I strongly recommend you read David Blankenhorn’s article at The American Interest on the causes of political polarization. He lists fourteen of them and I’ll quote just one of them, habits of mind and heart:
14. The growing influence of certain ways of thinking about each other. These polarizing habits of mind and heart include:
- Favoring binary (either/or) thinking.
- Absolutizing one’s preferred values.
- Viewing uncertainty as a mark of weakness or sin.
- Indulging in motivated reasoning (always and only looking for evidence that supports your side).
- Relying on deductive logic (believing that general premises justify specific conclusions).
- Assuming that one’s opponents are motivated by bad faith.
- Permitting the desire for approval from an in-group (“my sideâ€) to guide one’s thinking.
- Succumbing intellectually and spiritually to the desire to dominate others (what Saint Augustine called libido dominandi).
- Declining for oppositional reasons to agree on basic facts and on the meaning of evidence.
These ways of thinking constitute the actual precipitation of polarization—the direct and immediate causes of holding exaggerated and stereotyped views of each other, treating our political opponent as enemies, exhibiting growing rancor and aggression in public life, and acting as if common ground does not exist.
There are other factors I would add to those he lists, not just in the quoted part above but in his entire piece which I encourage you to read. For example, the trend away from the written word as a means of expressing thought towards more visual media encourages a more agonistic mode of expression which in turn provokes an oppositional response.
And there is one reason for political polarization I do not believe should be forgotten. Political polarization benefits some people personally or financially, in particular the media and national political leadership. Nearly every incumbent in Washington benefits from polarization. Conflict attracts viewers while amicable disagreement doesn’t. It’s working for them. They’ll promote more of it.
” Political polarization benefits some people personally or financially, in particular the media and national political leadership.”
Amen. There is a lot of money being made keeping us mad at each other.
“Viewing uncertainty as a mark of weakness or sin.”
I (and 3 other docs) was asked to meet with a leader in our State Senate about drug issues (legalization of marijuana among them) a few years ago. Nice dinner meeting. Very conservative guy from a rural district. Anyway, in the chit chat after talking over the issues someone asked him about the Tea Party. He had no use for them. They were 100% certain about everything, and were unwilling to compromise on anything. No use for people like that. (Usual caveat. I am sure the left has plenty of people like that also.)
Steve
The old mojo isn’t working. Obama could have been polarizing when he came in: investigate the torture programs and the Iraq reconstruction, go after every banker, forgive mortgage debt, etc. Instead, he bailed and ‘reformed’ the banks, expanded the eternal war, and brought in Romneycare. And yet he was just as polarizing.
The effect of the Fox News bubble bears some of the blame, and pretending the NYTimes bubble is the mirror image of Fox is equally pernicious. In a normal country, Obama’s politics would have been pure centrism. Instead the more normal American things he did–drone assassinations, deporting undocumented immigrants, and talking about compromise with Republicans–the more he was from Kenya.
There’s also the Salem Hypothesis:
In any Evolution vs. Creation debate, A person who claims scientific credentials and sides with Creation will most likely have an Engineering degree.
There are many crank belief systems–climate change denialism, for one, or whatever it is that Jordan Peterson and the ‘intellectual dark web’ are trying to say–that resonate with a certain type of intelligent person. And debates with this person always end up like a vintage 1997 internet debate about Intelligent Design, where the most important thing ever is to be fair to the creationist.
The conservative media environment has basically conned this person into taking hundreds of crank positions.
“Usual caveat. I am sure the left has plenty of people like that also.”
So what was the point of bringing it up? No need to answer……
As for Modulo. Thanks for the chuckles.
“So what was the point of bringing it up? No need to answer……”
Since you asked, never met with a Democratic politician and had the topic come up. I assume it is probably true, just don’t know for sure.
Steve
Excellent article. Unfortunately, it’s mostly preaching to the choir. Those that most need to hear the message are those least likely to engage in the necessary introspection.
Every characteristic of every organism has a genetic component, so it is likely that people who indulge in polarization have a gene or set of genes that predisposes them to do so. Every item on Blankenhorn’s list could be genetically influenced.
As to Salem’s Hypothesis, it is a demonstrated fact that the humanities and social sciences, and most especially their faculties, harbor most of the Darwin deniers.