally talking about a class struggle with racial, ideological, and religious components. The foundations of the class war began in the 1970s. The Vietnam War created a large incentive for young men to pursue higher education.
The college education rate went from under 10% in 1960 to a steady 30% today. I wonder why. We've now had two draft-dodging presidents and one privileged National Guard veteran as a result. The only recent nominee with a decent military record was swift-boated. We're only beginning to see volunteer veterans as candidates now.
You combine this trend with Reagan-era union busting and a completely fantastical disregard for basic Keynesian economic principles of social mobility. We've found ourselves in an absolutely monumental rut of social inequality that transcends race, gender, religious affiliation, geography, and even education. Absolutely everything except class. We are the Mariana Trench of unequal opportunity.
This reality exists as the direct result of bispartisan neoliberal decision making made beginning in the late 1970s and the early 1980s. Everything else simply adds color to our unfortunate predicament.
I am less concerned with how we got here than how we're getting out though. Young people understand neoliberalism is a poisoned well. Time to return to a civic sense of morality and public responsibility that was lost somewhere between a martini and a 40 year acid binge.
Let's also be honest and clear about defending the old Constitution:
Discussion of the "popular vote" was not allowed at our Constitutional Convention
We are defending a constitution intentionally designed to exclude a constitutional right to vote, allowing each state the constitutional authority to design it's own subtle forms of voter discrimination by race, gender, class, land holding, and now forms of identification.
In Massachusetts--oh, so liberal--a simple utility bill with your name and address was sufficient ID.
1
"Divide and conquer" employed against the American people through the political donations of surely the most selfish and misanthropic economic elite in the Western world - to both Republicans and selected Democrats - turned the nominal "leader of the free world" into an episode of "The Twilight Zone" it has effectively become. Nothing but sustained electoral success for genuine progressives like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren and a return to truly moderate and democratic conservatism by the opposition in reaction will prevent the inevitable Balkanisation of the currently ironically named United States of America - and end its pernicious influence on the rest of the democratic world.
4
Human beings have evolved to become social animals. This means, like it or not, we generally thrive best when we live together in healthy communities and find ways to promote social cohesion.
Conservatives wish to ignore this reality and believe that humans thrive best when left alone to do as they want with little interruption. Freedom to govern oneself might seem ideal, but is, in fact, not conducive to human happiness and satisfaction and often devolves to tyranny.
Liberals take the opposite tack, promoting forms of social organization that veer toward the extreme, implicitly espousing the sublimation of individual needs to group prerogatives. Socialism promotes this fundamental aspect of human life, but takes it to extremes, and thus confounds itself.
Neither perspective constitutes a realistic view of what humans require to thrive, thus enabling the polarization we bemoan.
The more we convince ourselves that one or the other extreme must be right to the exclusion of the other, the more we deny what it means to be human.
A better way is to find a course in the middle that pragmatically embraces what works and avoids extremes. Let’s start by eliminating the use of both labels as either laudatory or pejorative. Having either conservative or liberal views should not result in anyone or anything being automatically branded as good or bad. If we stop simplistically categorizing our opponents in this way, in fact stop seeing them as opponents, polarization might decrease.
2
I work diligently to keep an open mind. To be humble enough to know that my knowledge in the grand order of the universe is quite limited. I eschew easy pat answers. I abhor partisan opinions that brook no thoughtful questions or objections.
The thing that discourages me is that; I hold a number of opinions, but often am defined by only one of them, and am automatically thrown into one basket or another and judged solely on my opinion of that one issue.
The other side of this is that sometimes I will agree with someone's opinion and that person thinks of course I agree with their other opinions; which are in fact, rubbish and to make it worse, people on the other side immediately accuse me of belonging to that tribe lock, stock and barrel.
I don't belong to a tribe. I am a Democrat, but I will not just repeat the party line unless I think it actually makes sense. I see a few commentators here who have a similar attitude, but many people are either neon red or neon blue.
6
And then there's Occam's Razor, Ross: "When there are multiple possible answers to a problem, usually the simplest is the correct one". And what is the simplest explanation for our divide? The unresolved issues from the Civil War.
When you look at the make up of the now staunchly right Republican Party, it's heavily comprised of the old Confederacy, and descendants from that region. Note: I am not saying ALL Republicans have roots in this regard, but the majority do. And what were the grievances of the South? Slave ownership, and state's rights. Sound familiar? They should, given the degree to which current Republicans, and especially Trumpists, hold racial bias, and hate Federal government. In fact, these would be the strongest unifying ideology among the right, making them modern day Confederates, and just as determined against compromise as their forefathers.
It's really not as complicated as you and these authors make it.
11
@Kingfish52
If this was true the strongest division would have been in the past and would have been diminishing due to increasing chronological distance from the historical event called "Civil War" in 1867 to nowadays.
It did not. There were undulations. Polarized division got even much stronger since the mid 2010ties. Excluding the crucial period between 1867 and mid 2010ties when polarization was by no means as strong as it is now can never lead to a proper analysis of the current situation. (Don´t quote Langston Hughes: This dream was deferred much to long to explain effects in 2020.)
So your conclusion is obviously much too simple. It looks like hiding behind welcomed popular excuses.
Such apparent major mistakes in regard to the basic "art of arguing" would have had definitely spoiled every test in the old days of academic education. In classical faculties of universities in Europe this is still "0 points" In the safe spaces of American universities this might be assessed differently nowadays. But this does not lead to correct results.
BTW; A classic working hypothesis: Has the actual ignorance of the analysis rules for evaluation of historic facts and a premature search for all too welcomed "narratives" in broad parts of US society lead to an certain insolubility of conflicts which has lead to an unstoppable amplifying of differences and contrasts?
(Such academic stuff of the old days is nothing to get popular by but this is the only way to take us further.)
@ws
"If this was true the strongest division would have been in the past and would have been diminishing due to increasing chronological distance from the historical event called "Civil War" in 1867 to nowadays."
Here is the weakness of your argument, the grievances about slave ownership, states rights and animus against the federal government are all based on the underlying premise of white supremacy. The reasons that divisions are being amplified now is that white supremacy in America is being challenged by the emerging demographic changes in this country that will start to emerge in a significant way in the coming decade and whose effects will be amplified in the next twenty years.
Those Americans that believe that America is a white Christian country that should be under the dominion of white Christian men are in an existential fight preserve their vision of America. They have shown they are willing use any means including the subversion of democratic norms, due process, the rule of law and even violence to achieve their goals.
3
Cultural diversity is inevitable in a liberal democracy as large and populous as the United States. However laudable diversity can become problematic division if there is a CONSENSUS to make it so. The States would not be so polarised if there had not been AGREEMENT between its political parties to generally ignore the economic well-being of the vast majority of its citizens and to fight elections over social issues only, for over twenty-five years. When Clinton followed Reagan's "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem." with "The era of big government is over." the US effectively ceased to be a country (and a democracy "of, by and for the people" too - need I say?) to become just a disparate group of individuals residing in central North America.
4
Democrats astound me. The party stands alone now in diversity, women's rights, support of science over religion or profit, the rights of individuals over corporations, a clear understanding of the dangers and necessity of repair to combat climate change.
Yet the Party doesn't seem to understand that the times do not require compromise. That's really at the center of the electorate. The ignorant masses voted for Trump because of innate racism but also because he conned them into thinking he would remake a government for the people.
Obama won because he spoke truth to power. In Obama's case he was telling the truth. Trump conned the masses. Obama did not. Obama's Presidency was hobbled by a deeply sick Republican Party which has now fully metastasized under a Fascist President.
Bernie tells the Truth to Power. He is what the people want. In that way Bernie aligns with Obama and , yes, aligns with what Trump's "better" message was, though Trump is fully false and malevolent human being who, again, conned his voters.
Bernie can win. We need to let him win. And we also need a blue House and Senate. I believe Trumps appalling malfeasance might very well help us achieve a blue House and Senate, at
5
@David Kesler : Yes, the Democrats' propensity to compromise away their declared values is infuriating. I think some of them are naive and never learned that the only way to fight a bully (and the Republican politicians ARE bullies) is to stand firm, but I think some of them are compromised by feeling a need to obey their largest campaign contributors.
Right wing media certainly plays a huge part in our current polarization but they were only able to capitalize on the anger and hopelessness of so many Americans who no longer believe they can succeed. The problem is the right wing has used the misery to blame the poor and minorities rather than shining the bright light on the wealth and inequality which is blighting our country. Neo-liberalism is a failure and it has contributed mightily to our current frightening moment. The wealthy have to stop hoarding and start sharing if we are not to become a dictatorship. Watching Trump I think we are more than half way there already.
1
We are polarized because our political system rewards politicians who polarize the country.
Consider a thought experiment where a pol speaks to an audience of those thinking he is sorta ok. At the end of the pitch, a sizable group thinks he belongs in an insane asylum and a sizable group thinks he's the greatest figure who ever appeared in the Republic. Has that pol advanced his cause?
The answer is yes. Under plurality voting, voters who think a pol is sorta ok are of no value to a pol, so convincing a group of such voters that the pol belongs in an asylum is of no real cost to that pol. But, convincing a separate group that the pol is the greatest of all time does advance that pol. Thus, the definition of polarization, convincing some voters that a pol is the greatest while convincing a separate group that the same pol has no proper place in society, is amply rewarded.
In order to stop rewarding polarization, it is necessary voters thinking that a pol is sorta ok, even if not great, is of value to a pol relative to those voters detesting the pol. That is all in the voting method.
None of this gets to the core.
American voters have been lied to, conned, heard empty promises, and then been cheated. They are fed up. It is rebellion.
Which partisan side is rebellion? Both. That is the one thing they agree on.
Our media and political grandees and pundits generally don't want to see that. Either they can't see it, or they find it more convenient to pretend.
There is a word for what people rebel against: centrism.
2
One of the great frauds of the right is that pushing of the fiction that White people's money is going to Blacks and other people of color. It was this lie that that Trump sold. It also illustrated the ways that Paul Ryan and other right wing Republicans did not get their own party. The Base of the Republican Party does not oppose social insurance programs and other aid programs. They just object to people other than themselves getting the money.
3
The Dunning-Kruger effect and it's mostly faith based absurdist thinking adherents.
Where the distinction between a blob of nascent eggs and a real life eludes those americans stuck in the Bronze Age .
When these conspiracy theorists with their anti vax and anti climate science world views inexorably dissipate and:
When they can distinguish between propaganda from fox and 24/7 lies from their president.
We will be well on the way to a rational existence.
3
The idea that liberals have run up deficits by paying off discrimination through government handouts is undercut by facts. Reagan. Bush and now, God help us, Trump have run up fantastic deficits (who could forget the abhorrent Cheney's dictim "Deficits don't matter"?) while Clinton and Obama were left to pick up the pieces and create surpluses.
This is a political decision by the GOP, to starve Democratic administrations of money to implement their preferred programs by putting the nation in hock. It's not a "hugely expensive attempt" to address civil rights. It's a manipulative calculation to avoid allowing voters from non-GOP parties to have an effect.
The "vilification of the white male working class" is the aggrieved response to sharing power with women and minorities. It's a resentment that can also be seen in mainline and evangelical churches, where Southern Baptist women must take an oath to be subservient to their husbands and women and birth control are barred from Catholic policies.
Yes, it was all simpler when white men had preference in every aspect of American life. But however inconvenient, civil rights are for everyone.
The loathesome and shameful supine self interest the Senate is displaying towards Trump's power grab and disinterest in the national good convinces me that much of this argument is pointless. The unendurable treason and it's cheering minions convince me that the country must break apart. Morality and facts are not shared anymore.
8
The Reagan Revolution swallowed traditional liberalism. Clintonian Third Way-ism merely made "greed-is-good" feel good.
So, with the elites in general economic consensus and in thrall to the same oligarchy, sending their children to the same elite schools, living in the same neighborhoods, summering in the same enclaves, what would they have us fight over?
Identity.
The reality is that even in the Trump era, there has never been a better time to be a woman, black, brown, gay, lesbian, transgendered, or immigrant in America. We are among the most open, tolerant, diverse and accepting societies in human history.
Yet, the better things get, the more catastrophic and urgent the identitarian rhetoric becomes.
Rather than fighting for general economic welfare, we fight over a 40 year old high school blackface photo, or that Greta Gerwig got snubbed at the Oscars. Just as the oligarchs would have us do. Because the former threatens the status quo, while the latter undermines the broad solidarity needed to turn overturn it.
5
Has anyone considered that possibility that, had we not passed the 1960's civil rights legislation, we might have a black population in revolt, even armed revolt. Certainly, that was the plan for the Black Panthers and other black groups in the 60's. I really don't think we could have kept the lid on had we not passed that legislation. I would fully understand if black folks had bought guns.
1
@William Smith
First, the focus on the Black Panther Party was not armed revolt, it was enfranchising black people socially and politically. They were much more interested in providing free breakfast for neighborhood children and free health clinics than they were armed revolt.
Their possession and use of firearms was for protection against police brutality, which was rampant at the time. As the political assassination of Fred Hampton by the Chicago Police Department showed they were justified in their concerns.
"the old quip that 'X is so foolish, only an intellectual could believe it' has empirical support — in a study Klein cites, for instance, that found smart people talking themselves into the wrong answers on brainteasers where the right answers had ideological implications they disliked."
No doubt true on both sides of the intellectual divide-- and yet for some reason critics of "intellectuals" seem to think the word only applies to leftists.
1
If you look at the US population excluding the uneducated white male segment, nearly two thirds of the remaining population despises Trump, and similar %'s don't like the GOP.
We're not as divided as you think. We simply have an uneducated, angry, resentful, and easily gullible segment of the population that has gone off the rails.
4
@Joe Arena
Well, of course that must be the problem. Those darn pesky nearly 63 million citizens who voted against the coastal managerial elite in the form of President Trump. Denied their collective utopia with its endless wars job eliminating trade agreements where the connected and corrupt in the government financial and corporate classes conspire to thrive at the expense of the working class. Yeah, you must be on to something its"their the problem."
1
There have been many posts about rightwing media, but I think its role cannot be emphasized enough.
It is inflammatory--most rightwing media deliberately tries to terrorize its viewers/readers, using their fellow citizens as the demons. It's very black hat/white hat, Good (Conservative/Trump) vs. Evil (everybody else) and super-paranoid. While I read some selected conservative writers, I refuse to be terrorized by bombastic white dudes. How can anybody watch that trash?
If you watch Fox News all the time, you'd be convinced that our cities are all so dangerous that people cannot live there, and that all black people and immigrants commit crimes incessantly.
My rural Fox watching relatives feel like they have to arm themselves like commandos to come to Nashville. (Nashville!) It's really hard to feel like we have much in common. They cannot believe that I visit NYC frequently for family and business and have also visited friends in downtown Paris multiple times, because they perceive these places as too overrun with black people, immigrants, and Muslims to support human (ie, white) life.
There are of course a few left-wing sites that do this sort of demonizing--but they are not very popular. Being bombarded with polemical adjectives is, for me, a big turnoff and credibility killer.
The media landscape is not symmetrical in the US.
3
This is nothing new. The French Revolution, Marx and Engels, the Czars for the Commissars... in fact its Biblical. "The poor will always be with us" isn't just a statement, it's a prophecy.
The next discussion you mention will be better. Like any human endeavor, practitioners of religious faith have done a lot of wrong, but also have gotten a lot of things right. But today, for an increasing number of the world's citizens, faith is a joke. Yet there's really no substitute for the kind of governor it provides.
Marianne Williamson seems like a weirdo precisely because she preaches a message of love. Well, maybe we'd worry about her approach to a nuclear crisis. I know I would. But given our current state of affairs, it's clear we'd rather let our hate flags fly.
1
Over my 54 years the nation has made enormous strides in terms of racial, ethnic and gender justice. Most importantly those changes have been social as much as legal.
But we have taken some big steps back recently in racial, ethnic and gender solidarity, as the left's obsession with diversity has replaced its traditional emphasis on economic solidarity. And how could we not, when we are told that diversity is everything, that we must celebrate any and all identities (except that which is white and male)?
The reality is that diversity is not "our strength." Unity is. And we can't be unified when we are indoctrinated at every turn that our external identities are what matter. In fact, that his the ground assumption of all bigotry.
We are strong when we look beyond our differences and unify around shared principles of goals, as the the Democratic Party which dominated the 20th Century did.
It is no wonder that a generation after the *entire economic elite* - left and right - has been captured by Reaganomics, that what we are left fighting over is identity far more so than economic reforms. Tragically, like academic politics, the fighting is so vicious because the stakes are so small.
3
The "many" polarizations?
There's just one polarization and it's inequality. Inequality, inequality, inequality.
Republicans are its root cause. They were for inequality before The Great Depression. They agreed to passivity during it, WW II, and in post-WW II in their own self interest of avoiding what the rest of this world's unequals resorted to, revolution.
But by Ronald Reagan younger Oligarchs had had enough. Taxes fell, wages stagnated, labor unions were attacked, and unfortunately Democrats helped by deregulation in Clinton's time, and trade agreements that failed to consider negative consequences for America's 90%.
Republicans have done a much better job of pinning it all on Democrats without themselves having to do anything to help their supporters. They still do. Trump has slashed taxes, and moved trade agreements around without improving our position.
But if you listen to especially Fox news and other Conservative propaganda sources you'll never know that.
3
I feel a solidarity with other people, not just those who share my characteristics. I recognize my privilege and aim to do what I can to make things better for others and smooth the way for them. I believe that everyone does better when everyone does better. The country my family emigrated from is notoriously racist, sexist, classist, and xenophobic, and is leading to that nation's stagnation and sputtering failure. I don't want that to happen to the USA!
29
Well, 2 big things that haven't been mentioned are:
1) the media, the failure of print and the realization that there is huge money to be made in whipping up the partisans of both sides. This money fueled media machine isn't going anywhere. This is a phenomenon of the right and the left, but Rush, Hannity and Fox news, which begot Trump have been major drivers here. With out this conservative media Trinity, I really think the conservative movement would have died out in this country in the smoke and ash of the financial crisis and the Iraq war, two massive failures of conservative policy. (Conservatism as a philosophy died in this crisis, but it's media continues on like a money making zombie)
2) Economic disparity is huge. Pure capitalism like we have in this country is a lottery. When the capitalism lottery winners are getting most of the money, the lottery losers become increasingly inflamed. This is where we are today, inflamed by economic inequality.
1
The methodology Ross uses here is terrific and is something we could use a lot more of (and in a lot of areas): take the best from very different perspectives of what explains our society's intense polarization. He also adds his own.
The meta here is important.
There is no one reason, each perspective has a piece of it, but is incomplete. We therefore have to venture into dealing with complexity and go beyond confidently, comfortably, and easily assigning simple causes.
There are things missing, beyond his lost religiosity, and for that Ross is really going to have stretch even more in any updates. There is nothing here about what we've been doing to our life support system--the Earth.
And at least in his summaries, he's offering nothing on, OK, now what do we do about polarization, both politically and otherwise?
Yes, I know, a tall order. But he's a part of the way there.
When I ask a Trump supporter why they are opposed to immigration (legal or not), I hear an answer that boils down to preventing others from taking something they haven't earned. When I ask about universal health care, a like kind of response surfaces. While I do not minimize tribalism or a war of ideas as a root cause, I see a battle between a generosity of spirit and the cramped fear that someone might appropriate what they do not deserve.
5
@Richard Swanson
It's like the story about there being ten cookies on the table and three people, one person (the rich) takes nine of the cookies and leaves. The other two people (the rest of the populace) fight over the one cookie and ask each other "Why are you trying to take my cookie?"
1
Corporates and wealth, along with their henchmen in politics, have gotten virtually everything they've wanted since 1980, in one way or another. Religion has become somewhat discredited because it doesn't act the way it says you should. One of our political parties, republicans, have a political stake in the government not being effective at doing anything about any problem that could be identified statistically.
One should start with these three basic and very true assumptions when considering "what's wrong" with the republic.
In your account, these books ignore another factor: the rise of the right wing media.
While the Left in this country has changed little in its attitudes in the last 50 years, at least economically and politically, the right becomes ever more extreme. (And let's keep in mind that, on this front, what the Left dreams of is more or less what they have in Canada.) Yes, the Left has become ever less accepting of discrimination on the basis of race, country of origin, sexual preferences-- but aren't we supposed to treat others as we wish to be treated?
The Right's extremism is fed by the right-wing media echo chamber, which has considerably less concern about truth than the more traditional media, and constantly focuses on divisive issues. mIf a teenager gets raped by an illegal immigrant, Fox New and their ilk will be hammering on it day and night, with hours of outrage following the News. It's not that the rape isn't tragic and appalling and outrageous, but it's also an anecdote, not evidence of the collapse of Western Civilization at the hands of immigrants. But outrage and fear keep people glued to their screens and are thus profitable.
And the conservative billionaire class that doesn't want any taxes or regulation has found that using these cultural issues to stir up the less-well educated, less cosmopolitan segments of our society is a useful way of gaining political power that can then deliver the goods to them.
The polarization isn't all accidental.
136
@Miker The left has changed little? Seriously The defense of marriage act DOMA was signed into law by Bill Clinton. As recently as ten years ago most major Democrats leaders, including a lot of the current ones spoke of the problems of illegal immigration and it's effect on low wage workers.
13
@Todd
Comparing apples and tractors.
11
The religious aspect of our polarization is also explainable, through a lens that focuses on racial politics, ideological and tribal tensions and culture masking economic differences. The rise of insider religious sects is the key to understanding the way politics works. There are both liberal and conservative insider religious sects. Some have origin stories that promote racial identity. Some are ideological politically, and some are ideological through the implications of their tenets. Some are very tribal in their emphasis, connecting to ancient religious legends. And because they're full of insiders, they're flush with money. While there hasn't been much of a public analysis of such sects, groundbreaking New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has spoken on them. Pope Francis has moved to limit some. There are murmurs about them in popular culture. Without taking these associations into account and how they influence religious polarization often unbeknownst to everyday believers and also influence political events, the picture is incomplete.
1
Americans are not divided on this issue:
President Donald Trump’s 2020 budget proposal includes $25 billion in cuts to Social Security over the next 10 years.
Majorities across every age demographic surveyed in a Pew poll from March said no cuts should be made to Social Security benefits in the future, including 81 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds and 79 percent of respondents over age 65.
3
What would be interesting to understand is who is benefiting from this polarization. Certainly the Media benefits and encourages the divisions. The religious right and cultural conservatives amplify the divisions to define a false victimhood for their beliefs.
But who else?
1
As a refugee growing up in this country at the end of the Vietnam War, I have witnessed a lot of changes, both good and bad. I was fortunate enough to experience a life journey that continues to allow me to learn through my own experience as well as from experiences or history of others. My formative years combined the war survival period of my childhood and the growing adolescent years in America. My respects are to those who went before me and built or paid their prices to make this country great, especially during the civil rights era. From history and civic classes in high school to so many historical works by towering figures of greatness, from Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, FDR and MLK, etc.., I think I have gained some knowledge and wisdom to contribute to this article.
In a dysfunctional family, who should shoulder the blame? Is it the parent or the child?
In a divisive country, who is most responsible? The powerful, like the head of state or the poor?
In the country of my birth, we have a saying: Don't believe in what the communists say but look at their actions.
Science and facts must be the foundation of our decisions. The current administration deserved nothing but contempt!
What will be our legacy to the future generation?
Wake up America!
As the Dalai Lama says,
Of all our natural resources, the most important is the mind.
May the Almighty have mercy on this nation.
2
A political coalition for the "The socially conservative, economically left-leaning constituency that's numerous but often homeless." Yes. I've been awaiting that home for quite sometime. Lind seems to have an excellent point there.
I don't really need social conservatism. I would be happy with socially neutral, socially uninvolved. For instance, it would help in Democrats quit treating abortion as a sacrament, but went with the old "safe, legal and rare" idea and were basically quiet on the topic. Carrying on about it invites the one issue voter to vote GOP, nearly always against all their own economic interests. Which, it turns out, is also not in the interest of those of us who would much prefer that it be "safe, legal and rare." Democrats will win when the issues are economic and plainly described. Cultural issues are not winners.
2
Dear Mr. Douthat. For an excellent historical writing illuminating the religious polarization in the United States, please read Benjamin Palmer's Thanksgiving Sermon of 1860. It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Our intellectuals give us three takes on the problem. One view holds that politics tends naturally to polarize and that racial divisions and racism make that polarization worse. A second view sees polarization following ideological fault lines, not just tribal ones. The third finds the reality of the culture war is indistinguishable from class war. I think all thee views have something to build on and I add one more factor: mendacity.
Mendacity by leaders in religion, education, politics, and the media coupled with the public inability to recognize the untruths or the our lack of will to accept the truth is the root cause. This mental fault of the public and the evil perpetrated by the leaders is both easy and natural for both parties and, in the long run, deadly to the country.
1
After reading this 3-in-one summary by Mr. Douthat I don´t have too optimistic expectations to gain expedient insights by reading those books
Klein is pointing out at timeless features of human nature that cannot explain why in some stages there is no visible effect of polarisation even when segregation had been much stronger while in in others - like now - polarization seems ro be insurmountable.
Caldwell is unable to explain why the creation of this strange thing called "Second Constitution" that took place in the 60ties did not lead to today´s polarization in 2008 when many white industrial workers voted for Mr. Obama advocating his specific change narrative while division suddenly reached unimaginable heights in 2016 and particularly in 2018-2020.
Lind is more up-to-date but he is hiding the simple fact that the polarized division goes straight thru families of the same class the same area and the same education level - remember Kevin and Maureen Dowd... - both in heartlands and in thriving hubs without any regard whether the person is worker, manager, student - remember the "Bernie bros and sis´ " on the one side and "the Stephen Millers of this world" on the other side of the same class room - or Ivy league meritocrates - remember Ms. Warren, a law professor of Harvard. This doesn´t fit into his predominantly ideologic view at all.
These books may be nice but seem not to be helpful to understand the issue. Thank you Mr. Douthat for saving my time and Euros.
1
The deepest polarization is economic. Increasing income disparities are driving us apart across the other divisions Douthat mentions - race, ideology, tribal instincts. The disparities appear in two ways: Inadequate subsistence levels (not enough to eat, no place to live, no access to basic health care) and and inadequate security as greed and corruption destroy the nation's production system (all of us are headed for a gig economy ruled by oligarchs and globalists with no protections for labor, no guarantees of employment, shortages of workers, as the public oversight system breaks down). Thrown in the need ot manage climate change as an urgent prod to get our house in order - as functioning democracy. Can we save ourselves in time? The quesiton looms ever darker
1
I am reminded of the fracturing of Robert Peel's Tory government over whether to feed or not feed the starving peasants who subsisted on potatoes in an Ireland owned and governed by its absentee landlords.
While millions starved Ireland's food export economy boomed and Robert Peel's Tory government gave way to Lord John Russell's Whigs to oversee the death by starvation of a million peasants and the deportation of a million.
America is not polarized liberals and conservatives are in fundamental agreement on the basic nature of society with the division being on the role of government. America's Republicans and Democrats are both neoliberals. They are both both Whigs with the Democrats believing more in Democracy and the conservatives believing in top down governance and power being entrusted to the elite.
I do not know how the Republicans were so successful in turning Jeffersonian Democracy on its head and creating a belief in a Republic that mimicked a constitutional plutocracy with veto power entrusted to the sponsors of Citizens United.
America is not polarized it is at war with itself over becoming a liberal democracy or returning to the world before the enlightenment and the ethics and values where a small number ruled the day to day activities of the many.
America is not polarized red America hates America and blue America loves America.
Power corrupts and there is no metaphysical middle ground the fight is only over power in a notion of lawyers and their sophistry.
5
@Montreal Moe
So much for a preamble. 1500 characters is not nearly enough for citizens who don't know history and historical context.
I live in a constitutional monarchy that has evolved into a liberal democracy under its constitutional monarchy. I listened closely to the GOP and they never utter the word democracy. The repeat over and over constitutional republic. The talk about Hamilton and Madison and the Federalist papers. 17% of revolutionary America could read and write and Jeffersonian democracy was an anathema.
The America of the Federalists is not the America of liberal America or the America we remember before Reagan.
The Federalists do not believe in government of the people by the people and for the people.
Democracy is a pie in the sky concept to plutocrats, aristocrats, and conservatives.
Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela are constitutional Republics. Canada, Sweden Denmark Switzerland and Norway are liberal democracies. The GOP knows whose side they are on.
This is not political polarization it is two fundamentally different philosophies and there is no political solution.
2
Ross knows that the absence of something transcendent is the core malady of the modern era - but embedded in a rather conservative Catholic mindset, he can't find words to convey this in a way that is universally accessible.
One problem is that Christianity for most of its history has been fundamentally dualistic - good vs evil, God vs the devil, man (most decidedly "man") vs nature.
"Transcendence" can be understood in a way that is profoundly immanent.
Right now, you are processing the shapes of black letters on a computer screen. What you are "really" processing is/are various forms of light (with regard to light or "energy" in general, this is in fact true not only of everything you see, but everything heard, felt, tasted and smelled).
The light that you process is "transcendent" to the forms it takes in the letters you read and the images you see.
But they are not different. Look at these letters one way and you see words that refer to something apart from what you see. Look at them another way and you can see they are merely forms of "one" thing (if this doesn't make sense, turn down the display slowly, all the way, as you ponder this)
The great physicist Richard Feynman stated that "we have NO idea what "energy" really is."
If we set aside our modernist "faith" that whatever it is, it's NOT conscious, and NOT alive, then we have a pointer as to where we can find the truly transcendent.
3
Excellent commentary. As far as the fourth book, it should point out “the benign indifference of the universe”, done.
2
Interesting article. It starts by quoting a book that says knowing a lot makes it even harder to make the best decision then he digs into two more books and caps it off by saying that we really need to read even more books before we can get the answer.
But the answer is very simple in some respects, we have never been and are not currently a Christian nation in that we may pay lip service to Jesus and celebrate his birth and death with religious zeal but few of us actually make a serious attempt to follow him by treating everyone we come across as a neighbor and treating them in the way we would like to be treated. This is the one thing that almost certainly matters most and yet is often so rare.
Yes there are lots of other things at play here but treating others with kindness and respect is not so much in vogue. I can cast blame or look for reasons but it is better if I look inward and set the example I would like to see in others.
1
A good column by Douthat--he's much more conservative than I am, but this is pretty thoughtful. There are some books that do explore the 'dramatic religious trends' he mentions, and he is absolutely right that the religious polarization of the country is every bit as important as the racial, class, and ideological divisions, with which religious polarization is intimately connected. 'Evangelical Christian', for instance, is an increasingly inaccurate label for large number of people who use that term to describe themselves, as they are largely united by a conservative cultural politics oriented around defending clear hierarchies of sex, race, and class that has very little to do with Christian theology at all--e.g. large numbers of 'evangelicals' don't go to church, and they are *more* conservative on race, sex, immigration, and class divisions than evangelicals who do go to church (though the ones that do go to church are pretty conservative, they are more likely to do philanthropic things). Opposition to abortion is the key thing that gives this group of very political, quite secular 'evangelicals' some kind of tie to faith and theology; without it, 'secular evangelicals' would look very different to the rest of the country.
4
One of the key divides I see between conservatives and progressives in the US is the divide between analyzing issues from an individual perspective rather than a systems perspective.
Consider poverty. From an individualist perspective, the solution for poverty is for individual people to stop being poor. From a systems perspective, the solution is to build an economy that doesn't depend on a certain fraction of the country to be poor.
I see the same divide wrt healthcare. From a systems perspective, it seems perfectly clear that the wealthiest country in the world, which is already spending twice as much per capita as similarly-wealthy countries, is capable of delivering basic health care to all of its people. From an individualist perspective, some individuals don't deserve health care because they haven't paid (enough) for it.
I have no idea how this divide can be bridged, though.
4
My grandmother believed human beings were like diamonds. Essentially we are mostly carbon with some other things mixed in. Diamonds don't look like much until they are cut. Each facet changes the look but not the chemical content. Human facets are gender, skin color, hair, personality, likes, beliefs, and so on. It is the imperfections and cuts that give diamonds their beauty and fire.
Humans can group themselves by a particular facet but it doesn't change or stop them from being human. The more we focus on a single facet the more we lose sight of what we really are - Human Beings.
If Ross goes back to the 1960s and takes a really hard look at what was happening, including the economic despair poor people of every color all around the world were experiencing it becomes clear that to heal the division we need to do a better job of ensuring equal opportunities for all. Dr. King was murdered because he was organizing the working class and poor. The TRUE Rainbow Coalition, not Jessie Jackson's version, did the same thing and their leaders ended up dead or in prison.
What unites us is far greater than any facet people use to divide us. If we remain divided we will continue to lose opportunities for peace and a better life.
Please see "me" as a whole member of the one race - Human and judge me by the content of my character.
1
@Sierra Morgan
I think the problem is not people grouping themselves by a particular facet. The problem is people grouping *others* by a particular facet, and using that as a reason to treat them poorly.
2
To my mind, which is partial by dint of DNA to the Democratic Party, the reason we are so polarized is due to W's evil genius of a political advisor, Karl Rove who proved that governing to the base, and not to the middle as before, worked.
After invading Iraq, and a fairly through, if not convincing, debate about Weapons of Mass Destruction, W was elected to a second term. That was a fantastic political feat of heavy lifting and slight of hand that had to be admitted and bitterly admired. It worked.
Isn't that the sole criterion of any heuristic these days? If it works, we better do it too. And so to the base every politician and media commentator began to speak or speculate.
The problem was that "the base" was often on the edge, and so defending flank attacks became the order of the day, thus extending the flanks further and further out.
Thanks a lot, Karl Rove. Look what you did. Even an adversary has to acknowledge how well you did it. But here we are now, and it won't be easy to undo it.
Undoing Gerrymandering and coming up with non-partisan means of balancing and maintaining fair electoral districts would be a first step towards bringing back more moderate Republicans and conservative emocrats.
Repealing voting restrictions and Citizens United would also help to give the middle more power, and shift more emphasis by the governing party and by the party out of power trying to regain popularity to moderate positions that will win elections.
4
The fundamental disagreement between Left and Right is rooted in the presumption by the Right that it has the morally correct answers to all questions (after excluding any and all bothersome facts of history, science or math) and should therefore be permitted to dictate the basic life choices to be made by everyone else. The Left believes individuals should be empowered to make their own choices within the parameters of good citizenship and general decency, and no overbearing authority, societal, political or sectarian, that interferes with such personal autonomy should be tolerated.
Things get strange when people on the Right complain about government over-reach (by attempting to solve problems such as access to health care or preventing pollution) and the Left resorts to rabid enforcement of its own versions of political correctness. In American politics, as usual, nothing is simple.
3
I don't agree much with Mr. Douthat but I appreciate him condensing and putting out various ideas on important subjects. To me the best reflection on polarization is
'The Righteous Mind,' by Jonathan Haidt. And in thinking from the"long view" "Sapiens" is also a useful contributor. I understand that all such books have flaws, still good food for thought. No thesis or leader should ever be over idealized. Broadening ones definition and recipients of "empathy" is probably more important than philosophical and intellectual frameworks.
2
A lot of commenters saying, don't know where we start to solve the problem of intense, destructive polarization - which is now far beyond mere opposition or division.
How about on the level of:
there is only one human race.
This is not aspiration, but already present, demonstrable biological fact.
What if we taught this to our children, and daily sought to bring its implications into our own perceptions, beliefs and interactions.
Then add the principle of justice - which begins in the mind. Fairmindedness - which requires commitment & mental discipline - helps human beings to reorder priorities, evaluating beliefs and actions and societal structures so they may become more just. Please don't tell me it's impossible. You got something else to do? I'd much rather we spend the next few hundred years exploring where basic principles of justice and interconnectedness actually take us, than exhausting ourselves, and the earth, with trying so diligently to destroy each other, and our only home.
2
I'm going to read this again to see if I'm willing to read one or more of these books. My problem is that I see the polarization in our society as the function of something not mentioned here--intelligence. Manufacturing processes are increasingly technology driven, and not everyone can keep up. High paying jobs require smarter and smarter people. An increasing percentage of the population is cut out. We have also seen the migration of the best jobs to our two coasts--some notable islands in between--and our politics dividing on the same lines. The strongest predictor I could ever find for how states went in presidential elections was the percentage of college graduates in the population. As a retired psychologist, I view the situation fatalistically. We're not going to change the evolution of jobs, and we're not likely to get any smarter.
3
Forget all the books. Just ask one member of the marginalized classes in America about we've come to be so polarized and they'll tell you why.
Black folks know because it's the color of their skin.
Poor people know it's because they have no money.
Immigrants know because they weren't born here.
And everyone else fits somewhere in-between, whether they're urban or suburban, from the coasts or the middle of the country, from the North or South, Democratic or Republican, Jew, Muslim, Gentile, or Agnostic.
Face it.
The country is polarized and in serious trouble and in danger of splitting apart.
And that's more troubling than just pointing out whose fault that is and the reasons why it's happening.
57
@N. Smith
The last time we were really a United States was during WWII, and even then there was a small group that considered itself a "concurrent majority."
The key issue is whether someone can tell right from wrong. Having administered beaucoups official oaths, I will testify that once administered, people usually will tell the truth and nothing but the truth.
A small concurrent minority cannot. They show themselves through tests for credibility. Exaggeration. Inconsistencies. Demeanor. A jury exercises "sit and squirm" theory.
During Vietnam, I served with some soldiers who expected to return to a civil war. Consider 1968. Assassinations of MLK and RFK. Cities and even small towns on fire. A "police riot" at the Democratic National Convention.
To paraphrase Lincoln, this dictatorship shall pass.
6
@N. Smith : Disagree. For poor whites and immigrants, it is all skin color. Hispanic citizens of NM and Texas, whose families have lived in the same region for literally longer than the existence of the USA, they know, when they are told they do not belong in this country, know it is skin color.
12
@N. Smith
Respectfully, I could not disagree more.
Please consider what it would be like to be a black or immigrant person just 30 years ago. Or an LGBTQ person. Or a smart, ambitious career woman. Would you prefer to have lived in America in 1990 or 2020?
You'll notice that the better things get, the more catastrophic the rhetoric. "Racism" has given way to "white supremacy" as the core of every problem. Gays have mainstreamed, so the new "civil rights crisis" has become insufficient celebration of the transgendered. And on and on.
What is splitting us apart is the assignation of everyone to the role of Victim or Victimizer based on their outer identity. It is unsustainable, and hazardous to a nation as truly diverse as ours.
15
We need a book on where this will lead us if we don't decide we want to stop it. But I really don't see many people on any side who care to stop it.
Rather, I see a whole lot of people who hate each other more than they love any possible vision of a shared and thriving America. And *in this case* I see it universally. For once, "bothsiderism" is more accurate than not.
Americans who blithely say "Hey, just split off the coasts from the heartland and be done with it" neglect urban/rural divides even within states, as well as cultural divides even across adjacent ZIP codes. Not to mention the widespread availability of 21st century high-powered weaponry in private hands.
We've already stripped our children and grandchildren of the opportunity for prosperity and progress, chosen environmental destruction over action on climate change, and stood by as our institutions of republican democracy have been hollowed out because we were too lazy to do the hard work of citizenship. We are now in danger of bequeathing them a failed state and a civil war.
We won't be remembered fondly -- for what we were given, what we chose to do with it, and what we are leaving behind. These have been, and continue to be, *choices*.
101
@Bill Camarda Jonathan Rauch wrote a great piece on this recently: https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/rethinking-polarization
4
@lindamc That was superb: very much worth reading. Thank you for sharing it.
@Bill Camarda It's not choice when the majority of the 2016 voters candidate lost the presidential election because of an 18th century election rule. Because of the electoral college, the country is more divided than ever. Because of the total capitulation of the Republican party to Pres. Trump's agenda, environmental rules are being dismantled and regulations weakened. Voting rights are under threat and international treaties aren't worth the paper they're written on. These are NOT the "choices" of the majority of Americans.
3
Don't worry, Ross, religion will make a comeback. There seems to be a bottomless appetite for superstition, and pandering to irrational fear. We will tackle the real despair underlying our polarization as soon as we get after the satanic pregnancy problem.
3
Ross I just want you to know that I have read your column in the past and have not liked what you have had to say. Perhaps I had been too stuck in my disgust for anything conservative since Trump became president. This started to change when you started doing “The Argument” with Michelle Goldberg and Brett Stevens. The respect and arguments that you all put forth make my day and I look forward to that podcast every week. Since then I have been spending more time and energy reading your thoughts and I have great respect (even when I do not agree) for your writing and thoughtfulness. Thanks for putting it out there at the Times and thanks for being part of “The Argument” because all of these things together have given me a better view of possibilities during this crazy time.
2
We are divided because we have a culture that rewards effort, not results. We have legitimized everything!! You have an opinion? Great it's valid no matter how stupid or outlandish it may be (actually if it's really outlandish, you are certainly a creative person!). I can't pinpoint exactly when this happened but at some point in our culture and media we began to reward the "un-intellectual" over the "intellectual", "unreasonable" over "reasonable" and finally "illegitimate" over "legitimate". Now we wonder why our divide is so wide and our politics are so polarizing?? It's right in front of you...we have abandoned the common shared truths and facts for a society that rewards uber individualism no matter the cost!!!
1
This polarization is not new, but Trump has allowed the racism, the xenophobia, the misogyny, the resentment against the highly educated, wealthy or not, and exclusionary jingoism to be expressed openly and proudly on right wing media, in evangelical churches, at presidential campaign rallies, on bumper stickers and on every other conceivable occasion.
I spend more time these days reflecting on “American Myths” than I do on “American Exceptionalism.”
1
As LBJ stated the end of segregation would lead to an economic boom in the South. Which Nixon ably hijacked for the GOP with his Southern Strategy. Then Reagan added an anti tax mantra to their wedge issue driven dominance of the White House in the 80s. The debunked jettisoned claims of the Laffer Curve have recently resurfaced by Mnuchin to show the wonders of the Trump boom.
2
Ross Douhat uses very complicated language in three different books to illustrate a relatively simple divide. The rural-urban divide is enhanced by what these two different groups represent - rural is mainly white, small town, economically descending, focused on traditional, apprehensive of change, anti-immigration, anti- world view. Urban is mixed racially, tolerant of diversity, generally dynamic, economically ascending, supportive of change, pro-immigration, pro-world view. Rural residents have thus become more Republican because they see Trump (not the party) as keeping a wall (i.e. a metaphor for keeping away change). Urban residents have become more Democratic because they see the party as supporting change in a positive way. The media choices today allow for the other to tune out another point of view. Hence - polarization! For further reading about this, see today's article in the Times by Eduard Porter as well as many of his previous articles...
5
@ES Your description of the urban-rural divide is not "simple." It's simplistic. That's an important distinction.
Sorry, I'm not buying any of the four theories. My observations over the fifty years since I left college lead me to conclude that it was the demise of the Republican party that has led us to our polarized state. After the great depression the Republican party lost credibility and with the success of the New Deal the party was adrift, the old ideas that the unfettered market was all that was needed for minimally shared prosperity were dead. The effort to save Europe from communism allowed the rise of the hybrid state and it threatened what remained of the old, discredited "capitalism is king" policies that Republicans clung to. A new breed of Republican took over the party after Nixon. Edwin Meese brought us Reagan and a whole new idea, find a pretty face to put on a vicious scorched earth political strategy that would never compromise with New Deal policies and carry the "greed is good" banner forward. After Meese came Karl Rove, the master mind of wedge issue politics behind George Bush's pretty face. The revolution was almost complete. The old guard Republicans were being replaced by people who wanted the citizenry to be at each other's throats. The New Republican party embraced the old Dixiecrat racists, rejected the Roe v Wade compromise in favor of fanning the flames of hard-line religious zealotry. New wedge issues, "gun rights" and "the war on Christmas" were created to keep the hate circulating.
And now we have Trump who proclaims the hate proudly.
10
I’m amazed that Douthat manages to discuss Caldwell’s book without touching on how deeply racist the book is, and how Caldwell’s arguments about a “new constitution” are an iffy framework to justify his desire to discriminate against non-whites.
I would have thought that Douthat would have realized halfway through that referencing a book that claims whites are on the “bottom rung” of races now and oppressed because they aren’t allowed to oppress others is, well, a really bad idea. That he doesn’t says distressing things about Douthat.
8
Took him a while, but Douthat finally got down to where he wanted to go—liberalism corrodes everything. Sorry about the Enlightenment, Jeffersonian democracy, the abolition of slavery, and female sufferage, Ross. Sorry about Vatican II, for that matter.
By the way, that “universal solvent?” That’s called, “capitalism,” dude.
4
Speaking from 80 years of observing cultural change, I would say that it was labor unions more than churches that empowered people. The middle class had control over its welfare when it had the power to make changes. “Right-to-work” laws deprived workers of that power and to divert attention away from the real culprit, Republicans exploited labor’s vulnerability by blaming “government” for their problems and, perhaps more subtlety, the civil rights movement. The Internet makes it easy for conservatives to capitalize on the inroads they have made over the last 40 years and it will take Democrats a long time to right the ship. It won’t happen in 2020.
3
Right to work, a cleaver little phrase concocted by the right wing spin doctors; it is really right to work for less!
1
I find it interesting that Mr. Douthat and none of the books that he (not I) read mention two very important developments in our polarization.
The first was covered by books like Bill Bishop's "The Big Sort," explaining that, since we became a post-modern society (pinpointed at the fall of 1965), people have been able to move where they wanted, and so they move from places that are not to their liking to places that are more like them. That reduces political and social diversity in both places.
The second is the transformation of the media over the last 30 years. It is now very fragmented, reducing the need to produce content that appeals to a broad audience. Everyone can listen to what they want to hear, and avoid what they don't, so naturally they do.
Both of these, in my opinion, contribute mightily to our current dilemma, and while I am already part of "a socially conservative, economically left-leaning constituency" called the American Solidarity Party, I don't think it's enough to fix all that ails us.
2
Not to mention the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.
1
50+ years of Democrats using lies and the courts to impose their utopia on the American people and treating anyone who opposes their agenda as evil enemies that must be destroyed are the real root causes of polarization in America.
Trump has given the delporables leadership and hope that their values, the values that made America great, can be restored to their former prominent roll in education and the body politic. For the first time the right has a leader adept at using the tactics of the left and they are loving it. This is why Trump will win again and polarization will continue into the foreseeable future.
1
Nonsense.
In the beginning the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant American Founding Fathers aka Framers who owned property including that of the females in their families along with their enslaved black African men, women and children and the lands and natural resources stolen from brown Indigenous nations men, women and children never imagined that any other kind of human being could ever be a divinely naturally created equal person with certain unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness like themselves.
'Text without context is pretext' Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.
5
Yet these misogynistic, racists created the worlds biggest, most diverse, welcoming, most sought after democracy that has ever existed. Go figure.
Yes, but a pretty fragile society given it's hypocrisies. And the "welcoming" part ALWAYS depended on who you were.
3
@AL
They did not create it willingly. It took a war that killed over 600,000 Americans and even after that about another 100 years of domestic terrorism was used to deny people their constitution rights.
That resistance has continued to this day and its embodied in Trump, his supporters, and the GOP.
1
Read Bruce Bawer, The Victim Revolution, you don't need this clap-trap (I'm NOT a paid shill, NO, it's NOT a 'comspiracy'- it's stupidity).
The Caldwell theory and the Lind theory to some extent seem to boil down to “America is polarized because of the people who don’t agree with me; we should use the heavy hand of the government to force others to agree with me and marginalize or exclude people who don’t.” It takes two to be polarized, even accepting the Caldwell and Lind versions of history, you could equally argue that there would be no polarization if everyone accepted the Civil Rights reforms or neoliberalism. Polarization doesn’t bother me as much as the people who think everyone in America should be forced to be like them.
I believe it is much simpler, I believe its just about people using people to get what they want. The industrial revolution moved business from the city to the country transforming rural agricultural towns to essentially company towns, providing good jobs and increased standards of living. When these towns no longer worked for these companies, they closed or moved essentially abandoning everyone that depended on them. This has always been our history,
a governing structure, no matter what you chose to call it, a dictatorship, a monarchy, communism, socialism or democracy, that always facilitates the few at the expense of the many. The polarization we are seeing is a result of that dynamic. However, this larger dynamic is simply a reflection of the most basic dynamic, you and I. It's called the Golden Rule for a reason, do unto others as you would have done unto you. Unless each of us changes, the system will never change.
This is the great troubling question of our times: can people who fundamentally disagree on such foundational questions as race, gender, entitlement, diversity and so forth coexist on the same land?
From my readings on the subject, I believe that while economics (especially the unprecedented concentration of wealth by a few and the stagnation of it for everyone else) was the original driving force in this arena. But a second wave has now rolled over us, with clever and cynical politicians - and riding on the vast expansion of media outlets - rousing our passions against one another using the timeless tools of division: race, ethnicity, religion and gender.
Altogether, we are placed in a devolving and dangerous place. How or if we can escape from it to a better one is anybody’s guess.
3
"The new constitutionalists are constantly discovering new rights and empowering courts and bureaucracies to enforce them; the old constitutionalists object, win a few elections on the objection and then find themselves defeated nonetheless." Defeated because when the "old Constitution" is applied in ideal terms it is found to be racist, classist and misogynist. Caldwell's argument however is a good one. Poorer, white males have seen their version of America challenged and they don't like it. Tough luck, things change.
2
you lost me at surfeit
1
Why I'm typing this I don't know because for some mysterious reason no comment of mine ever gets posted on one of Douthat's columns, but here goes:
The photo along with this op-ed bears a striking resemblance to the one the "traditional faithful Catholics" use of St.Peter's with lightning to not-so-subtly suggest that the resignation of Pope Benedict was satanic.
How about that.
@Di
Welcome to the “ No Fly List “
I’m honored, actually.
The U.S. has always been 'divided.' That's the point of the federal separation of powers in the states and in the branches of the national government. There would have been no point in creating such a structure if there had been broad agreement. The issue is the functioning of the federal system, not some sudden moral crisis in the individual souls of Americans. America is the wholesale recreation of European/Western civilization in a new place. That took 500 years and transfer of a thousand different ideas, practicies, institutions, ideologies, traditions, etc. That is not a story of 'unity' it's a story of immense complexity. The complexity was always there, stumbling in our ability to handle the complexity is what's new.
Sounds like Douthat is planning to write a book about religious polarization.
1
Most people don’t really want the truth. They just want the constant reassurances that what they believe is the truth.
That’s what the Republicans and Democrats have in common.
That’s what makes the FOX News, the CNN, the MSNBC and the NYT profitable.
That’s why we have two mainstream political parties and three monotheistic religions. That’s why we are saddled with the endless wars.
We believe to be personally perfect in an ocean of sinners.
That’s why nobody is correcting own mistakes and stupidity. You can’t improve the perfect, don’t you?
That’s why we keep hitting a wall headfirst and repeat the same mistakes.
We construe our bloody heads and noses as the proof that God just tests our faith and that we don’t have the right to change the course just because of the pain.
It isn’t helpful that God loves us.
It’s more important that we finally start loving ourselves.
If we did, wouldn’t we finally start correcting self by eliminating personal stupidity?
Idolizing ourselves isn’t the love but pure stupidity.
The love and the idolizing are at the opposite end of faith like the light and the darkness.
The true believers never idolize themselves personally.
They constantly learn from the old mistakes.
It means they don’t vote repetitively for the same political parties that keep lying to them by promising the things they cannot fulfill.
The true believers never vote for the professional liars.
2
"The true believers never vote for the professional liars."
Huh? That's the definition of "politician".
And umm... "True believers....." in WHAT?
“In fact education can increase polarization, because the more tools you have to interpret the world, the easier it is to cleverly interpret it so that your side is always right.”
Gosh, Ross, are you talking about yourself?
1
Right wing propaganda.
Who funds it? Who owns it? Do they benefit from division?
Why?
1
Excellent article
2
Riddle me this: Out of 377 GOP governors, senators and members of the House all White save one? The base for the polarization is racism. Yes, those other factors are present and cannot be ignored, but there cannot be a resolution without dealing with GOP racism. It is a shame that the GOP has come to this. We need a real conservative party (and I say this as a left wing Democrat).
2
@John Douglas
The current incarnation of the GOP is a real conservative party. At its core conservative political movements are about maintaining traditional social hierarchies and political structures. For most of America's history there has been the belief that America is a white Christian country that should be under the dominion of white Christian men. The more to the right one goes in the political spectrum one goes the more these beliefs are reinforced. At the extreme right the intersection of race and religion come together to where people believe that white people are actually God's chosen people, and any means necessary is justified to maintain their dominance.
1
This country is based on racism just as it is around the world where white societies are in charge. There is the continual belief that if you keep minorities down and you use fancy words to explain that your doing proactive activities to improve the lives of minorities or the world.
Till we address our racial issues and reeducate the country or the world will never happen. Till businesses invest in the citizens of this country people will feel left behind and hate.
Don't have to write a book, all you need to do is turn on the TV and listen to the hate streaming off the news here and in rest of the world
The fairy tale of the Harry and Megan story, now that prejudice was right in your face by the people who hated Lady Di for being a commoner. Hate never stops and racism=hate
1
Great picture. Almost don't need an article.
1
So, which one of those books is about Karl Rove's sound-bite machine and Fox "News"?
1
Interesting article, but Bill Clinton was not a Liberal. He was Republican Lite. So was Hillary.
2
Like a bunch of lemmings running around, with the influencers among them yelling:
"Who needs GPS - we've got each other!!!"
1
The first cousin who refused to attend her gay brother's wedding.
The Service Academy graduate who can't go ten minutes without saying something demeaning about Barack Obama, even at this late date. "He killed Judge Scalia, you know".
The sister in law who forgives all where Trump is concerned strictly on the basis of "look at my 401K".
Books, books, books. Pick all you want at the carcass of America in hopes of making sense out of the status quo. It's not gonna help me feel anymore charitable toward these fools.
But therein lies the key. I just gave away the secret. If I refuse to accept them despite what they are and what they believe, I am the creator of my own disbelief and suffering.
It helps to distance one's self from the media. But more importantly, way more importantly, it helps to surrender what many of us think is our right to judge. Check with Marianne Williamson, if you don't believe me.
55
@dove
"But therein lies the key. I just gave away the secret. If I refuse to accept them despite what they are and what they believe, I am the creator of my own disbelief and suffering.
It helps to distance one's self from the media. But more importantly, way more importantly, it helps to surrender what many of us think is our right to judge."
One has to walk many a mile to find someone who speaks the truth. But, as important, one must be able to know truth when one hears it. In my view, the above wise passage by Dove is, indeed, that very truth. We must have compassion and respect, as fellow human beings, for our adversaries. This doesn't mean we have to accept their actions, only that we need to develop our own actions that further a greater good.
8
@dove
So what exactly are you saying? It's my fault for allowing myself to feel emotions in response to miserable people? The path to happiness is acceptance? The path to the status quo is acceptance, you mean.
I don't care about nasty words just because they "make me feel bad." I care about words because extremists are a hop, skip, and a few recessions away from murder; words are handy ways to identify people who are extremists, who would like to hurt people like me, and sometimes do. Pretending that "it's not our right to judge" is really easy to do from an ivory tower. Accepting ugliness seems to inherently make you part and parcel of it and I don't want to be a part of that. If the price is a certain degree of happiness, isn't that worth it?
5
@dove
So what exactly are you saying? It's my fault for allowing myself to feel emotions in response to miserable people? The path to happiness is acceptance? The path to the status quo is acceptance, you mean.
I don't care about nasty words just because they "make me feel bad." I care about words because extremists are a hop, skip, and a few recessions away from murder; words are handy ways to identify people who are extremists, who would like to hurt people like me, and sometimes do. Pretending that "it's not our right to judge" is really easy to do when it's not your friend raped, your other friend called the n word, you being treated like you're less than human. Accepting ugliness seems to inherently make you part and parcel of it and I don't want to be a part of that. If the price is a certain degree of happiness, isn't that worth it?
2
Any Liberal Era in which it was "Good" to mingle and find common interests among different identity groups has come to an end not because alliances that are good for all those groups, but because at the end of the attempt to find more common interests, after they are all discovered and implemented in accordance with liberal agreements, what remains is the residual differences that CANNOT be resolved, i.e. the irreconcilable differences are laid bare and become the focus.
In this Post Liberal Era we already know what we all have in common and can deal with through liberal political alliances.
What liberals didn't believe is that beneath all those common interests there were and are still irreconcilable differences that cannot be resolved with politics. The result is the new conservative movement that identity groups do well to congregate among themselves and that they are happiest when they do so because they have no irreconcilable differences within their own groups. The same is true at the national level of geopolitical-ideological divisions, that identity groups are happiest when they have geographic borders and common political-ideological beliefs.
Liberalism has found all the common interests, and now must face the truth that there still exist real irreconcilable differences and that Liberalism does not have the answers for how to deal with them.
1
The polarization in this country started with the constitution and continues today. The forming of a perfect union 200 plus years ago excluded a whole lot of Americans.
That the rights of all Americans have been and are being addressed in the 21st century is the struggle that made America exceptional.
Some of those rights have been long overdue and denied, but through our incremental justice system many have been addressed albeit this country has a long way to go.
2
I have read Lind's book . Despite exagerations in his analysis the idea is a correct one. Let me put it in my words. The syllicon valley plus the Ivy league are part of the same league of neo liberal globalized agents and both work together. They are in favor of immigration, diversity and human rights. Some in the Ivy league are critical of the socioeconomic gap, without undertsanding that they contribute to it. The Ivy league are the greater promotor of neo liberalism, and it is the place from where the "elites in transit" (Christopher Lasch) come about.
let me add, Populism indeed is a terrible, but at the same time the right answer to this widespread hypochresy. And it it is going to end badly
2
Interesting theories and reads. Something that appears absent here and elsewhere, as people try and understand the upswing in disruptive populism across the Western world, is a contrasting look at the wealthy first world countries where populism is not such an issue, like Japan, and consider why that is the case. Why here and not there? What's different? I'll note as well that Japan has extremely low wealth inequality compared to most of the Western first world. Perhaps we should be looking overseas for answers, not across the Atlantic, but across the Pacific.
1
One important fact is that conservative Christians have not noticed that Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists are conservative too and have failed to create an umbrella for all groups.
A similar fact is that Hispanics are also conservative and abortion is banned or sharply limited in most of Latin America where Hispanics are allowed to choose their own laws. Similarly there is strong conservatism also in the black community. MLK's niece is a prominent opponent of abortion.
The white Christian conservatives COULD create a large coalition group but so far they seem not to have tried. Maybe they will realize that the "come one, come all, white only" is a slogan which cannot work.
1
@Ludwig
The support of Donald Trump has destroyed whatever credibility that white religious conservatives may have had with other groups. It may take at least a generation for any hope of anything resembling a multi-religious conservative coalition. And there is a possibility that it doesn't happen at all if white religious conservatives don't change their positions with regard to "others."
Bush 41 was the last President who worked in a bipartisan way. He took on the financial industry mess, outlawed discrimination against disabled people, tackled the acid rain problem and raised taxes. Unthinkable today for a Republican.
Next came Bill Clinton, who we remember as presiding over a long period of growth and leaving the WH with a budget surplus, but his legacy is complicated. It was his embrace of free trade with low wage countries that drove workers into the arms of Republicans.
Indeed, their response to being let down by the government in favor of the educated classes has been libertarianism (we don't need anyone) and iconoclasm (... all of you). That of course, was/is a mentality highly compatible with the one furthered by the corporations behind the GOP. Conversely, many of the upper middle class could find themselves in the Democrats' embrace of economic growth, cheap products over manufacturing and low taxes over social programs.
That's why I mark Clinton '92 as the turning point, and why I think getting the workers back from Republicans is the key to reversing polarization.
We need to rethink free trade with low wage countries. Smart trade barriers work to create manufacturing opportunities. Occasionally you will find corporations admitting the truth, like this company creating 600 jobs in Tennessee only because of the Buy America Act: https://www.vanhool.be/en/news/van-hool-builds-bus-factory-in-morristown-tennessee-us
3
@Liz
We now live in a plutocracy. You will not get the corporate elite to give up the value created and the competitive parity or advantage of low-cost foreign labor. Any concessions will be symbolic at best.
You will also not get the corporate elite to give up the increasing productivity gains and costs reductions due to automation.
Workers need to trained to move further up the value chain where the return on intellectual capital is better than the return on low skilled labor. It's the best way to incentivize corporations to hire workers, and pay them accordingly. Unfortunately, this won't happen until we have more politicians that see providing funding and access to skilled technical trades and other forms of higher education as both sound economic and social policy
3
@Liz
Reagan was the tipping point for the non-upper management white collar worker. Prior to that companies sent workers for training, employees were valuable assets, not cost centers. Welfare was seen as a hand up and Dems could still see the 80% of Americans. Reagan's Amnesty Bill, anti-union media blitzes, and all out assault on small farmers started the landslide. Bad trade deal after bad trade deal wiped out many people. Now it is the arrogance/ignorance of leaders that refuses to invest in education for adults that is wiping out families and older people.
But then again when you can exploit someone else and their resources why not? It is all in the name of profits, which makes it all good, right?
What?! Polarization but no discussion of the impact of elite-manufactured propaganda?
While the counter-culture of the 60s might have got the ball rolling in response to the hubris and lies of the Establishment, the Right has turned hate-speech into an art form. Elimination of the Fairness Doctrine enabled demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and outlets like Fox and Clear Channel to spew hate into the public sphere as a strategy for building their businesses.
Ross, you are right that churches might have helped stem this divide, by insisting on more love for one's neighbor, and holding off with that "first stone." But those churches have had to deal with their own hypocrisies, and often lost their moral high ground by eschewing love in favor of demeaning the "other."
The good news is that the damage that we, collectively, Left and Right, have wrought, is going to be severe enough (Donald Trump as President! A cowardly Senate! Hurricanes, Floods, Drought, Fires, Pandemics) that we will have to work together to make a better world. Let's hope that those that survive remember.
At the root of our schism is the fallacy of the dualistic and dominionist Abrahamic religions which essentially deny that man is a part of nature but its ruler. Along with this is our fear and fixation on death that drives us, ironically, to sow death. Until we accept that we are merely a part of nature, not its lord, and accept death as a transition to new forms, not the end, we will be irrevocably toxic to earth and one another.
But I wouldn’t expect Douthat, with his fixation on a dying religion, to understand this.
2
This was really good and I have to hand it to Mr. Douthat for doing all the work - a lot of reading, a lot of thinking - necessary to write this one short column. If I were to do my own work, I would read all three books too.
2
Many things can be true at once, especially in a subject as complicated as how America got to be the way it is.
All three explanations seem to contain some bits of the truth. But none of them mention the unique confluence of events that came after WW2: the fact that America was the only leading manufacturing nation that hadn't been severely damaged, and the military hegemony that allowed it to keep its monopoly for decades. This happened before civil rights, so the value of the white American male's labor soared.
The rest of the world caught up in manufacturing, civil rights divided the pie, and that decreased the value of American male labor. And people with diminished expectations tend to act irrationally. Meanwhile, the right wing think tanks have been fine tuning their rhetoric to demonize anything that involves working together as if we were all part of the same team.
I'm not saying the explanations in the three books are incorrect, just that it's a complicated reality with many moving parts.
4
It's absurd that Caldwell blames the liberalism of Clinton and Obama for the decline of "churches, families, union shops and local industries." The cities have become the center for economic growth and success due to their superior educational opportunities focused on the advancements of technology worldwide that have replaced less efficient ways of doing things. States that are primarily rural have elected anti tax Republicans who wind up providing inferior services and environments for business. So the cities thrive and rural areas go into decline. Add someone like the divisive Trump to make this economic gulf ever wider and the narrative becomes it's us, the rural conservatives versus them, the elite liberals.
Republicans have been pushing a false concept of a culture war for decades. Society moves on, people's understanding of what is right and what is wrong evolves and it has nothing to do with Washington politics, Supreme Court rulings and the law.
3
@USS Johnston
Society seldom moves on its own. For often than not it has to be pushed. Both the labor movement and the civil rights movement in America met with fierce resistance. We've reached another point in history where the status quo is no longer sustainable.
1
Well, for starters, Ezra Klein is a liberal only in Douthat's sense. By any other measure -- New Deal politics, American history to about 1980, European norms today, -- Klein is a center-right technocrat whose program has failed society, but done excellently by himself. Universal health insurance wouldn't have shocked Dwight D. Eisenhower, but it sure shocks Ezra Klein & Co., and opposition is the source of a great living.
American life today is much simpler when seen as class war, horrifying though simplicity may be to the likes of Ross. Settle inequality, on the modest order of our counterparts in Western Europe, then we can talk about the indigenous conflicts which remain.
And for the lord's sake, leave religion out of it. In 2000 years, what grief has it assuaged, or violent conflict not abetted?
1
When the Barons of England forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, they were not thinking of democracy, human rights, the vast serf class of their country. They were thinking about their own fortunes that John was wasting in futile wars.
The landed gentry of the American colonies wanted to be equal to the aristocrats of England. Yes, some influential colonists( ie. B. Franklin) really did believe that all white men were created equal and they did not want to support a state religion. But the plight of the slave and the Native American population registered nothing on their conscience.
Mr. Douthat believes it is right to allow the African American the right to marry the person of their choice, but not the lesbian or homosexual. To him, rights extend only to the reach of the teachings of the Catholic Church.
The Magna Carta, The Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s are all steps, important steps, but only steps TOWARD the true equality of all humanity.
When every human being, of every ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion (including no religion), age, disability, country, etc is truly regarded as equal to all others then we will have moved closer the true belief in human equality.
5
First: Follow the money - politicians doing for the wealthy. Think Ronald Reagan's Tax Cut Revolution.
Second: Anti-communism leading to anti-government leading to greater and greater inequality together with endless wars.
Third: Religion on the line - anti-governmental Christianity. A faith who's morals can't stand the test of modern ethics.
FUTURE SHOCK is here. The pace of technological change is increasing as new tools beget more new tools.
Petty old priorities must be discarded. On this trip to the future only CORE VALUES may be packed along. Can you identify them? Buddhist mindfulness could help - but, old time Christianity? Not so much. It's a religion for children and the poor of spirit. Adults must put away childish things.
3
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
We are divided because we have myths and an ethos of rugged individualism at a time when our problems cannot be addressed or solved through unregulated capitalism or self interest.
When our nation was young and few new its size or resource limits, we could all strive for our own self interests without lasting harm to others (except of course to slaves and natives).
Now we have 350 million people living in fixed borders competing in a global economy. Our problems concerning the environment, health care, education, and infrastructure cannot be solved by individualism. "I've got mine, it's up to you to get yours" will not solve our issues. A quasi-religious belief in "markets" will not help either. A dollar has no conscience and commercial organizations get what they financially reward for. Capitalism cannot address moral and ethical issues.
We will not advance beyond our present polarization without thinking beyond ourselves. Presently we have too much 'me" and precious little "us".
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@mike
"Capitalism cannot address moral and ethical issues."
Actually capitalism can address both moral and ethical issues. The issue is in many cases it has decided not to.
The problem is that stakeholders, as in shareholders for public corporations, boards of directors, and management place profit above all else. We've gone beyond capitalism to what I call hyper-capitalism. The pursuit of either profits for established companies or high valuations for startups has skewed both morals and ethics.
1
Right-wing media looks to me like a major driver of division. Its reach is wide, both here and in the UK, dwarfing the reach of left-wing media. It's been pushing suspicion of one's neighbors for decades. More recently, it has freed its politicians from reality, so that even observable truths can be denied. Paul Krugman has written that climate change denial is a clear example of this, and the skills honed there are now deployed to warp understanding of other inconvenient realities.
Perception of truth matters. When one can control the truth, enormous power is gained.
Divisive politicians benefit from this platform. Trump's flamboyant hatred is only an amplification of W's 'you're either with us or against us,' and Palin's 'real Americans'.
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@Old Yeller
Exactly correct. Right-wing media dominates the landscape overwhelmingly because it is funded lavishly by wealthy and corporate interests who in turn benefit enormously when right-wing politicians are in office.
The 99% of the rest of us who (might) send a few bucks to a campaign and (maybe) vote can't compete with that.
27
@Old Yeller
I think it is right-wing media in conjunction with the decline of community and civic organization participation. I suppose Douthat's common refrain of religious decline has some space here in the sense that people can no longer say, "No Fox, that generalization isn't true at all. I'm a deacon with a person from this identity group you are bashing and they are in fact a lovely person." More broadly, how does one get past fearing your 'neighbors' if you don't know them? How do we surmount the problem that instead of first hand information about and communal experience with others, the right wing media is the only force shaping opinions? I know it isn't a nationalized solution. A president won't solve this. We need localized community and organization building.
5
Please Ross, keep it simple.
If a significant portion of the electorate believes right wing propaganda is real news and legitimate journalism is fake news, democracy becomes impossible.
That is the crux of our polarization. People base their beliefs on what they are told to a great degree and what they are told has changed in this country in the last 30 years.
This is a very dangerous moment to our democracy and our planet- we need to clearly state the facts.
Our polarization has at least as much to do with the manipulation of powerful interests as the natural, grass roots predilections of the electorate.
We've long been under the influence of such power, but never before has it reached the heights of the Murdoch perpetual motion machine of political propaganda. The more people under its spell the more money it makes.
Usually the powerful have to pay for their influence and don't become billionaires on the propaganda itself.
Maybe it's time we boycott its sponsors.
If one doesn't recognize the uniqueness of that they don't understand the threat.
62
In my opinion, each election ought to foreground Parties. Parties are national. The Senate gives states rights. The President is greatly influential regarding all our citizens; all over the right age should cast a clear vote unable to be dismissed. Now, they basically recommend his election.
Scrapping the Electoral College might create or make possible a process closer to what US situations need and which might be of some importance.
There could be two sorts of relevant votes here: a single vote for one’s preferred Party – the sort of vote that can determine the Party to be successful on election day; and secondly – and also of importance – voting that would show each individual’s different preferences as regards the five individual men or women of each Party that are wanting to become the next President (first, second, third, fourth, fifth).
See Louis Menand in The New Yorker, January 20, on how affirmative action has worked, as shows by statistics. A Reagan Labor Department study showed that requiring federal contractors to hire more minorities and women showed that affirmative action worked. The department hired a consulting firm to review the results and when it concluded the results were valid, it decided not to release the report.
"Diversity, however we define it, is politically constructed and politically maintained. It doesn't just happen. It's a choice we make as a society."
1
For me, Ross Douthat's review of 3 tomes seems overly compicated. Sure, they document the origins and manifestations of polarization, but all treat their subjects with dry analyses that frankly leave me cold.
We're in an era unlike any other, one I think is based on information warfare. It seems less important to debate the dynamics of polarization--white resentment, economic disparity, cultural battles, constitutional remedies--than to accept how tribalism has supercharged our worlds.
Why? The dominance of alternate reality media that created and maintanis the bubbles we know today. Society can't survive two versions of truth--Conway notwithstanding, there are no "alternate facts."
Conservatives and liberals can argue forever about what drives polarization but it won't be fixed unless the two sides operate based on the same set of facts and reality.
276
@ChristineMcM - Six corporations own 90% of the media outlets in the US. Entertainment has merged with politics and punditry in the US news landscape. Because of this, the corporations thrive on division as it attracts eyeballs to their TV channels. Roger Ailes had a business plan for Fox News that included hiring the most attractive people even if they were substandard TV news journalists. He became a billionaire off of packaging news geared to a certain audience and was masterful at blending the yellow journalism of his tabloids with his TV news networks. Americans don't have the attention span to watch 60 minute documentaries on specific news topics so they're condensed into 2-3 minute shorts with an entertainment "Miss Universe" flair. The news networks are expected to bend to the President's propaganda or risk infuriating the corporate heads wh rub shoulders with political influencers. Why else would Pompeo feel confident enough to suggest that Ms. Kelly couldn't distinguish between Bangladesh & Ukraine to Trump supporters? When news aren't interpreted correctly, the Trump administration can threaten retaliation. Therefore, division is built into the structural beams of society, and people are herded into one farm pen or another, depending on their ability to figure out the manipulation from above.
103
@Dunca: your points are excellent and well known. FOX can get away with murder, quite literally, because of the symbiosis with Trump's brain. FOX and other conservative media are bullhorns to magnify and spread the principles of Trumpism and Trump's ugly, perverted demands for fealty no matter what he does. That nobody can criticize him is dangerous. We depend on a free press to hold officials accountable. Nobody is holding Trump accountable, just as he's evaded responsibility for his actions all his life. He truly is the Emperor with No Clothes, and because the Dems are the only ones calling that out, it carries no weight.
29
@Dunca Actually you can probably blame Ted Turner for starting the never ending news bombardment. When 24hr news (CNN) came on in 1980 there was a constant search for content. Well, only so much news happens in a day, so opinion content began to creep in to the point where it's getting harder to tell what is news and what is opinion. This is true for whichever side you are on.
15
American polarization is driven primarily by racial animus...it's not economic, it's not religious, it's not constitutional. You know it, Ross. We have to quit looking for other reasons.
The post-2016 Pew Charitable Trust survey of Trump voters definitively showed they didn't vote for him for economic reasons. It was for racial and cultural reasons. They liked his demeaning messaging about minorities. His blatant white power stance. I
am not sure if this will change as older white voters finally die off. I hope so. But then white people and racism is pretty intractable.
The 2020 election does not bode well for Democrats. Race will continue to be the key factor for white voters even as Democrats continue to think it's about impeachment, healthcare, or Trump's immoral behavior.
80
@History Guy On the money response. Until everyone, including Times Editorial Writers, start to recognize this glaring and most dangerous American reality nothing is going to change. Republicans want to limit the ability of minorities to vote for this very reason. Everyone with a conscience must vote, particularly all minority voters.
15
@History Guy I think it's much more tribal than racial, it just so happens that the white trump voters recognize that they are in the opposite tribe than the vast majority of non-white Americans. It also explains why they will show a lot of support for minorities that do support Trump. It's a similar reaction I have to seeing a guy with a cowboy hat on saying something bad about Trump, "Look! a good one!"
Race also doesn't explain the Obama to Trump working class voters that flipped the rust belt states and ultimately cost Hillary the 2016 election.
14
@adam
The number of Rust Bell voters who went from Obama to Trump is miniscule. You can look it up. Thomas Edsall in the Times had a great piece on it.
What flipped Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to Trump was a major decline in minority turnout. Forget Ohio. It's pretty much a Red state.
20
Jim crow'? I'm a native NYC'er, and 'til about 15 years ago, we were different.
Now, with the influx of stupidity, and gentrifiers, this is becoming (rapidly, YET) another bland, generic place.
In all my years, I've NEVER heard of, nor seen of the lunacy which DOES happen (unfortunately) in the south, Midwest, (the so-called 'bible belt, LMA).
NYC is - had ALWAYS been at the forefront. Before the civil war, NYC was a 'free' city.
It's disgusting how uneducated, misinformed people have a pulpit to spread lies, falsehoods (about NYC).
I'd recommend to anyone who truelly use interested in wanting to know why this country's going down the proverbial toilet, read. Bruce Bawer the Victim Revolution.
As s for people NOT born in this city, we've had enough of your meeting, and trying to outproce us out of our homes, of trying to make us a bland nothing.
This is - and should remain NYC.
If anything, we should become an independent city-state, get rid of these 50 MILLION (check the records) tourists/year, waddling around, and the gentrifiers, and let us live in peace.
I don't see this as being all that complex as these books describe. It's really quite simple; not all conservatives are racist, but if you are racist, you claim to be a conservative. And many of these racists aren't afraid to show it. I was in Central Florida the other day, and unsurprisingly, a huge, loud, pick-up truck with the Confederate flag emblazoned on its rear window, and stickers about boys, guns, and the Constitution festooning the truck - a common sight in the south - I thought, how could America not be polarized when people like him are unafraid of displaying their not subtle hostility towards reasonable citizenship? This cancer didn't start with Trump, or the 1960s, it's been with us since the beginning of our country.
169
@Jason must be the same truck I saw in Miami years ago It made me feel like a slap in my face
6
Mr Douthat misses an obvious point: the rise and fall of a credible external threat. When the Soviet Union was strong, more politicians were inclined to keep the rest of us happy in order to prevent a communist revolution. Notice how the closer to the Soviet Union’s borders one got, the stronger a country’s social safety net became?
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the rich and powerful started working to bring back the Gilded Age. One tool was buying up all the large media sources so that only their side of the story was told on TV, radio, and big newspapers.
This became an opportunity for folks such as Rupert Murdoch to replay Randolph Hearst’s Yellow Journalism model. To succeed, they needed to divide the rest of us from uniting against the 0.1%. Thus, a divide and conquer media environment, which creates polarization - until a credible foreign threat causes everyone to unite against the foreign devils.
Example: Iran used the Great Satan to unify its population and suppress dissent - and the US uses fear of Iran for the same purpose. Without the threat of foreigners, internal dissent rises.
63
@John M I always thought that the Cold War was a time of great unity because we were determined to prove our way of life . . . Democracy, freedom, individual rights, capitalism . . . Was superior to the command economy represented by the USSR. It drove our scientific community to engage in a space race which we won (though it appears to have been revived).
We were united by a vision and it resulted at times in utter folly like the domino theory and Vietnam. That probably had alot to do with undermining belief in our institutions to address real problems.
As the world changed and the old answers became increasingly impotent, we turned to institutions like government, religion, education for answers and they were either ineffective or, even worse, sources of betrayal.
So we are left with fear of the future, distrust, frustration, And a sense of wounded pride.
6
@John M I agree that the end of the Cold War played a major role in where we are now. I wonder if Ezra Klien's book details this at all as it does fall within the psychological dimension that the article is highlighting. A crucial development in tribalism where without the "great enemy" tribalistic biases still had to assert themselves, but now it was inward nationally, rather than externally.
5
@Susan Johnston I said to my husband yesterday that I think most people in America feel that their lives have not turned out the way they hoped/expected when they were younger. That most of our adult lives have been a struggle, that we have been let down by people and institutions we trusted, that playing by the rules didn't get us anywhere. The big difference seems to me that some people need to have someone specific to blame for their misfortunes and some people don't. And the right-wing media has been able to attract people that need someone to blame and nurtured their sense of grievance, told them that they are right to feel that way and encouraged them to use their grievance as the filter through which they interpret the world around them. And unless we can solve why some people react that way, we will remain polarized, paralyzed and unable to solve our problems.
6
The civil rights laws were the root cause of issues we face because it shifted party dynamics, for the good and the bad. The Democrats were the party of the south, they tiptoed around things like getting rid of Jim Crow, they tiptoed around issues like abortion but they also were the party of farm subsidies and the legacy of the New Deal, that benefitted the farm/southern/rural voters. The GOP before the civil rights movement was the party of the rich and the suburban middle class, they were socially center moderate (the old Northeast GOP), were anti organized labor. Post 1964 the GOP saw their future in the disenchanted southern voters, and what was once the Blue Dog democrats over time evolved into the GOP base (this includes the fundamentalist Christians). This caused over time traditional suburban GOP voters to go independent or Democrat. It led to conflicts, the Democrats, shorn of the southern/rural voters, we able to become more liberal in their orientation with rights, which likely helped with further losses on the blue collar side. The GOP still had the big money guys, and as a result they actively destroyed organized labor and also cheerled businesses going offshore, which helped destroy the rural belt. The GOP then told the blue collar white workers that their jobs were lost because of regulation, tax policy and affirmative action, rather than the loss of the power of labor, and of course blamed "liberals"...Trump played on that anger, QED
1
I don’t see why Douthat had to ruin a perfectly good column by interjecting religion. I’ll wait for his “we’ll see” armed with my defense against religion coined by Hitchens: that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. A razor employed not employed often enough.
2
Given your central religious theme--including the increasing absence of it--coupled with a longstanding history of warring religions (and ethnic groups), it is difficult to muster much optimism.
Danielle Allen recently published an essay calling for unity: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/danielle-allen-american-citizens-serfdom/600778/ ("The Road from Serfdom," Dec 2019). In it is a plea for unity, but based on human history it is hard to think this can occur in our lifetimes. There remains a suspicion that only a grave external threat could unite us and that would at best be temporary. Could that threat be climate change? Not so far.
So many print discussions have surfaced on the need for tolerance. So many historical examples indicate just how difficult that is to expect, particularly over the long haul. Hence enlightenment--whatever that really means--remains elusive.
"I’m a conservative...that makes me doubt the completeness of this analysis."
Completeness? You are missing an entire elephant in this room. Any analysis of our polarization overlooking the affect of powerful special interests purposely dividing voters via well funded think tanks and direct control of media is not deserving of a platform in the NY Times.
Is Doutha's continuing assertion that the politics of this country are formed entirely organically from the grassroots up the result of naivete or just cynicism?
Did some auto mechanic in Des Moines come up with the idea that climate change was a hoax and the scientists are frauds and liars and then told his friends...?
Did Roger Ailes have nothing to do with the organization of the Tea Party and FOX only was reporting news when keeping viewers tuned in to every event of the group leading up to the 2010 midt-terms?
This country has long been divided by envy and resentments between the working class and professionals to some degree, it is human nature to envy those that seem more successful and to exaggerate one's own virtue as the reason for being successful.
However, to develop this to our current point of acrimony required a lot of help from the top. Singularly, the most powerful influence has been the phenomenal success of Rupert Murdoch in turning political propaganda disguised as news into a billion dollar entertainment industry.
Heal the polarization by boycotting all sponsors of FOX.
3
An intellectual can attempt to explain the divisions that are fracturing our country as if he was a geologist scientifically explaining the causalities of the Earth's magma which cause the San Andreas Fault. The most laughable is that education causes people to have a "bunker" mentality. Why not just examine the reason why certain individuals benefit from dividing the masses. No, the social safety net & fear of poor minorities getting too much of the pie is not a cogent explanation as Trump just gave Midwestern farmers over 16 billion dollars while cutting SNAP, attempted to kill the ACA & rollback Medicaid, rolled back protections for blacks against discrimination, passed a tax bill that excludes blacks from sharing in the wealth, rolled back legal aid & protections for poor minorities from being "over policed" in their neighborhoods & many other cruel policy objectives. The media profits from division and class/racial hostilities as well as the ruling 1% of society. After all, “Divide et impera” is as old as politics and war. Diving your enemy so you can reign approach expressed by Julius Caesar is as old as Western Civilization. Caesar applied it to conquer Gaul twenty two centuries ago. But he wasn't the first one, nor the last one, to implement it. Trump is just the latest wannabe Caesar to employ this simple but effective political strategy. Douthat attempts to over intellectualize the ruling class's greed & lust for power which has caused immense income inequality.
Cardinal Newman’s opinion on the decline of civilized states may have some relevance here: “...in civilized states the cultivation and spread of knowledge for a time develop and length dissipate the elements of political greatness in the sense that ‘where thought is encouraged, too many will think, and will think too much’ , with the result that the ‘sentiment of sacredness in institutions fades away’ and ‘at length the common bond of unity in the state consists .....,simply in the unanimous wish of each member of it to secure his own interests.’” Or put another way, too many will illustrate the maxim that “a little knowledge” is a dangerous thing. See NYT’s 1619 project and scholarly response.
At least Ross has made a tiny first step toward self-awareness in suggesting that he might be one of those intellectuals who is bunkered in their rationalization in ignoring the facts around them.
Fine, if that salves your intellectual conscience. But that doesn't do any of us any good when you use your intellect to salve your moral and political conscience- and put that in a column, week after week, even at this late date.
I will not believe that 'the conscience of the conservative' allows for outright lies and character assassination, outright denial of oaths of office and oaths in court.
Intellectuals may be experts at deluding themselves, they can deal with their own dishonesty. But to delude yourself on what you know to be right and wrong ( and to use specious moral and religious arguments to do so) is a different level of dishonesty.
Any love of conservatism or conservative religion can not be rationale for not calling out politicians for failure to live up to the oaths that politicians have sworn to God and men. Or failure to call out an immoral, lying President.
As Ross well knows from the confessional (perhaps converts don't get this education) regarding wrongdoing (sin). Realize it, own it, apologize for the damage it might have done, and move forward with a vow to not repeat it.
1
I live in Texas and I come in contact with many Southern Baptists. Many of them are excellent people with whom I disagree on many issues but that does not mean I do not value their friendship.
But there are those who speak in dark, conspiratorial tones about how the world has become intolerable since the sixties and all this change is a refutation of God's plan and something should be done about it. They are, of course, referring to civil rights and feminism without have the integrity to do so directly.
I look them in the eye and tell them that any honest and open-hearted reading of the Gospels of Jesus Christ leads to the inevitable, and completely correct, conclusion that you cannot be a Christian and a racist, and God know what is in your heart.
It is absolutely the truth -- heck, it is the central requirement of Christianity: love they neighbor. There isn't a clause in there that says "love thy neighbor after you move to an all-white gated compound."
Boy, do those Southern Baptists get mad.
5
It's about ideas. Truth over tribalism. If having more information makes one more concerned or active in politics, you have no choice but to be partisan because conservatives have dismissed knowledge. We only have the two parties. This is no time for muddied waters. Global warming is rampant and of the utmost concern--idea no.1 . Many people are gay, or dark-skinned, or outspoken women, and deserve to be treated just like anyone else--idea no. 2. Our society is unjustly dominated by the rich and powerful, with a disparity in wealth and income that needs to be addressed--idea no. 3. Trump's flaws must not be glossed over--idea no. 4 (I'm not partisan when I say he's a lying pig, I'm informed). Most Americans want common-sense firearms restrictions--idea no. 5. Most Americans support a woman''s right to choose abortion--idea no. 6. This supposed to be a democracy. Just because so many Americans are ignorant and full of hate doesn't mean we can excuse their terrible ideas.
3
The one polarizing effect that rises above all others, Fox News. You don't have to go any further than to see the damage that network of propaganda has done to divide America more than any other influence in our society.
3
Another overly technical analysis of a problem that has existed forever in America. During a recent vacation I re-read "To Kill a Mockingbird." I suggest that all read this contemporaneous vision of the deep hatred Whites had for Blacks less than 80 years ago. Neither MLK, nor the Civil Rights Act, nor the Newark and LA riots, nor affirmative action policies, nor any other purported American strides towards equality of the races have significantly diminished White racist attitudes that are intensely embedded in Americans, particularly in many areas of the nation. Children learn these sentiments from their parents, Sunday School teachers, school teachers, ministers and friends. Just look at the rabid masses at Trump Jot;er ;ole gatherings. Read some of the banners at White political rallies. The problem is less complex, but more pervasive and difficult to resolve, than you opine.
3
One of the most significant sources of polarization, which always seems to be swept under that rug, is the abject denial of scientific truth again and again.
We generally have faith in medical science telling the truth.
Our lives depend upon it, and we are buying it.
But this same scientific method and it's dedicated specialists produce findings repeatedly that our political leaders deny- without really understanding the studies, and without comparable evidence to the contrary- and heedlessly act upon this ignorant prejudice.
And where is Science now, in a world violently divided over religion and it's place in modern society?
Other-worldly superstitious religion is the primary, most elemental mother of falsehood today, that affects every facet of our existence, contaminating government to it's core and compromising real positive action.
Just yesterday Catholics were killing protestants, Moors were killing Spanish Catholics, and Southern Christianity supported human slavery.
And so it goes...
1
Let's just face it. We are not "one country' merely because we learned how to use a knife and fork the same way. Life is a series of compromises. Just ask the millions of dead in the ground over many centuries among the nations of Europe.
There's an old Pogo cartoon with the caption, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Every analysis of what's wrong with us points to other people as the problem. Liberals blame conservatives. Republicans blame Democrats. Struggling white people blame hothouse elites and vice versa.
Every recommendation for improvement blames another group that--probably not coincidently--also gets handed the check in one form or another.
We have no unified vision of what this country is supposed to look like. Find that and you'll find the solution.
1
Good Article - Good Luck! I wonder what percent of NYT subscribers will read this article. And then I wonder what percent of those will read just one of those books. I have a friend, 76 yrs old, that walks with me. He is college educated, smart, successful in business, and has not read a book in its entirety since graduating college in 1965. Oh, I forgot, he is a Trump supporter. I'll probably read one of these books and tell him about it. He will laugh at me and call me a hippie liberal. I've walked with these guys for 10 years. They all support Trump. Some of them read books. The Republicans in the Senate remind me of the guys I walk with each morning. They are not stupid people. They have just given up on REASON as a tool for confronting paradox. Maybe Ezra Klein has the answer in his book.
What all three books--in Douthat's review--seem to lack is an understanding of how such a large segment of our population can accept Trumpian falsehoods---a world of alternate facts and conspiracy theories, discredited by rational people. It is as if --were we in Medieval times--these Trumpians would continue to believe that the world is flat and the earth is at its center long after the Renaissance began. Lie ater lie after lie, changing stories all the time---Trump's approach to information--and the base continues to believe in the man. Ezra Klein posits that even a good education would not help, as often the highly informed are the most intensely partisan advocate. I would think that not all supporters of Trump---the highly partisan group facing the highly partisan liberal group --really believe all the nonsense presented by Republican leadership. Many feel that Trump is carrying out their wishes--tax cut for big business, deregulation, setting up a totally conservative judiciary, and "keep minorities in their place"---and even knowing that he is a serial liar and incompetent administrator does not lessen their support. Others who support him just believe him. Even if they are educated they have not learned critical thinking in their education, which relies on a thorough evaluation of sources. In many of the humanities, as in history or philosophy, this is basic and such education would work against blind acceptance. But the STEM subjects require only memory.
1
@shimr
"But the STEM subjects require only memory."
Not true at all. You can't create a computer program or design a web page with just "memory". It takes a certain level of knowledge, skill and experience. Both critical and analytical thinking skills are required
Age of entitlement could just as easily describe the period before the 1960's. Heterosexual white males were entitled to all the goodies. Power was more unaccountable and shrouded than now, much more entitled in other words. All depends on what you look at.
3
I think the "Second Constitution" encroachments come from "globalist\universal" ideals of freedom and decency...even when they undermine cultural norms, traditions, institutions, etc.
Social conservatives value loyalty, cultural norms, traditions, institutions, over these and that is the problem. To hold onto these over the rights of individuals is unacceptable. Laws are an excuse to maintain the status quo.
Social liberals put truth, honesty, equality above cultural norms, traditions, institutions, etc. Things may get a little wrecked in the short run, but they're almost always on the right side of history.
How can you not empathize as a slave, woman without voting rights, homosexual, transgender, etc and realize that the truth is the truth and cultural norms, traditions, institutions, etc. have to make way for the truth immediately. Ready or not.
Regardless of what your norms, beliefs, etc. tell you, you are not a "good" person if you don't allow others the same rights as you.
1
Right Ross, the people are the tail wagging the dog and our polarization is an organic product of the roots producing a tree without the seed of powerful special interests directing the DNA. Sure thing.
Rupert Murdoch hired a political propagandist to create a "news" network because he was interested in promoting fair and balanced journalism which included ideas such as that climate scientists are frauds and all the other mythologies he drips into the minds of his viewership.
I could bring up the influence of right-wing think tanks, but really, the success of billionaire right wing libertarians pales before the evil genius of the Ailes- Murdoch perpetual motion propaganda machine. The Koch's invested a fortune to create their propaganda monster, Murdoch became a billionaire with his and it's much more influential.
To kill the beast, starve it. Boycott FOX sponsors.
2
The biggest struggle for me is understanding the mean spiritedness of the right. I do not know a single trump supporter who is not a racist or a bigot - by their own words. Trying to have a discussion with them is impossible when they just spout Fox talking points. Why is kindness towards others so difficult?
1
Interesting analysis, but one can't help but wonder about the importance of media outlets increasingly mastering combative polemic in order to keep you in your seats.
This country has never been united. It has always been polarized. The cults and political clubs have always made it that way. Our current overlords have an interest in promoting division just as they always have. The use of the word polarized is just more in their propaganda story now.
Our leaders and their owners have always done what is needed to keep the people ignorant and cowed and usually that includes keeping the people blaming the others.
For their part, the people like to hate and they are seriously gullible as well.
Raw strength, tenaciously held and brutally wielded by corporations that get larger and larger, has put them beyond control by the government. They pollute. They cheat on taxes. They hide their profits off-shoe. They pit US workers against sweat-shop near-slaves in developing countries. They collude with their oligarch counterparts in China. They rip off health care consumers with health services and products costing double the rest of industrialized counties. Buying off legislators in every state and US Congress too is the easiest part. Rather than an instrument of the people, by the people and for the people, to protect the people, Government has been bought, on the cheap, and is being used as a weapon against the people.
The culture wars, the Constitutional battles, even guns, abortion, gender issues, immigration and religion — all, all are just a smokescreen for the run-away domination of the Big over the Small. This is why our “politics” has become such an eerie farce. A false-choice between a sociopathic bigot and a patronizing socialist.
The bottom 50 percent have been squished into destitution and dependency. The 50 to 90 percent are beginning to feel it too — in health care, education, housing. The 90 to 99 percent will be next.
It’s the economy, $tupid.
2
Caldwell's book overlooks the fact that black folks were systematically denied property rights up to the pre-Civil Rights era, and examples continue to pop up to this day. Add to that, the minute the Supreme Court removed Voting Rights Act restrictions on southern states, they moved to disenfranchise black voters.
His book deserves to be filed in the trash. This column engages in false equivalence by comparing it to Klein's.
I suggest The American Nations by Colin Woodard. It explains our divisions as a product of our origins, and the origins are more complicated than just a few boats of English settling on the Atlantic shore of North America.
Douthat’s excellent book, Bad Religion, does cover the change in religious habits of Americans since the 60s quite well. We need to continue these discussions rather than continually reverting to knee-jerk reactions to those on the opposite political team. The division and condemnation of each side is weakening our country. Trump is partly to blame, but we need to rise above his dumpster politics.
So-- "read these three books" and become more depressed. No thanks. I got it. The more you "celebrate diversity" (an idiotic suggestion to begin with), the more divided we become by the minute. That said, where are the great National examples we should be emulating, and whose moving there?
1
It's more about the country not agreeing on a set of facts. One half believes the truth, and the other half watches Fox News.
3
A good review of these three books which brings up many avenues for rebuttal.
First, we have been polarized since our founding. Much of the original constitution was written to appease the slave-holding South. Slavery is gone, but the political advantages of rural states remain. The polarities are between the majority of citizens who are primarily urban and the rural minority who nonetheless retain disproportionate political power. Klein addresses this and the unpleasant outcomes associated with prolonged minority rule.
Second, the use of the term 'working class' in these books - Lind in particular - is a euphemism for unhappy white guys. Think about who cleans your office building, picked your tomatoes, or made your last latte. Probably not white guys, but those white men have come to dominate the conversation.
The fact that white men are more politically dominant in the rural states tends to exacerbate the tension.
86
@Dave
Keep in mind that there are many blue collar and rural people who are not white, but share the same conservative social and liberal economic outlook. For example, Black Americans live in heavily rural areas of the South and people of Latin American descent have heavily rural populations in the Southwest. While they may seem very different, their viewpoints aside from racial/social friction, are quite similar. The same could be said of urban/exurban blue collar people. This points to another issue not mentioned in any of these books. In the inner cities there has been an ascent of the bourgeoisie and educated classes, who often assume incorrectly that they have much in common with blue collar people. They often fail to understand how different the needs are of working class and rural people.
6
Although organized religion and science can manage a precarious détente, authoritarianism and science cannot. Authoritarianism from the 'right' or the 'left'. An example of the first is the rejection
of climate change by our 'right' and the acceptance of Lysenko and the rejection of Darwin by the Soviets for political reasons; nature and nurture and all that. The Left-Right scale is a slippery little devil, a real slider. Authoritarianism, capitalistic authoritarianism is our current problem. And it is well represented by the GOP.
2
Can we stop calling it polarization, and simply call it conservative racial fundamentalism? That what’s happening in Europe and the U.S., with lower educated white voters increasingly voting conservative, against their own economic interests.
Higher educated voters are increasingly choosing liberal parties, in part because their education is an inoculation against propaganda from outlets like Fox News and the nonsensical claims around Brexit.
Higher taxes on the rich to help those left behind by globalization (with education, retraining, mobility, healthcare and early retirement) goes a lot farther than fake solutions like closing borders and protectionism. The jobs aren’t coming back; let government help you make the transition.
5
It is notable that Mr. Douthat makes reference to "radical liberalism" and then uses the word "conservatism". Note the negative versus the neutral reference. Here, let me help you, Mr. Douthat: the proper term you seek here is "reactionary". When that word is used it makes more clear the true nature of the characteristics and intentions of a very large segment of populations.
As learned as Mr. Douthat's writing may appear to be, he reveals himself to be, in principle, of the same ilk as a Limbaugh or a Hannity. The only difference is he does not appear to have the self-awareness necessary to understand that and conduct himself accordingly. Otherwise, he'd not be reduced to trafficking in these sorts of flawed and dishonest rhetorical devices. Words DO matter, Mr. Douthat, words do matter...
13
I haven't read Caldwell's book, but from the reviews I've read, one of his chief contentions is that the civil rights revolution of the 60s and its accompanying legislation was a disaster. I'm sorry, but racism dressed up in the costume of pretentious philosophy is still racism. That was and still is the tacit underlying theme of the far right which goes far in explaining its attractiveness to people who will ultimately suffer from the regime it will install.
1
When the pundit class talks of polarization these days it’s mostly this narrative that the Democrats are divided between “the extreme left” and the “pragmatic centrists”.
That’s an interesting story. Well, “The Hobbit” is also an interesting story. But let’s get back to REALITY.
The recent polls show Bernie Sanders is surging everywhere, that his poll numbers have gone up after every debate, that he is leading among women under 45, minorities, that he is the most trusted politician in America right now, that more people trust Bernie on the issues than any other politician, and that the issues and policies he is fighting for poll well across both parties. That’s the real story.
2
Ross Douthat's analysis focuses on the somewhat different explanations each book offers for our current state of political polarization and dysfunction. Although I haven't read any of them yet, Douthat's summary of each leads me to propose that they have one very fundamental thing in common: How people have come to view society in general and politics in particular.
Prince Otto von Bismarck, an 1800s German aristocrat and statesman, is credited with saying that politics is the art of the possible. That view has clearly fallen by the wayside. In its place, the view of Carl Schmitt, a German political theorist of the early to mid-1900s, has become dominant. In his 1932 book, "The Concept of the Political," Schmitt argued that politics is best defined as opposition to those who have different values, beliefs, or political philosophies, and that one should view these groups, whether they are external or internal, as the enemy. After all, they represent ideas one group doesn't believe in because they are seen as destructive to society. Compromise, in this view, makes no logical sense. There are several factors that result in people adopting a friend/enemy worldview and I suspect the authors of these three books mention them. What I will be looking for when I read them, however, is whether they offer any kind of workable solution to our current morass because I do not see one arising any time soon.
2
You could say that "polarization" is the result of voters becoming more powerful.
Until the civil rights movement it was easy for governments to rig elections. to keep dissident groups from voting. In the 1960s the Vietnam war was shielded from democratic control; in the 1970s the abortion industry was. Once voters started to matter, politicians had a motive for exciting their passions.
Polarization probably always existed. But as long as one side could be kept powerless, we weren't aware of it.
1
These books seem more interpretive than factual.
Interpretations differ, and no one can definitively prove that one is closer to the truth than another. Pace relativism (which holds sway in our culture) facts are objectively true and can't be discarded.
Among the facts: ours is a multi-cultural, multi-racial society. The various groups are held together only by a creed and a common language, ties that are fragile and weakening.
Our governmental structure, with its separation of powers, is clunky. As the problems it tries to deal with become more complicated and technical, people become frustrated and want someone to cut Gordian knots. Hence the decline of democratic and liberal faith, and increasing calls for " a man on horseback."
2
As a conservative I am strongly attached to traditional social conservatism: individual responsibility, family values, law and order, and so forth. I also believe that capitalism is the engine of world prosperity and advance.
But inherent in capitalism as the organizing principle of national economies are the two problems of economic insecurity at the level of jobs and excessive inequality of wealth and incomes.
In this sense I share much with populists and libertarians but little with radical social justice warriors.
I, and I believe many, would embrace redistribution mechanisms that went further than today's in reducing the extremes of income inequality but without subverting the values of individual responsibility, work, citizenship and most of all attention to the universal ethical imperatives that arise in the matter of conceiving and raising children to adulthood.
Let's about how that might be done.
4
The divisions, while obvious, are overstated. Narratives pushing polarization always leave out not only the many quieter bemused centrists but the near majority that pay no attention to politics of any sort and never vote. In any case division in politics is underrated and actually useful to a society's evolution. Why should anyone want to live in a place where everyone thinks the same way? I'll take our loud and often weird pluralism any day.
3
@Frunobulax Actually, the so-called 'divisiveness' under discussion is the _opposite_ to Pluralism. Pluralism is a liberal concept, and accepts civil debate and persistence of difference. The current norm is that nutcase preacher who prayed for all non-conforming babies to be miscarried.
I applaud Ross for doing the superb job of reading and synthesizing these books! Rare feat in a journalistic setting.
I agree with much of what he says, without having read the books. I'd add a couple of items:
- technology of information: the silos are not only silos, they're constructed truths and anti-truths that don't need any editorial authenticity or even bias;
- privatization of truth in the post-truth culture, see Kellyanne versus left-leaning Relativism.
- The end of demographic growth; national populations do not regenerate themselves; they must import immigrants, and the native poor resist that, and it's most often either a racial or a religious resistance.
5
There is a fourth reason. Pure ignorance.
I yet have to meet a single Trump supporter who knew that coal is not pure carbon.
Coal is laced with toxic heavy metals. The heavy metals most affected by coal industrial activities are Cadmium, Mercury, Manganese, Copper, Zing, Nickel and Chromium all harmful.
Mercury is the primary toxic element of concern in coal because it is present at higher average concentrations in the blood of pregnant women near coal power plants. It harms the fetus because mercury is a neurotoxin. It is the reason that doctors tell women not to eat fish because of mercury levels in fish. It may also be the reason that there is a greater prevalence of autism near coal power plants.
Dirty fossil fuels and dirty fossil fuel cars not only hurt the pocketbook (as Forbes reports) they also harm children's health.
(https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2020/01/21/renewable-energy-prices-hit-record-lows-how-can-utilities-benefit-from-unstoppable-solar-and-wind/#b98b5f12c84e)
Americans are united in loving their children. If they knew about the poisons in coal they would be united in opposing what harms their children and the coal loving "greedy grifters" as another NYTimes columnist called Mnuchin. I had the personal experience of seeing Trump supporters questioning their blind faith when confronted with scientific information. It is the reason for the assault on science by right wing politicians questioning evolution, vaccines, climate change.
7
@Eli
"There is a fourth reason. Pure ignorance. "
Exactly. Right now Republicns are telling their gullible supporters that impeachment is a plot to "reverse the 2016 election". Actually, if Trump were driven from office, the presidential power would shift to Vice President Pence and the religious right that he represents. What the Republicans aren't saying is that they regard Pence as a non-entity with none of Trump's ruthlessness.
2
Wait a second. Civil rights laws caused the deficit and national debt? Excuse me, but they had absolutely nothing to do with our fiscal problems. The problem started when LBJ refused to properly fund the Vietnam War. It was exacerbated by Reagan's tax cuts/military buildup (which I supported, and Reagan did say that if he had to give up tax cuts, the buildup, or a balanced budget, he'd give up the latter, so at least he was candid in that respect). Under Bush I and Clinton we moved toward a balanced budget, and as the 20th century closed there appeared to be a road to paying off the national debt. Then Bush-Cheney came in and cut taxes while expanding social welfare programs (Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind) and spending trillions on wars of choice, causing ballooning deficits and debt. Trump cut taxes again while needlessly increasing the defense budget, and here we are.
The introduction of COLAs in the early 1970s contributed to the problem, but the idea that civil rights legislation destroyed budgetary discipline is so off base that one wonders just where the author's head was when he wrote it.
The US government spends too much. Any tax increases to reverse in part Trump's cuts should be accompanied by cuts in spending, particularly on defense. But don't go blaming the Civil Rights Movement for the problem. It's not true, and it's demagogic as well.
14
@Jon Harrison. Clarification: When I wrote "the author" in my comment, I was referring Mr. Caldwell, not Douthat.
1
@Jon Harrison
"The US government spends too much. "
No, it taxes too little to keep up with spending.
2
@Jon Harrison
Not to mention that according to Trump nation, with an economy that is booming (according to them), "the low unemployment", "the great stock market" , Trump is running deficits of over 1 trillion in a supposedly great economy (then will say "well, your president (Obama) spent 1 trillion dollars bailing out the banks and GM"..of course leaving out that Obama was in an economy that was the worst recession since the 1930's, the bank and financial system was almost at collapse (the Libor spread was almost 7 points, when ti should be a quarter of a point, basically meaning banks weren't lending at all), unemployment got close to 12%, the Dow hit 6500 (and ended, I might add, over 18000.), and of course housing collapsed, lot of people lost their homes, and many millions gave up even looking for work...and would have been worse had we not spent that money, but what is the justification for a trillion dollar debt in an economy that is growing, not in recessaion, and unemployment is 3%? Don't ask them, they will shrug and say "the debt doesn't matter" ie "the debt doesn't matter since the president is an old, angry white guy, just like us".
2
Ross needs to be called out here. Caldwell says the civil rights act destroyed the Constitution, and evidently Ross agrees. this is a corrosive right wing fiction given the events of 1860-65, and the 13th, 14the and 15 th amendments. however it is of a piece with Ross equating trump to Lbj the other day. so the southerner who pushed through the civil rights act, the voting rights act and the fair housing act is in ross' view the same as trump who is trying to undo each of those. so Ross I say to you what Welch said to McCarthy: Have You Left No Sense of Decency?"
8
@rhporter
Actually the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act ENFORCED the constitution.
The fact this worked against white supremacists, bigots racists, and people who benefited economically and politically due to skewed the preferential treatment they historically enjoyed is the point of division.
Good column.
But I want to suggest that excessive polarization is perhaps simpler than Douthat suggest.
The polarization that is the cause of greatest division in the US is illegal immigration. The US passed an immigration law in 1986 which was then undercut by "civil disobedience" by liberals, setting up a partisan battle.
Martin Luther King taught us the virtues of "civil disobedience," that is refusing to follow a law that is regarded as immoral. The problem is that morality may be misguided, particularly when the people making the choices are not adequately informed about the real moral choices we confront.
The real moral issue was raised by Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb" of 1968. Ehrlich argued that population growth would eventually lead to devastation and death as the earth approached its carrying capacity. This issue was expressed even more clearly by the 1972 book, "Limits to Growth," by Meadows et al.
Ehrlich was regarded as a crackpot, his views held up to derision. In fact, fellow biologist Garrett Hardin was characterized as a Hate Speech purveyor by the Southern Poverty Law Center because he advocated coercive methods of enforcing birth control.
The result was that we ignored an early warning that might have helped avert the worst consequences of global warming.
Indeed, global warming is a direct consequence of the population growth which we ignored.
The central moral question is: Should we not try to use birth control to save he human race?
9
@Blaise Descartes Good comment. But I think that you did not continue with the thought that immigration, legal and illegal, has been the driving force behind the more than doubling of our national population since the 1950’s. This has immense implications for our environment, but is never discussed because of a fear of being accused of racism. Better and widespread birth control is important, but immigration is the problem.
2
@Blaise Descartes
Any study of the history of immigration policy in America shows its impossible to separate those policies from America's history in terms of race. From the Naturalization Act of 1790 which explicitly stated that the only people eligible for citizenship where free white people of good character, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the Immigration Act of 1924 which severely restricted immigration from eastern and southern Europe. Immigration has been a tool to do two things, control the supply of cheap labor and to maintain white political, social, and economic hegemony.
@Blaise Descartes
"The polarization that is the cause of greatest division in the US is illegal immigration. "
No. All the fuss over illegal immigration is a distraction to keep Americans from thinking about (1) The transfer of wealth from the middle class to the 1% (2) The resurgence of Naziism, supported by Trump and others in the White House. The most damaging immigrants in US History are probably the Trump family.
1
In my opinion, each election ought to foreground Parties. Parties are national. The Senate gives states rights. The President is greatly influential regarding all our citizens; all over the right age should cast a clear vote unable to be dismissed. Now, they basically recommend his election.
Scrapping the Electoral College might create or make possible a process closer to what US situations need and which might be of some importance.
There could be two sorts of relevant votes here: a single vote for one’s preferred Party – the sort of vote that can determine the Party to be successful on election day; and secondly – and also of importance – numerous votes that would show each individual’s differential preferences as regards the three to five required nominees of each Party (i.e. First, Second, etc.) – to be written on one national voting paper and ranked as the citizen casts a vote for preferred Party.
@M. C. Major Okay. Perusing what I reviewed many times, I now see the clause ‘and ranked’ might be absolutely unwanted.
I'm growing resigned to the possibility that Bernie Sanders will be the next President, partly by rationalizing that his effectiveness at promoting big, systemic change will be dwarfed by his effectiveness in mobilizing a GOP resistance that departs from Trumpian populism.
But, in view of Ross's analysis, it seems like the disaffected voters whose ideology is conspiratorial and paranoid (per Klein), who are resentful or dismissive of "PC" and identity politics (per Caldwell), and who see themselves getting the short end from the managerial elite (per Lind) will continue to be the battleground. Sanders may win them this time; Trump, or a Trump protege (Haley, Huckabee-Sanders?) will them back in 2024, because the Democrats are incapable of agreeing to make a sustained appeal to these voters.
3
@Patrick
If Bernie Sanders becomes president, at least the average IQ in the White House will go up. I don't know how much our semi-literate current president drags it down.
1
I am following these books and most of their hypothesis are founded on dynamics of human intelligence (IQ). In reality human being are complex machines of many other agents like emotional, social relations and spiritual fulfillment. The tremendous development in technology has removed the survival challenge from human life - today in America a poor can afford car, AC, running water and electricity. The human mind that used to be engaged most of the time for survival challenges are now free from those needs. What human minds do to fill up the gap - the education system did not prepare the mind to engage positively on emotional, social and spiritual aspects of life. The traditional rational thoughts go to some length and then gets lost on infinite loop of causality. Human minds has become the destructive liability of human existence - hate, drug addiction, violence, gun culture, social media addiction, broken family these are the modern evils of twenty first century not poverty. No amount of money, political power or constitutional reform or free liberal education and healthcare for all will solve this problem - inequality is the symptom of the problem not the cause. We need to focus to the basics - how to nurture the human mind that can positively deal with emotions, society and spiritual connectedness.
6
Wow. Very good points. I have worked hard to learn the things that make humans connect. But if one isn’t interested or disciplined in learning those lessons in the inner life, and I know many who are not, the mind will work against the human spirit. Thank u for for insight
2
@Kalyan Basu Very good points. Agreed.
Caldwell's point about a Second Constitution can also be described as the Right's discovery of the joys of victimhood.
In the 60's and 70's, many conservatives rightly called out the risk that extreme liberalism could easily morph into a victim fetish that made being a victim a virtual career path.
Now, the conservatives have tasted it, and wallow in it more than anyone else. What's worse, because the white power structure still functions, they have the ability to reward themselves far more than the groups protected by 60's liberalism.
15
Polarization is real but polarization is also a meme. In addition to asking why we are polarized, it might also be worth asking how much.
The Perception Gap Project (see their website) polled people not only on their own beliefs and positions, but also what they thought "the other side" believes. It turns out that most of us have highly distorted perceptions of our opponents, most of whom hold moderate positions--not the exaggerated straw man profiles we often rant about.
So why do we do this? Extreme beliefs are held by the political fringes, and it is too easy (and too tempting) to use them as representative of larger groups. Political tribes and political media add to the distortion. Perception gaps, on both sides, increase with media consumption, especially partisan sources. BTW, Fox News does indeed increase the gap for conservatives (8%) but the NY Times does the same for liberals (10%). Those who consume media from the other side have smaller perception gaps. Finally, education does not help. Especially for Democrats, gaps increase with degrees from no high school (8%) to post-grad (30%). This probably has much to do with self-selected political bubbles.
The good news: we are not as polarized as some suggest (and want us to think). And we can become less polarized if we want to.
Do you?
6
All this, and not one mention of the impact of Fox News and other propagandistic “news” sources on public thought since the 70’s. It isn’t an accident that the polarization we now experience appeared, grew, and hardened as Fox and other right wing sources grew in size and number. I watched with dismay as my father, a lifelong Democrat, slowly fell under the spell of this propaganda program before he passed away. Propaganda machines, pretending to be “news”, have had a profound impact on political thought in our country. No discussion on the topic of polarization can be considered complete without inclusion of this aspect of the political landscape.
39
@Enigma Variation True, but it's not just Fox (and the ranting on talk radio). It's the 24/7/365 news cycle that started -- when? the early 1980's or so? The business model for all media, regardless of where they land on the liberal-conservative spectrum, requires eyeballs and clicks. For me, that's a clear line to more and more "propagandistic 'news' "-- on both sides.
2
Partly because Fox appeals to the baser part of our natures.
People as individuals are awash in the minds of those they live with (family, community, job, state, country). Each mind has its own agency and its unique configuration, its own wants, fears, and angers, yet, we end up clumping together in groups that we hope will keep us afloat, give us what we want, and keep us safe. We make many personal compromises in what we feel and think is true, wise, expeditious, and comforting to belong to some group or other because we really can't go it alone. Are any of us really happy and content with the group we are a part of? What would we have to do as individuals to buck our group? Can we pull it off? Will anyone in our group listen to us? Will they punish us if we buck them, and to what extent? We can look at the current GOP behaviors in the Senate to witness one outcome of the difficulty of being an individual human mind in the midst of a group's firm stance that reality will be defined in this way, not that way. We can see this in families where the father beats the mother and kids to have his way and vent his spleen. Yet, we all, in our heart of hearts, mean well in the sense that we mean to be a good member of our group, whose opinion of us translates into safety and access to resources that address our needs and some of what we want. Historically, leaders of groups have put maximum pressure on their group members to achieve the leader's goals. Until we can resist this, we will always be polarized and at war with each other.
2
Douthat thinks the finances of the federal gov are similar to the family finances he discusses around the kitchen table.
A H.U.G.E. difference is that thru the FED the federal gov can create as much money as wants out of thin air. It does not need to borrow or tax to pay for gov operations. Unless you have a printing press in your basement, Ross, you cannot do this.
Federal deficits & debts are nothing to worry about & in fact, are necessary. ALL 6 times we have eliminated deficits & paid down the debt 10% or more, we have fallen into a terrible real depression.
Since prices are proportional to the amount of money in the economy (times its velocity), creating too much money could cause excessive inflation. BUT prices are also inversely proportional to the amount of goods and service we can produce. A bumper wheat crop LOWERS wheat prices. And that is what FDR's policies did. They increased production while getting more money to the people who needed it and would spend it.
Of course, if the economy is constrained and you can't produce any more, this will not work. For example, if you just lost a war, and you did not have enough arable land to grow food to feed your people, and had no money to buy food, and your people were starving, printing money is just going to result in billion mark stamps.
But that is certainly NOTHING like our situation today when production could be vastly increased if people only had more money to buy stuff, & money comes from federal deficits.
2
I believe based on a long lifetime of observing human nature and watching the increasing division between Democrats and Republicans that indeed race and attitudes toward 'others' is one of the major dividing issues between Democrats and Republicans and this started with the Civil Rights laws of 1964.
But one other glaring factor that is being avoided is sex.
Women are the reason Democrats win elections in purple states. A recent national poll showed only 45% of men disapprove of Trump but 64% of women do.
The 1964 legislation also gave women equal rights in education and the work force. That caused a revolution in a profession that I know, medicine and has been all to the good. The legal profession is another.
This did induce a backlash in the same men that fear other races.
And of course the pervasive anti women legislation produced by Republicans from reproductive freedom, to equal pay , to subsidized health care, and post natal paid leave all push women into the Democratic ranks.
That is just one more reason the Democrats must have a woman as their presidential candidate.
12
@Edward B. Blau
Everything you posted makes perfect sense once you come to the realization that the current incarnation of the American conservative movement is based in the central premise that America is a white Christian country that should be under the dominion of white Christian men. Everyone else is a second-class citizen, at best.
1
The despair mentioned here also has demographics not mentioned in most published dialogue. Life in Manhattan, and in San Francisco, is dramatically different from life (and its inherent divisions) here, in Appalachia. Although the media has pretty much gone home, as we knew it would, we continue to lose over a hundred people a day from addiction and overdose. Division has consequences.
We get left out of book publishing.
Geopolitical issues (these drugs are not made here) get involved. Religious institutions are complicit. Racism gets involved (African-Americans face higher rates of incarceration). Quasi-judicial institutional bankrolled hatred in Southern Appalachia is far from done with the civil war.
History and despair are not unrelated.
Appalachia is by fiat left out of the divisions. We are quite used to it. Our own wars over confederate monuments continue. Even if, as usual, the media has gone home. Our clinging to the "War Between the States," as we still call it, reflects a despair like untended wounds affect the body politic. Publishing means elites will read it in New York, and the elites not unlike the New York elites in San Francisco (Silicon Valley) will argue, too, over the merits of how we got here. No one in Appalachia can afford a thirty dollar book.
We got here via the division between love and hate. That is not as simplistic as it sounds.
It is tearing us apart. Here, in Appalachia, there are no culture wars with pauses. The Civil War continues.
5
Excellent points. You are an interesting voice which has a lot to say. Take heed.
1
We are not divided - we are lazy.
There are not enough of us that take our citizenship, nor freedoms, nor even standing in the world seriously enough to vote for people that have our best interests at heart.
We feign indifference, or are disenfranchised by accepting that our vote does not matter. We then watch as just enough people are voted in that are diametrically opposed to anything that might help us. Even if those people that voted in do not hold power, the way that the Senate has been devised is that a sliver of a sliver of a minority of the overall electorate has power to stop any progress at all.
All it takes is a small percentage of the (100)+ million people that sit out any given election - to show up.
we would not be ''divided'' any longer after that.
11
@FunkyIrishman Great point, but I would add that, in a democracy, our civic responsibility goes beyond just voting.
4
@FunkyIrishman
We are both divided and politically and intellectually lazy.
It's impossible to say we are not divided as conservative republicans at the federal and state and local levels continue pursue legislative agendas that suppress voting, restrict a woman's choice to have an abortion, impede a same sex couple from adopting children (e.g. the State of Tennessee) and other actions.
Even if more people participated in the political process those divisions would still exist.
Add to these, historian Nancy Maclean's "Democracy in Chains." All the elements of today's Republican party were present in the anti-democratic Jim Crow movement; multi-pronged disenfranchising strategies, false narratives about makers vs. takers, the whittling down of liberty to only property (and now gun) rights. Today's Republican party has only one objective, to keep money and power flowing upwards. This is Jim Crow precisely.
34
I've been saying for years that, for my money, Douthat appears to be the smartest and most interesting and capable writers in the NYT's stable of op-ed columnists — even though I disagree with him on a clear majority of his beliefs and positions.
The plank his Douthat's political eye, in my opinion, is the degree to which he cannot keep his (adopted, not native) conservative Catholic religious beliefs from influencing his every position.
Once more, he beats the religious drum, this time in the last couple of paragraphs. As a dedicated anti-theocrat, here are my questions:
- What changes in America's religious profile, precisely, does Douthat think have somehow intruded upon his First Amendment rights to believe according to his conscience?
- And what reforms by the *government* would he promote to "restore" what he clearly views as a destructive decline in traditional religious belief?
People often talk about "choosing" this or that religious belief (or lack of belief). But the indisputable fact is that one does not "choose" his or her beliefs, whether drive by faith or doubt. Beliefs arise without conscious effort, and one either believes in A or does not believe in A at any given moment; there is no in-between. One is convinced that a given proposition is true or not true.
Given all that, I'm really interested to know Douthat's master plan to reverse the decline of institutional religion in the United States. Anything I can imagine is pretty scary, indeed.
22
@CB Evans
"Beliefs arise without conscious effort, and one either believes in A or does not believe in A at any given moment;"
That may be true for many people but it's not true for others. There are also a lot of people who develop their beliefs through deep introspection, intellectual curiosity, and a strong desire to understand the dynamics of the world around them. This is especially true when one's beliefs run counter to popular culture or social norms.
Not everybody believes things because "This is what my mommy told me."
1
I am Catholic and disagree with Douthat on most everything, too. However a Catholic religious point of view helps me see each human being as intrinsically good though flawed and as such, still capable of fooling oneself by misdirecting his/has life in a empty pursuit of personal happiness that is destructive both to self and others, and to family and community relationships. Humans in a Catholic view possess an intrinsic dignity, and that by virtue of their human existence alone, automatically deserve to be treated with respect and dignity. Thus, humans deserve decent housing, food, clothing, access to quality education and healthcare, meaningful work, quality leisure time, etc. Human beings deserve employment opportunities that ennoble them and for which offer their time and skills in pursuit of meaningful work that provides for their family and individual needs. Humans are at their very best when they view their talents and abilities not solely as a gift to be individually cultivated and enjoyed but also to help others, to combine their efforts in a collaborative human effort to promote the common good for ourselves, our planet and all living things. A Catholic view reject a lifestyle seeking solely to enrich oneself and amass great wealth and power at the expense of intimate relationships and community as a shallow and empty life — and antithetical to true human happiness.
The primary unit of tribal behavior is the individual... each individual. We are all echo chambers, being receptive to and seeking out info that we agree with, and rejecting that with which we diagree. This allows us to be consistent. Once we make a choice, we stick to it lest we be ridiculed and seen as a flip-flopper.
We seek out people with similar views and dismiss those with differing views, which has the secondary gain of reinforcing our beliefs and giving us a place in a social network.
1
The takeover of our Democracy by the rise of the Oligarchy of the rich, the corporations, and the Military Industrial Complex has created the polarization of America. Average Americans don't count anymore if they are not rich or connected to the Oligarchy. Citizen's United silenced our voices, marches and protests don't matter anymore because is the Oligarchy is now ensconced.
8
@steve
Oligarchs have no power without brainwashed masses. It is the subliminal brainwash of the past 50 years that has made white Americans as brainwashed as any other culture in history.
1
Look at history, there have been such divides amongst Americans appearing and disappearing throughout. Some have stayed with us such as questions around race, and others haven’t. In general, the divide over who can vote has been an example of the latter (although not perfectly). Everyone gets to pick their own issue to divide us, whether it is “welfare queens” or “the 1%”. And that divides us even more. What we really need is to find some agreement over something that has more universality then these other distinctions. For instance, if more of us focused on the issue of basic human dignity, we will tend to come together.
My biggest beef with Trump is that he repeatedly and intentionally demeans others. Note: my formulation there focuses on what he has done, not on what he is. This allows me to give him the basic dignity a person should get, while strenuously disagreeing with his actions. The issue of basic human dignity can be found in most major religions (the Good Samaritan in Christianity, the universality of life in Buddhism, the respect due a guest in Islam, and it is the key focus of nonsecular Humanism). It may not be primary in any given religion, but all I have studied have the concept.
If we can focus on basic human dignity, we can easily overcome this period of divisiveness and partisanship, as we have done in the past.
4
The polarization is caused by the belief that we now live in a zero-sum world, so that any economic or social advance by one group must be offset by an equal decline of another.
So, any immigrant ends up taking a job away from someone who immigrated here somewhat earlier. Any person admitted to college by any type of affirmative action is taking a seat away from someone who did not have past discrimination to deal with. Any financial assistance to a poor person is taking money away from someone who is somewhat better off. It is every person, family, or "tribe" for itself.
Add to this the Calvinistic belief that God made the rich and the poor, and any attempt to change this is going against God's command and the (primarily) right-wing media, and you have our current toxic situation.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act was an upheaval as it shattered (over time) the caste structure of American society. For those not alive then, the hierarchies were whites over people of color, men over women, Christians over non-Christians. Everybody had a place. Do we want to go back there?
8
"...smart people talking themselves into the wrong answers...where the right answers had implications they disliked."
I think that I have been searching for this phrasing since early 2016 when I realized that Mr. Trump would indeed become President. I thought then, and believe now, that many people knew it in their gut; but their mindset, their sophistication, prevented them from facing it as a probable, if uncanny reality.
But, I had an advantage over the many: my conflict did not arise from ideology or from wishful thinking. I am a boring centrist who takes governance seriously; therefore, I distrust "exciting" politicians. I avoid reductive, personality-laden arguments with "decided" people. Ugh...
I don't disparage Mr. T. because he is grossly unfit for the Presidency; I have loathed this man since 1993 when he was building Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and relentlessly and maniacally bullied and vilified Vera Coking, a widow of a certain age, who refused to sell her modest home by the sea. She stood up to him, and won (where's the movie staring Sigourney Weaver?)
Though I do enjoy the blessings of higher education, my natural skepticism demands that I engage in free thought. The downside is that I feel like the drifter in John Carpenter's "They Live," who puts on special sunglasses and sees the complicated, true state of the world he thought he knew.
Colin Woodard's "American Nations" is a must-read for anyone wanting to trace today's tribalism to its sources.
21
@Allen please count me in to your boring, pro-governance, anti-excitement political party!
1
Interesting point about the decline of Religous institutions. I can recall when Episcopal bishops were big deals in Eastern cities and when Catholic bishops and cardinals had immense power and presence. Spelman was a national figure.
3
Subconscious bias and insecurity as "others" hope to become fully enfranchised, gets my vote for the superficial explanation. But, Ross, surely you heard the Scripture reading this Sunday: stop this division; some of you are for Apollos, some for Paul, etc. It even cites "for Christ" as a division, as it asks, in Christ is there division? No, in the final, unknowable dimension we point to with "E pluribus Unam" or Allah or science or Christ or Buddha or the Question - in that final stratum of the cosmos, we are human.
3
If you are having trouble with the prospect of reading three more books on political, economic and social polarization, there is an option you might want to consider. This one-liner from Warren Buffett.
"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
After every war the winners write the history of that war. Thank goodness the class war has not been fought to unconditional surrender.
35
1.Fear and unease have made people look for change. I know a couple people who voted for Obama, didnt see change to meet their expectations, and so turned to Trump. He does such a great job of selling himself that he has maintained loyalty despite accomplishing little.
2. The media. We have blurred the line between reporting the news to mixing in not just editorial comment and opinion, but cuing the audience to be outraged and incensed...... on a daily basis.
4
What's missing here is a scientific perspective. Human brains - and behavior - evolved when there really was a battle for survival, a survival of the fittest, if you will. Over many millennia our technological knowledge has increased dramatically as the knowledge of each generation builds on the knowledge of preceding generations. However, our basic human behavior is essentially unchanged. We still battle for power and dominance in ways that harken back to mating rituals and we still fight for resources, economic and otherwise, in ways that evolved when there was a fight for survival. This is especially true when resources are limited - as they have been for a large segment of the population since the Recession.
3
I hesitate to make this more complicated, but there is a larger context. This heightened partisanship/tribalism is a worldwide phenomenon. The world's population is in turmoil with large numbers of people on the move because of climate change, overpopulation and the resulting wars and violence. We Americans like to think we are special, even in our nastiness. We aren't, not that this is comforting. Just reading the paper is enough to make anyone want to hide somewhere with an old pair of slippers.
6
@loiejane
News Corp owns HarperCollins Publishing across the US, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and Australia, and part owns HarperCollins Asia. It also owns or part owns several marketing and digital media groups.
Rupert Murdoch
1
Thanks, Ross. You do a magnificent job of making us think deeply about important topics of the day. That being said, in terms of solutions to our country's maddening polarization, I'm not one to overindulge in endless, Freudian-like searches for the source of the problem. Like Freudian psychotherapy, a deep dive to learn the source of the problem can be intriguing, but it rarely results in a fundamental benefit - the anxious, neurotic patient is still anxious and neurotic though better informed.
Instead, I believe we need to look to more pragmatic solutions. Whatever the cause (and your ultimate point is that it is complicated), the solution lies in creating the right positive incentives for people to behave in a less polarizing manner, politicians and the media in particular.
My praise of your conservative voice is an example. I'm left of center, but love reading your perspective. Chris Wallace's continuing rise at Fox News is another example. He's (slowly) teaching those basking in the uninformed righteousness of their ignorance to more graciously consider all opinions. I'm hoping to see more politicians rewarded for good behavior and more incentives created for those who engage in civility and open-minded debate.
On that note, let's continue to encourage the NYTimes to maintain and strengthen its conservative voice. It must own its left-leaning limitations in order to force readers to consider their bias when they engage with others.
44
@Harry
I appreciate your emphasis on sharing information of multiple views.
Allow me then to update you on therapy in these United States. The Freudian couch I infer that you speak of disappeared when I (and perhaps you) was a young man. Introspection can lead to frustration but it can also lead to real change. Some of might say it is the real change your addressing.
What is missing from the argument is about achieving equality and making sure the declaration of independence all men are created equal pledge is fulfilled not gaining some phantom privileges. Trump and populism turned the equation on its head and made his supporters think they were losing something rather than bringing others up to their level and they defend their privileges with vigor. Playing the victim card used to be the epithet by conservatives about liberals. Now they find themselves playing the victim card incessantly, Trump most of all.
8
I submit three causes of the polarization:
1. The balkanization of the news media: A news media is dominated by advertisers, who have a monetary incentive to divide us to better target audiences. This is why radio stations never offer a true variety of music. This is why Fox offers a different news spin than MSNBC. For instance there is even a news outlet now that favors Bernie Sanders (Hill Rising) funded by corporate sponsors. And the entire purpose of social media is to market our personalities to sell products to our "friends."
2. The balkanization of education: Increasing "choice" in education from elementary school through the university has further divided us by providing us with competitive bogus theories. Economics 101 is an apology for greed. Sociology 101 promotes a victimization culture. We are now segregated according to income rather than race.
3. The time-tested historic strategy to divide the working class to keep the elite in power: In all societies there is a strong survivalist motivation for the elite to divide us along race, religion, and gender to prevent us from uniting to carry out reforms that are in the interest of the working class. This is why corporations fund identity politics and promote this divisive perspective in the corporate media. The more we focus on identity politics the less we unite on bread and butter issues that made our country the envy of the world in the mid-20th Century.
22
@Robert Scull - Thanks for making the main points clear & succinct for readers. If I may add to your excellent list the fact that working class union workers have lost their high paying jobs due to trade agreements and automation. This has led to an economic scarcity situation which exacerbates white identity politics. Also, the resentment of rural populations against elites who believe are unrepresentative of them and feel disrespected & looked down upon. The despair in white working class communities has fed an opiate crisis and higher rates of suicide among this group than any other. The resentment of white rural males against feminism which threatened their already precarious power dynamic led to the anger & disgust with the "elitist" Hillary Clinton's presidential race. In addition, the issue regarding immigration was a touchstone as many law and order, patriotic Americans view illegal immigration as a problem that needs to be addressed.
The solutions are for Democrats to show empathy for the legitimate concerns of a working class that is in serious trouble. Identity is a human instinct which can be deliberately shaped in broader or narrower ways. Liberals have ignored the moral appeal of national identity which needs to be focused on democratic values. The left dismisses concerns about identity politics from the right & should focus more on civil identity rather than tribal differences in order to capture the hearts & minds of those attracted to "populist" leaders.
10
@Dunca
I agree completely with everything you said. We need to talk to people with different viewpoints and listen to their perspective if we have any chance of expecting them to listen to us. We can learn something from everyone.
3
"Klein’s book is political and sociological, but its primary interest is psychological: how the tribal impulse shapes our interaction with news..."
It's striking how many books warning of the dangers of tribalism have been written by Members of the Tribe that is the wealthiest, best-educated, and most influential per capita in the modern world.
5
The human mind is sovereign. It has supreme power over itself and can think whatever it wants about anything. For those who have nothing in the world of money or social status, the sovereign ideas and views of the mind are the only thing they have. Try and change that without changing economic and social conditions. Most people today feel ultimately helpless. They get by from day-to-day, month-to-month. Not much room for hope but lots of room for resentment and conspiracy theories.
For those who have the means, i.e., money, they tend to think alike when it comes to their investments, and the top 10% of the wealthy now own and control about 75% of all our wealth and about 100% of our means of producing real wealth. They people have practical hope, and they look to the next year for even more good news. They can convince their kids to work very hard with the promise that they will be well-rewarded. They can build, invest, or go on a long vacation. They can entertain any ideas they like in their sovereign minds, or even pretend to care about other people.
I don't put a lot of stock in what people are supposed to think, but I do feel that our economic injustice is slowly creating revolt among the dispossessed in many small and subtle ways.
8
Ross-
I think the real divide that no one speaks about is the social contract destruction rent by Air Conditioning. Bear with me. For most of the time period from the 1860's until the 1960's the economic engine of the nation was in the northeast and midwest. It was too hot in the south or west to live. It was decided in the 1950's to subsidize movement away from the NE/MW and hence away from 'tradition'. Before this period if you were a Liberal or a Conservative you were also Catholic, or Jewish or Italian or many other things. You could also be a Union member. But you were rooted in a place. New York, Chicago, the South, et cetera. A/C ripped out allot of these ties and so fake tribalism was all that was left. This has resulted in out social disfunction. In Europe people are going back to tradition see the use of minority languages for example. But here there are no more traditions that bind. And so demogogues can thrive and people can self sort into their shallowness.
2
"The parting on the left
is now the parting on the right..."
We as a nation have always been divided, always been tribal. And yet we've always gotten along. And we still get along. What's different is that we're no longer ashamed of our differences. That in itself isn't bad, but what it's led to is a society where we are no longer ashamed of our motivations.
We've also always been a nation that has been run by the rich and powerful (the "well bred, the well fed, the well wed..."). And that, too, isn't in itself bad, but there was always an understanding that the powerful wouldn't get greedy, or that at least there were checks to that greed.
Today the powerful are unashamed of their fortune, and doubling down -- a trillion-dollar tax cut in a growing economy? Really?
Will anyone remember that tax cut in the Trump presidency? No, they will remember that we were divided over abortion, and welfare, and health care, and education. It doesn't make any difference what we're arguing over, so long as we're arguing.
Let's pray we don't get fooled again.
(with apologies to The Who)
3
Peter Turchin’s “Ages of Discord” points out something that all three books miss - this isn’t our first time experiencing this.
From 1830-1920 political polarization was on the rise, old parties splintered and new ones emerged, populism skyrocketed, basic measures of health declined, basic measures of well being declined, and the inequality gap increased.
And then an age of relative accord set in. From 1920-1965, the middle class prospered, an era of relative bipartisanship reigned again, wealth gaps closed, and measures of well being and physical health improved.
The theory behind this is structural demographic. When you have a large input of cheap labor, it obviously immiserates the middle and lower classes, but less obviously it makes it easier for the rich to get richer. These elites then start to fight amongst one another for a finite number of available political positions, limited seats at elite schools, and limited status positions in media and entertainment and so on.
From 1830-1910 the cheap labor input was mass immigration from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Greece, and Poland. From 1965 the cheap labor input has been mass immigration from the global South.
Turn off the spigot, and wages climb. Turn off the spigot, and polarization subsides. Turn off the spigot, and the wealth gap will close.
Stand-by open borders, and lose.
Most of Turchin’s message is expressed mathematically and in safe academise, but it’s also accessible. It’s a real eye opener.
7
@Ben - But nowadays, you don't need to admit low cost labor. Chinese factory workers can manufacture goods to be shipped to the US, and Indian computer programmers can work remotely for US corporations.
In order to reduce inequality now, we'd have to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world completely.
5
Got it, Ross, but I will stick with the inherent sectionalism of USA: historical and empirical, with stubborn political economic implications. The Electoral map, maybe the associated Electoral College, looms large. Swing counties in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin form one block. Another includes South Carolina, Florida, and even Georgia. Keep your eyes on Texas. Arizona and Colorado in the West will be contested.
Such an orientation provides venues for organizing. Dems must reach out with ag, resource, and rural policies to assist such constituencies. Ditto resource extraction areas such as West Virginia and key parts of Kentucky, Montana, Idaho. Alaska, with spots elsewhere. The shifting demographics trend Blue.
Coal remains a key industry that must be rethought or subject to managed adjustments. Infrastructure must be installed immediately before the Green Swans of climate catastrophe hits, a second wave of infrastructure must be considered ASAP.
2
It boils down to economics and economic control. We’re in this mess right now because the brilliant Milton Friedman pushed for deregulation that was adopted by Reagan and all subsequent US presidents ending with Bob Rubin’s elimination of the Glass-Steigal Act Friedman’s theory made it possible to export entire industries abroad as well as the manufacturing base. Right now 60% of the working population are hourly workers without benefits or security. Higher education is an industry and student debt has reached the $1 trillion mark. The lates figures show that American families are late in their credit card and car payments. Of course we’re divided. Fox News and the Democratic Party elite pass the blame to immigrants - as do the Brits and others in Europe. It’s not a liberal/ conservative issue, it’s and income inequality issues and lack of good and fair paying jobs.
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The thing that's missing here isn't a religious analysis. It's an analysis that sees the urban working class -- especially workers of color -- as a key Democratic constituency pursuing its own interests.
There's a definite tendency among conservatives to think of Democrats as exclusively made of academically inclined white people. Or, alternately, as the managerial elite and a bunch of dependents on welfare.
But people of color are a third of the country, and their share is growing. Most are working class or middle class, and they organize to promote their own interests. If you leave them out, or treat them as passive recipients of programs rather than active players in their own right, you won't see what's coming.
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America has increasingly become a nation of tribes in my 7 decades on this planet. Divisions have grown in number and hardness with each passing administration in Washington. Trump seems like some kind of logical endgame in this decline, but who knows, maybe someone even more divisive is waiting in the wings. I say this as someone who deeply loves this nation and hopes for the best. But hope sometimes seems to be the ultimate victim in this race to the bottom.
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As a left-leaning moderate, it seems these 3 books seek to explain the polarization. If you seek a sense of 'what to do about it?' I suggest reading Arthur C. Brooks Love Your Enemies - How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt. Mr. Brooks is right-leaning and strongly Catholic, which should be appealing to Mr. Douthat. Brooks offers thoughtful analysis and actions that can address the challenges that other authors seek to explain.
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@Navigator, I also recommend "American Carnage: on the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump" by Tim Alberta, a conservative who wrote for The National Review. Despite the title, it is as much about Democrats as Republicans. It looks at populist outrage and the clash of ideologies in today's politics. It describes the meeting of the minds over the budget between Obama and Boehner which was unknowingly disrupted by a bipartisan group of Senators. I never understood Boehner's abrupt change of mind until I read this book. It was a basic error of communication which tainted their relationship from that day forward. It's just sad how everything was turned on its head by that trivial problem. I had forgotten about so many of the outrages that occurred because there have been so many since. I came of age when Democrats and Republicans could be pragmatic and work for the general welfare. Today all politicians are afraid to step outside the boundaries of party belief. Those who do get their heads figuratively lopped off.
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Ideological alignment among the elites: Vested interest.
Ideological alignments among the populace: People follow their friends -- biases and media play a role.
3
While it may well be oversimplification, the reptile side of my brain whispers, “Follow the money.” Or lack of it, depending on one’s perch. Real wages for those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder have seen no appreciable increase for many years now. Over the same period, those of the CEO class have enjoyed a dramatic, exponential increase in their fortunes. It is no surprise that economic disaffection leads sooner or later to institutional disaffection. People perceive institutions as controlled by the CEO class, used by them as tools to increase their already obscene fortunes. And so it goes, until it doesn’t.
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@Dale Irwin - But it is not only people's perceptions that cause economic problems. Inequality causes real measurable econmic ones.
Economists have a concept called the velocity of money. It is the frequency, how often, that money changes hands in domestic commerce.
Here's an example. Suppose the government gives Scrooge McDuck a Billion for advice on the comic book market, If Scrooge puts the bucks in his basement, and forgets about it, that doesn't help the economy at all. That Billion has a velocity of 0. Also, if Scrooge loses a financial bet to Daddy Warbucks,
and the Billion moves from Scrooge's basement to Daddy's, that is a change, but the velocity does not change because it is not a useful change. It doesn't
affect commerce.
Money going to the Rich has a lower velocity than money going to the non-rich. The Rich spend a lower percentage of their money. What's a guy or gal who
already has so many houses he can't remember how many & an elevator for his horse gonna spend his money on? The answer is he is going to use it to
speculate.There is a correlation between inequality & financial speculation. Speculation is bad for the economy. That money has a very low velocity. AND it increases risk which we have seen in 2008 ain't a good thing.
Since 2007, the velocity of money has plunged. https://fredblog.stlouisfed.org/2016/04/a-plodding-dollar-the-recent-decrease-in-the-velocity-of-money/
Too much money today is in the hands of the Rich where it is less useful.
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@Dale Irwin
The 70% of Americans without a university degree blame not only CEOs, but the entire educated elite for their problems. The system that restricts high paying jobs to those with degrees, when the jobs don't actually require many skills, and the holders of those jobs don't exhibit many skills, strikes those without degrees as very unfair. That is how the modern meritocracy works. Non-professional university degrees impart few useful skills, but serve as a signalling mechanism to employers. The ever increasing number of graduates has allowed HR departments to classify ever more jobs as requiring a degree. Those who didn't go to university get the shaft, even though they often have the skills to do these degree-restricted jobs. Don't underestimate how much of a role that resentment played in electing Trump, and populist anger in general.
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@Tom Meadowcroft
You've made a interesting point. But here's is the source of real resentment for the white working class. Since Bacon's rebellion in 1676-77 there has been an implicit contract between working class white America and those in power; in exchange for creating a social order that placed white people at the top of the social, political, and economic structures in America, the white working class was provided with stable jobs, and the means for social mobility.
When the return on capital became greater than the return on labor due to globalization and the rise of technology, the elites broke this contract by sending manufacturing jobs overseas, and busting unions, while at the same time providing more political and economic opportunities for people of color, and increasing immigration of people of color through the Immigration Act of 1965.
The full repudiation of the old social contract of the election of Barack Obama in 2008. Donald Trump as able to successfully play upon the resentments of the white working class to win 2016 presidential election.
"Make America Great Again" is really coded language for returning to the social contract where the white working class's place in society is secured by the elites.
4
I am fine with the decline of institutional Christianity. Institutional Christianity harms with its power and it has since its inception. It prizes ancient doctrine over earth's biology regarding women and LGBT. There are about 33,000 denominations of Christianity which demonstrates substantial disagreement as to what Christianity is making it a subset of Christians designing the institutional Christianity.
The history of Christianity, as well as other religions, unfortunately denies us the hope that living the spiritual life of one's choosing does not also mean that man-made rules religious rules based on ancient writings must be societal rules.
4
It is not clear to me why there is such angst over polarization. First, except for specific periods when national emergencies created an urgent need for unity, I don't know that today's situation is all that different from many past periods of US history. Second, if politics has as its goal the allocation of power to implement some social agenda, it seems natural that in an open society we will have vast differences of opinion that lead to one outcome, to be countered at some future date when that outcome ceases to compel sufficient support to endure, in a dialectic of advancing policies. I as much as anyone would like for us all to sit together and sing campfire songs, but I think that unrealistic. So don't panic over differences. Sally forth and argue for your vision of the good society, and everyone else can do the same. As long as we agree that the means to the end is politics, the system is working.
6
Why don't we ever start at the beginning? We have always been inherently polarized; in times of stress the chasm widens and threatens us.
Not sure about the polarization? Look at movies - old black and whites on Turner - and watch for scenes in which the fast talking city slicker tries to take advantage of the rube, and is schooled. The same meme appeared on my Facebook feed yesterday, updated to a present a guy with $100K in debt and a major in philosophy, and no job, depicted as thinking himself better than the guy who learned a trade and is now the one cutting off the elite guy's electricity. Same theme.
We are a large nation, with a dueling pair of central philosophies that have prevailed. One is based on the fundamentalist religions - the Calvinists, the stubborn Scotch Irish of the Appalachians, the Germanic people who brought forth black and white morality, strong belief in self-reliance, Libertarianism and a disdain for government. The other, more based on Dorothy Day, main stream Protestantism and Jewish intellectuals fostered a philosophy that we are our brothers' keepers.
Weave in everything else, but the fallout comes down to our philosophy. Individualism, individual goals versus communitarianism and community goals.
In times of stress, as people feel opportunity is limited, they retreat back to the basics, and we end up polarized, because we are fighting for what we see is our existential future.
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And, that’s Fox News’/Trump’s success: exacerbating “times of stress” by stirring up even more with”migrant caravans”, “rapists and murderers”, “gun confiscation” and just plain scary fairytales. Follow the stress and the money—no matter how bad it gets, it’s good for some short term power hungry profiteers who know how to activate the reptilian brains of a critical mass of the population.
5
There is long history to this polarization. Find the election map of 2016—East of the Mississippi—and look for the counties where Trump's performance surpassed the 2012 Republican result. Then compare that to the election map of 1860. Look for the counties with higher anti-Lincoln votes, including votes for Stephen Douglas. The maps are strikingly similar, foreshadowing in the anti-Lincoln votes even the upper-midwest tendency which Trump rode to victory.
Sometimes, a historically-minded person listening to Trump's advocates could be forgiven for concluding we are re-fighting today the political battles which wracked the nation over Reconstruction, post-Civil War.
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@S.P. I like this line of reasoning. I have long felt that slavery was the original sin which has shaped the development of the US since it founding.
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@Alan White
The original sin wasn't slavery itself, it was white supremacy. White supremacy was used as one of the justifications for slavery, it also guided immigration policy with regards to immigration and citizens rights for Asians, and Latinos.
A big reason for the discord in America right now is that white supremacy is being challenged like never before. It was easy for white supremacy to be a social norm with 90% of the population was white non-Hispanic. It will not be sustainable in a democratic society when 50% of the population is white non-Hispanic.
The advent of Trump and the GOP support of him during the impeachment process shows that the GOP is willing to throw away democratic norms and due process to maintain power.
13
@S.P. Exactly. Republicans win and Trump won in large part by dominating that portion of the white population which is southern -- by geography, by culture and temperment, or by history. That embraces the 11 states of the Confederacy plus most of the border states -- Kentucky, West Virginia, Missouri, Oklahoma and parts of Maryland. But the "swing" votes are cast in Western Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and parts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa. These are the areas that were southern culturally ever since they were settled by whites and received several waves of southern white migrants in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. As long as the Democratic party was perceived as friendly to segregation, these voters were reachable by Democrats. Since 1964, less and less.Culture matters.
2
Thanks, but I think I'll pass on reading any more theories about how and why we are divided. I'm looking for solutions now, and I'm pretty sure it is time for "one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected [us] with another." Whether it is due to differences in attitudes toward religion, political preferences, very different worldviews and/or varying family/spiritual values, I believe we are hopelessly divided and need to part ways. Let us form an entity which is based on a common currency, the dollar, and allow each nation-state, red or blue, to decide their own form of government and the rights its citizens would enjoy, such as reproductive rights for women and same-sex marriage for our LGBTQ brethren. Former areas, like the National Parks and monuments in Washington D.C. that were part of a once-united America, would be declared "purple areas" that continue to belong to all of us. Yes, it will be quite difficult to effect but, in my opinion, it's better than a Republican dictatorship which will lead to a bloody Second Civil War or minimally, constant civil disobedience, which I can assure you I will be practicing routinely if Toxic Trump is re-elected. Face it: our differences are based solely on belief and ideology, and we just do not like each other. Let's call the whole thing off, please.
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@AKL
I have a proposition which I think is a better alternative.Let us create a country with different economic zones where a different economic system will be practiced.There are people that will never be able to understand the spirit of capitalism because their way of thinking either because of religious or political upbringing is different.I am one of them and a proud member of the working class.I know that I will never be able to be my own boss.There are millions like me.So create an area where the usual laws of supply and demand will not hold like in the case of housing
1
@AKL
This doesn't work when you consider that the large cities in red states lean blue, and that in many "red" states the actual population leans blue even though the political system is rigged to favor the rural areas.
As Klein posits, we have a structural problem that is not going to be easy to solve.
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@AKL
While I share the frustration about our current polarization and fear we have already entered an era of Republican autocracy that prizes power above democracy, the suggested fracturing simply reinforces the kind of black-and-white thinking we find in various media and social media bubbles today.
I live part of the year in a "red" state, part of the year in a "purple" Western state, where I was born and raised. In each place, such simplistic color labels are immediately rendered pointless if one spends a half a day talking to, you know, actual humans.
The notion that a "blue" city could be declared ignores that a third or more of the people living in that city will consider themselves "red." And if anyone thinks we can just declare public lands "purple zones," I invite them to take a look at the kind of checkerboard system of public lands across the West, most of which, by the way, is federal land.
Again, I get the frustration. But this proposed "solution" is both impractical and, in so many ways, just as bad as what we've got now.
1