[Two preliminary notes, in response to last week’s comments: First, on Klein’s definition of “polarization”: For Klein, polarization is the process whereby people’s opinions either change, or the distribution of opinions sorts, to cluster around two poles, with fewer people left in the middle. Importantly, this does not entail that either side is more extreme. So: sorting is a subcategory of polarization—both have the consequence of increasing tension between the two ends of the spectrum, “which is what polarization is meant to describe” (32); but polarization is importantly distinct from extremism. Second, on the structure of the book, which I should have emphasized. Institutions like the media are a crucial part of Klein’s explanation for polarization. This discussion plays out in the second part of the book. The first part of the book is about our polarizing political identities, which polarizing institutions interact with. On the whole, Klein wants to show that polarization is a feedback loop: “Institutions polarize to appeal to a more polarized public, which further polarizes the public, which forces the institutions to polarize further, and so on” (136-7). Today’s post finishes up a point I wanted to make about polarizing identities. Next week and the week after, Parts 3 and 4 will move on to the stuff on institutions.]
In last week’s post about Why We’re Polarized, I wrote about Ezra Klein’s case for sorting as a kind of identity convergence. Here’s a summary in his words: “Today, the parties are sharply split across racial, religious, geographic, cultural, and psychological lines. There are many, many powerful identities lurking in that list, and they are fusing together, stacking atop one another, so a conflict or threat that activates one activates all” (136). I concluded by noting that I’m particularly interested in the practical upshots of the geographic aspect of identity convergence. I live in a liberal enclave, and I’ve often wondered what kinds of moral reasons I might have to leave it. I’ve wondered how strong those reasons are relative to the self-interested reasons I have to live wherever I most prefer to live. Remember that Klein compared identity convergence to stacking magnets on top of one another, “so the pull-push force of that stack is multiplied” (47-8). I’m struck by the fact that, in his discussion of practical upshots, he doesn’t raise the possibility that we have some personal obligations to shuffle up our own magnets.
I think we need to consider this possibility, and we can see why by considering a passage in which Klein describes his 2015 interview with then-President Barack Obama. Seeing Obama as a figure who turned out to be highly polarizing despite his fervent intention not to be, Klein asked Obama what advice he’d give to his successor about how to reduce polarization. In response, Obama invokes our seemingly nonpolitical identities: “Everybody’s got a family member or a really good friend from high school who is on the complete opposite side of the political spectrum. And yet, we still love them, right? Everybody goes to a soccer game, or watching their kids, coaching, and they see parents who they think are wonderful people, and then if they made a comment about politics, suddenly they’d go, ‘I can’t believe you think that!’” (66). Obama argued that the media tends to activate our political identities, but that leaders might speak to the public in ways that counteract this tendency: “My advice to a future president,” he said, “is increasingly try to bypass the traditional venues that create divisions and try to find new venues within this new media that are quirkier, less predictable” (68).
Klein is skeptical, deeming Obama “too optimistic in believing that our nonpolitical identities…[are] strong enough to overwhelm our partisan divisions. In practice, our political identities are polarizing our other identities, too” (68). Later he goes on: “The merging of the identities means when you activate one you often activate all, and each time they’re activated, they strengthen” (70). Riffing on Obama’s example of a kids’ soccer game, Klein invokes the polarization of football in response to Colin Kaepernick’s act of kneeling to protest police violence: “Rather than a shared love of football pulling our political identities toward compromise, our political identities polarized our love of football” (71). Thus Klein’s skepticism: Political leaders can’t activate our non-political identities to cut through polarization because all of our identities are polarizing, and they’re polarizing in non-cross-cutting ways.
This is important for a couple of reasons. Most obviously, “the more your identities converge on a single point, the more your identities can be threatened simultaneously, and that makes conflict much more threatening” (71). But identity convergence also affects our processing of new information. Later in the book, Klein reviews some of the burgeoning literature on motivated reasoning. What struck me most was a particular attempt to demystify it, due to legal scholar Dan Kahan and three coauthors: “Kahan doesn’t find it strange that we react to threatening information by mobilizing our intellectual artillery to destroy it. He thinks it’s strange that we would expect rational people to do anything else. ‘Nothing any ordinary member of the public personally believes about the existence, causes, or likely consequences of global warming will affect the risk that climate change poses to her, or to anyone or anything she cares about,’ Kahan writes. ‘However, if she forms the wrong position on climate change relative to the one [held by] people with whom she has a close affinity—and on whose high regard and support she depends in myriad ways in her daily life—she could suffer extremely unpleasant consequences, from shunning to the loss of employment.” (96). This effectively makes it individually rational to put group dynamics ahead of objective evidence when we think about politically-charged issues. This is what Kahan calls “identity-protective cognition.”: “’What we believe about the facts,’ [Kahan] writes, ‘tells us who we are.’ And the most important psychological imperative most of us have in a given day is protecting our idea of who we are and our relationships with the people we trust and love” (96).
This clearly raises the stakes of Klein’s and Obama’s disagreement over the prospects for activating so-called “nonpolitical” identities. But it also raises the stakes of my own question about our individual obligations to shake up our magnets. Aspiring political leaders can counteract polarization and identity-protective cognition only if the various identities of their audience members are less coherently tied to their partisan allegiances. And their audience members’ various identities will be less coherently tied to their partisan allegiances only if those audience members take steps to disrupt their own and others’ coherences. This sounds less extreme when we remember that, in this context, the difference between a preference and an identity is contextual. It sounds less extreme still when we recall that identity arises from the preferences we habitually satisfy or the ones on the basis of which we’re identified (67).
Consider this: When I was in college, my favorite restaurant was Texas Roadhouse, a chain restaurant where each table has a bucket of peanuts to snack on, and where the peanut shells are meant to be thrown on the floor. With your meal, you get as many buttery rolls as you want. By the end of grad school, I never opted for Texas Roadhouse when I was going to eat at a restaurant; I’d choose one of the non-chain restaurants walkable from my apartment. But when some pals and I discovered one day that we shared a history of strong allegiances to big chain restaurants, we decided to plan a “chain-food weekend.” We’d hit up IHOP, where I’d spent summers waiting tables, Outback Steakhouse, where two of our friends worked for many years, and Texas Roadhouse (obviously). It was to be a gleeful, exaggerated tribute to our yesteryears, and we’d spend Monday sleeping it off. But between college and the end of grad school, something beyond my preferences had shifted: My preferences had changed, in large part because of ease of access; but also, what had once been mere preference turned into something I could bond with friends over. “We used to love these places. Now we find them kind of kooky!” Today, I suspect that my general orientation toward eating out is something like an identity, in the sense that it can be activated and threatened: I am someone who generally prefers local restaurants with lots of vegetarian options, but also someone who can appreciate a good bottomless bread service.
On the metric of Cracker Barrel vs. Whole Foods, I come down decisively on the side of Whole Foods. And this is one of the things that might influence, for example, which neighborhood I find most appealing to live in. Still, I spent years of my life loving Cracker Barrel, and I am certain that I could come to love it again if I committed to developing my preferences in that direction. I wouldn’t choose a neighborhood for its access to Cracker Barrels and Texas Roadhouses. I’d probably opt against it due to those features and the others—sprawl, limited walkability—that they correlate with. But in time, I could be happy in many such neighborhoods. My preferences are malleable, and so too are these peripheral aspects of my identity that align—but only contingently so—in predictable ways with my politics.
I wonder if Klein’s skepticism about Obama’s proposed corrective for polarization is due, in part, to Klein not having considered the possibility that we ought to disrupt our magnets, thus opening ourselves up to having nonpolitical identities that can be activated without triggering our partisan affiliations. Maybe the fluidity of our restaurant preferences makes this seem an easier proposition than it in fact is. But is it not worth exploring? At the end of the book, Klein’s proposals for “depolarizing ourselves” include cultivating more mindfulness about which identities are being activated, and which we activate or let be activated: “Sometimes it’s worth being angry. Sometimes it’s not. If we don’t take the time to know which is which, we lose control over our relationship with politics and become the unwitting instrument of others” (263). He goes on: “Once we recognize that we exist amid an omnipresent conspiracy to manipulate our identities, we can begin the hard work of fashioning our environment to shape and strengthen the identities we want to inhabit” (263-4). He then offers an idea for where to start: We should root our political identities more fully in the places we live (266). For example, we should tilt our news consumption a bit away from the national in favor of the local.
Valuable though it may be, this suggestion doesn’t really sound like “hard work” at all. And I’m not so sure we can afford to avoid having a conversation about the still harder work that might need doing.
{ 59 comments }
BruceJ 05.31.22 at 5:15 pm
Good luck with that; honestly. Where I live ( Tucson, a blue oasis in a reddish-purple state, AZ) local news is exceedingly expensive to get…a subscription to the local remaining newspaper (which keeps dwindling to an ever thinner daily version) is ~$1200 a year.
They no longer have a local reporter covering the state capitol, but instead syndicate a reporter in Phoenix. We have an ever smaller group of local reporters who do good stuff; but most of the paper is just sourced from national syndicates.
And this is for a municipal region of ~ 1M people!
Also the only people who would ever consider a ‘moral reason’ to leave where they live are people who can afford to move AND lose the opportunities available in their (mainly) blue urban and suburban polities. Folks in deeply conservative rural places leave the moment they have the ability to, because the opportunities are so limited; and the main political divide in this country is between urban and rural.
Much of the regional polarization in this country is strictly economic in nature. The vast majority of us have no real ability to ‘shake up our magnets’.
J, not that one 05.31.22 at 5:45 pm
I think it’s interesting that of those of Klein’s podcasts that I’ve heard, the ones with Buddhists who talk about mindfulness are, in my opinion, the best. But Sam Harris and George Saunders have prescriptions that are so much more specific than anything Klein says. And Saunders’s prescription at least is essentially: work on yourself. These are not recommendations anyone can use (who is able to mold their environments and local communities just by interacting with them more, and who is not? who is able to spend the time thinking about what sentences are true that Saunders is?), but they are advertised as such.
I’ve been hearing “act locally” especially as regards the Internet for more than two decades, and since Trumpists targeted election boards, as Fukuyama notes in his most recent book, that ship has sailed.
And as someone whose tastes in restaurants have also changed over time, I’m noticing that Klein pretends to be unaware of any, say, Whole Foods-Ponderosa or similar disconnect in blue states. Not sure what to make of that yet either. My guess is he’s taken what he understands to be the “science” much too seriously, if he believes we are literally polarized geographically along partisan lines.
Michael 05.31.22 at 6:06 pm
Fascinating exploration here. Still, a couple alternative proposals, one somewhat superficial and the other more serious.
I too have moved (several times) from Cracker Barrel to Whole Foods enclaves. Still, my hipster Manhattan neighborhood has McDonald’s, Taco Bell, KFC, and the like. Clearly my neighbors frequent these places, along with the local establishments and their abundant vegetarian options. Perhaps our preferences and identities don’t stack quite as neatly or exclusively as it seems.
The Marxist in me demands to know: why should we seek to uncouple our political identities from our social ones? After all, another term for the polarization Klein so ably describes is class antagonism. Sure, it is class antagonism in distorted and displaced form. Nevertheless, what is at stake in our political intransigence is precisely the future of the class structure. In this case, it is in fact our ethical obligation not to give quarter to political antagonists—that is, to those who would maintain or extend one or another kind of social hierarchy and the violence it brings down on its victims. The ethical thing to do in that case may be to repudiate our “friends” insofar as they are in fact enemies of the just world we wish to usher in.
Thoughts?
Michael
Stephen 05.31.22 at 6:30 pm
OP: Ezra Klein’s case for sorting as a kind of identity convergence. Here’s a summary in his words: “Today, the parties are sharply split across racial, religious, geographic, cultural, and psychological lines. There are many, many powerful identities lurking in that list, and they are fusing together, stacking atop one another, so a conflict or threat that activates one activates all”.
Need I add that this statement, if very likely true for the present USA, is not obviously true for the rest of the world? And if it isn’t, what then?
Possibly relevant addition: when I was a student my favourite breakfast was not from anywhere serving beef steaks (unattainable luxury) but from a worker’s caff providing slices of white bread with slightly salted beef dripping and jelly, with pint mugs of tea. Can’t find the like now. Wonderful thing, progress.
Sean 05.31.22 at 7:15 pm
@J, not that one: the thing is, someone has to start doing the things which everyone should be doing. Its not sufficient, but its necessary, because many people have status quo bias and model their behaviour on what they see so no large group ever changes all at once. And its obviously easier to influence a few dozen people you know face to face than “the whole Internet.”
If the kind of thinky lefty people who spend a lot of time on politics birdsite spend half that time writing letters, calling, and picketing representatives, the US and UK would be very different places.
William Meyer 05.31.22 at 7:56 pm
How will unstacking my personal magnets make it more likely that we stop global warming? Perhaps you have noticed that Republican states strongly correlate to those states in which oil & gas contributes a large amount to the state’s GDP? Is this correlation a magnet than can be unstacked or a fact on the ground?
This sorting you speak of is not a purely internal or psychological process.
Stephen 05.31.22 at 8:00 pm
Michael@3: “it is in fact our ethical obligation not to give quarter to political antagonists”.
Fascinating to find a Marxist echoing Karl Schmidt. But would you not agree that your political antagonists do in fact give very generous quarter to you? After all, you’re alive and well, free, uncensored, unexiled, untortured … or isn’t that what you meant by being given quarter?
And if you think that Marxism would not impose “another kind of social hierarchy”. well …
Kenny Easwaran 05.31.22 at 9:16 pm
When I moved from Los Angeles to teach at a university in a smaller metro area in Texas, I assumed I would be moving out of my polarized bubble. And it’s true that at Texas A&M I teach students that have a different set of social and political predispositions than I did at USC (in many different ways – though also with a lot of overlap). But I haven’t broken out of the geographic bubble as much as you might expect. Even though Brazos County voted 10 points redder than Texas as a whole, I think the specific precinct I live in voted bluer than Los Angeles County (and thus quite a bit bluer than California as a whole, though probably not as blue as the precinct I lived in in Los Angeles). When my partner and I moved to town, we specifically chose a home in a walkable neighborhood with a few bars and restaurants one could reach on foot, and didn’t pay any attention to the school district. And we are segregated not just in space, but also in time – I expect that at lunchtime, the downtown eateries get a lot of foot traffic of jurors, local judges and elected officials, and city and county staff, who probably represent the political opinions of the county at large, but my partner and I tend to go downtown in the evening, when young childless people are out for dinner or a drink. I’m not sure how much value there is in trying at the margins to struggle against all of these structural factors that give rise to the sorting in space and time. Much more un-sorting would happen as a result of changes to the structural factors.
Alex SL 05.31.22 at 9:38 pm
“Institutions polarize to appeal to a more polarized public, which further polarizes the public, which forces the institutions to polarize further, and so on”
Except outside of social media algorithms that create positive feedback loops that’s not how it works though, is it? Certain media empires are purposefully set up to radicalise one side of the spectrum, and that creates polarisation. In this case, it seems quite clear which of the chicken and egg came first: the institutions of newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations owned by billionaires pulling the age-old “look that way and be very afraid of the immigrants / Jews / communists / terrorists / ethnic minority / secularists / etc while I make off with my tax cuts and privatisation and deregulation windfalls”.
Also, the few people who would be willing to mix up their magnets were never the problem in the first place. The problem is that there are people like those billionaires and right-wing populists who have strong incentives to increase polarisation. How do you change them?
That being said, if Klein’s pessimism were well-founded, how did any society ever exist that was not completely dysfunctional due to polarisiation? There must be negative feedbacks at some point.
nastywoman 05.31.22 at 10:45 pm
what a wonderful ‘menue’ as the first place I always hit when I enter the homeland is IHOP – and I always fill out the survey afterwards and give the place and especially the Servers the highest marks in order to get that free Stack of Pancakes for my next visit –
BUT eating at my favourite IHOP in Kansas is a completely different experience than eating at my favourite IHOP in Santa Barbara -(which actually isn’t a IHOP at a all but
Garrett’s – with the best Blueberry Pancakes on this Planet) as in Kansas -(the IHOP close to the Hospital) we NEVER talk about ‘politics’ -(as it for sure would disturb digestion) while at Garrett’s we talk about the Crazy Right-Wing Racist Science Deniers ALL THE TIME –
and then –
when I just –
last week –
went to the Bridgerton Enactment -(the most hilarious ‘political’ affair I experienced for a long time) – I HAD to leave my good ole Biltmore early next morning to toddle down four blocks to Whole Foods (because there isn’t a close Sprouts) and get a fresh organic Orange Juice -(for outrageous ten bucks) –
As who pays ten bucks for organic Orange Juice –
Well – hardly anybody in Kansas – where the gallon of gas was nearly two bucks less than in LA.
And perhaps that’s TEH ‘ting’ between ‘Urban’ and Non-Urban -(even as Kansas City is VERY ‘urban’ for THE Midwest) that if you can afford 10 bucks for Organic Orange Juice –
(plus a ticket to the Bridgerton Enactement Party) there is absolutely NO reason to tal about ‘politics’ or any ‘Polarization’ as Bridgerton bridges it ALL and you guys probably won’t believe how un-polarized ALL these BLACK and very white and brown –
and even all these Indianish Royalty – celebrated our common LOVE for ‘ROYALITY’
(but NOT – ‘KinkTrump’)
nastywoman 05.31.22 at 11:02 pm
and about ‘the feedback loop’ and that –
‘Institutions like the media are a crucial part of Klein’s explanation for polarization –
and that On the whole, Klein wants to show that polarization is a feedback loop: “Institutions polarize to appeal to a more polarized public, which further polarizes the public, which forces the institutions to polarize further, and so on” (136-7)
if Klein finally understands that this loop -(not only in the Case of Bridgerton) –
started –
NOT with ‘the media’
BUT with ‘the public’ by the media responding to the publics obvious Desiree for ‘Royality’ (without ANY Racial boundaries) he finally had understood that this funny idea of ‘media starts looping’ by ‘propagandising’ – sometimes is just a silly -(and wrong) idea – if in reality a clever -(or evil) Media Producer -(or the Evil Trump) caught on to what ‘the public’ is/was really – longing for…
that “Institutions polarize to appeal to a more polarized public, which further polarizes the public, which forces the institutions to polarize further, and so on” (136-7).
nastywoman 05.31.22 at 11:10 pm
or in other (simpler) words –
it’s much easier to get people polarized against something or somebody – if there is already a preposition for NOT liking any type of ‘otherness’ –
BUT! –
if you see on Bridgerton that also a Beautiful Black Dude can be a ‘Very Noble Duke of Hastings’ – there is NOOOO way to turn back time to Polarized Closemindness!
Capisce?
Peter T 06.01.22 at 3:51 am
Relevant food for thought in this bit of research:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2107848118
J-D 06.01.22 at 5:51 am
It’s not clear what ‘activating’ an identity might mean, and so it’s not clear how activating an identity might be a good thing or a bad thing. It’s also not clear what ‘threatening’ an identity might mean, and so it’s not clear how threatening an identity might be a good thing or a bad thing.
Neville Morley 06.01.22 at 6:30 am
This is perhaps a bit tangential, or at any rate a lot more abstract, but I think it’s relevant, and in any case it was prompted by Michael’s comment @3.
In the context of classical Greek political thinking, a key term is ‘stasis’, which is a fundamental conflict within the normally more-or-less united citizen body. This can be over a specific issue, or it can be a struggle over the distribution of power and the basic institutions of the community. In the canonical texts, it’s pretty well the nightmare scenario, where a polis goes wrong; the most vivid description is Thucydides’ account of the stasis at Corcyra, and it’s interesting that much of his narrative focuses on polarisation rather than just political disputes: the division of the citizens into two opposed factions which now become their prime focus of allegiance, source of identity etc., evaluating actions and statements solely by factional advantage and so forth. And the ostentatiously reasonable people in the middle get squashed first, and clearly those are the ones Thucydides sympathises with…
But there is an alternative tradition – which comes to Michael’s point – that among the laws passed by the early Athenian politician Solon, given unprecedented powers to resolve fierce divisions, was one which forbade Athenians from refusing to take sides in stasis, on pain of losing their citizenship: if there’s an existential conflict in the community, sitting it out is not an option.
TM 06.01.22 at 8:42 am
“For Klein, polarization is the process whereby people’s opinions either change, or the distribution of opinions sorts, to cluster around two poles, with fewer people left in the middle. Importantly, this does not entail that either side is more extreme.”
Thanks for this attempt at a definition. I don’t think it’s very coherent (if opinions merely “sort”, how does that explain the disappearance of the “middle”? If they change, you have to explain how they change). In any case it completely fails to describe what is happening in the US, namely the radicalization of the formerly conservative part of the political spectrum and the replacement of traditional conservative politics with tribalism. Political scientists appeal to concepts like “pole” and “middle” in order to appear “neutral” and avoid political judgment but you cannot meaningfully describe the rise of fascism in neutral terms. The “polarization” model is a variation on the “both sides” cliché that Very Serious People in America are so addicted to they can’t give it up to save their lives.
TM 06.01.22 at 8:47 am
“For Klein, polarization is the process whereby people’s opinions either change, or the distribution of opinions sorts, to cluster around two poles, with fewer people left in the middle. Importantly, this does not entail that either side is more extreme.”
Thanks for this attempt at a definition. I don’t think it’s very coherent (if opinions merely “sort”, how does that explain the disappearance of the “middle”? If they change, you have to explain how they change). In any case it completely fails to describe what is happening in the US, namely the radicalization of the formerly conservative part of the political spectrum and the replacement of traditional conservative politics with tribalism. Political scientists appeal to concepts like “pole” and “middle” in order to appear “neutral” and avoid political judgment but you cannot meaningfully describe the rise of fascism in neutral terms. The “polarization” model is a variation on the “both sides do it” cliché that Very Serious People in America are so addicted to they can’t give it up to save their lives.
TM 06.01.22 at 9:19 am
“He then offers an idea for where to start: We should root our political identities more fully in the places we live (266). For example, we should tilt our news consumption a bit away from the national in favor of the local.”
Baffling. Very Serious Thinking indeed. A bit confusing though. I thought the geographic sorting was part of the problem?
nastywoman 06.01.22 at 11:08 am
and about the “depolarizing ourselves” and the funny: Klein ‘including cultivating more mindfulness about which identities are being activated, and which we activate or let be activated’ – I have found out – that – STILL ‘not talking about politics’ -(and or ‘religion’) works the best – or reminding everybody around – that it is NOT allowed to spoil my days with some badmooded nonsense about ‘Right-Wing Racist Science Denying Idiots’
about NOT being ‘Right-Wing Racist Science Denying Idiots’ BE-cause they do
‘this or that’ –
which isn’t typical for being a ‘Right-Wing Racist Science Denying Idiot’ –
or as the Stewart of the flight to Philly didn’t say ‘welcome’ anymore when he greeted his passengers –
He said:
Be Kind!
And then everybody on the flight tried very well to follow his advice.
J, not that one 06.01.22 at 12:52 pm
Sean @ 5
But it is obviously false that one person doing something will inevitably lead to the whole group doing that thing. It is nice to do good things and nice to hope the good things I do will have good effects, but to count on it is a little too laissez-faire to be “science.”
“Local” is usually a conservative call, and the call is not to influence the neighbors whom you presumably don’t understand, but to allow them to influence you.
J, not that one 06.01.22 at 1:05 pm
Neville Morley @ 15
Sitting it out may not have been an option for the full citizens of the community, in fact being a full citizen surely was determined by who had the capacity to take a side publicly without ill effect personally or for the community. Women and servants taking their own part could not even be seen as politics, just as a sort of social disease.
It’s difficult for me not to imagine that the liberal Golden Age assumed so easily by Klein and Fukuyama (and
Klein contradicted the book’s argument already in yesterday’s NYT, it would seem) had so little apparent political polarization just because it was so easy to exclude so many.
TM 06.01.22 at 1:11 pm
When I was living in the part of the world where Cracker Barrel exists, I ate there maybe twice. I don’t remember much about the quality of the food but thinking about it now, it occurs to me that you can get there only by car and I, living in a city, used to go to restaurants that I could walk or bike to. wikipedia: “For much of its early history, Cracker Barrel decided to locate its restaurants along the Interstate Highway System, and the majority of its restaurants remain close to interstate and other highways”, iow are located outside of cities. Big surprise that urban people are less likely to eat there.
Should American liberals now, to “shuffle up our own magnets”, rent cars to drive to a Cracker Barrel once in a while? Would that help us solve the problem pf “polarization”? Or should we appeal to the “institution” Cracker Barrel to open up locations in cities to help urban liberals get acquainted with the “traditional Southern U.S. general store” feeling so they can better empathize with Republican voters?
This is just one anecdote out of Klein’s no doubt far deeper, more nuanced and multifaceted argument but frankly, if the the summaries in the OP are fair, I must conclude that both the analyses and the prescriptions offered by Klein are utterly deficient and I find it hard to believe they are worth our time.
J, not that one 06.01.22 at 1:33 pm
Stephen @ 5
It seems pretty snobbish to assume people who eat at a place called Cracker Barrel must be poor.
I’m guessing the amount of meat on their typical breakfast is quite a lot more substantial than beef drippings. If they serve steak, I’d guess it’s better than Ponderosa’s, too,
bekabot 06.01.22 at 1:38 pm
What’s interesting here is the subtextual claim (which is made even in the knowledge that it’s false) that Whole Foods isn’t a really a franchise. There’s a brief that’s ready for unpacking.
politicalfootball 06.01.22 at 1:59 pm
Klein seeks solutions that don’t demand decency among rightwingers, and therefore he fails to address the actual problem.
politicalfootball 06.01.22 at 2:01 pm
A little elaboration:
Klein needs to identify “polarization” as the problem, but the actual problem is that one of those poles turned nihilistic.
I share the analysis of Alex SL @9, but I have an answer for Alex’s rhetorical question:
if Klein’s pessimism were well-founded, how did any society ever exist that was not completely dysfunctional due to polarisiation? There must be negative feedbacks at some point.
In the obvious historical example, the decisive negative feedback came in Stalingrad.
Kevin 06.01.22 at 2:30 pm
When I lived in San Jose, CA, my neighbour across the street was a Trump supporter and he would come over and drink my cider and we’d discuss the problems of the world passionately and amicably. Likewise, about half my soccer team voted for Trump and, still, we could discuss politics without rancour for hours after every game with beer and BBQ.
But could I live in a place that voted Trump? I don’t think I could.
You are probably familiar with that cellular automata that simulates house-buying with the simple rule “I’m fine with living next-door to people of as long as there is at least one neighbour of “. It results in complete segregation. Add to that the phenomenon where the media and Twitterati get clicks from exaggerating political and cultural differences and polarization is inevitable.
I recently moved home to Bristol in the UK. I NEVER meet anyone who voted for Brexit in a city of half a million people. When I go home to visit my family in Kent, I am the out-of-touch leftie who doesn’t understand the threats we face from brown people arriving on the beaches in dinghies.
I’d love to spend my retirement in a little seaside town but I know that everyone there will hate all the values that I stand for so I am condemned to stay by the beautiful Bristol Harbour among the beautiful people who see the world the way that I do. There are worse things, I suppose.
Kevin 06.01.22 at 2:32 pm
My cellular automata rules got eaten by the blog. It is:
“I’m fine with living next-door to people of OTHER RACE as long as there is at least one neighbour of SAME RACE”.
notGoodenough 06.01.22 at 2:35 pm
Stepher @ 7
“Fascinating to find a Marxist echoing Karl Schmidt.”
Fascinating to see someone who but a short while ago was driven to fury by perceived insinuation of fascistic tendencies so readily insinuating the same of others…
“But would you not agree that your political antagonists do in fact give very generous quarter to you? After all, you’re alive and well, free, uncensored, unexiled, untortured … or isn’t that what you meant by being given quarter?”
Interesting that you characterise Michael’s political antagonists as giving “very generous” quarter merely for not torturing, exiling, censoring, confining, etc. – you do seem to set rather a low bar.
However, perhaps I may draw your attention to the proposed “Indiana House Bill 1040” [1]:
each school corporation or qualified school shall provide for all students in grades 6 through 12 as part of required recitation concerning the system of government in Indiana and in the United States, instruction that socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are incompatible with and in conflict with the principles of freedom upon which the United States was founded. […]” As such, socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are detrimental to the people of the United States”
I wonder if – were it to be proposed that schools be required to teach that your ideology is detrimental to the people of your nation – you would also regard that as being the product of “very generous” quarter from your political antagonists?
“when I was a student my favourite breakfast was not from anywhere serving beef steaks (unattainable luxury) but from a worker’s caff providing slices of white bread with slightly salted beef dripping and jelly, with pint mugs of tea. Can’t find the like now. Wonderful thing, progress.”
While there is a sad lack of reliable and methodologically consistent measurements of food insecurity in the UK, data suggests it has increased significantly since the 2016-2018 period (and, naturally, falls disproportionately on the young and less financially secure)[2]. When I was a student, I used to be able to have a breakfast – something current students may now regard with envy.
However, commentators may be consoled that the data suggests that UK food insecurity does not appear to correlate with geography – in this respect, at least, it would appear there is no Urban/Rural divide, and we are all unpolarised in our hunger.
Wonderful thing, progress under 10 years of Conservative government.
[1] https://legiscan.com/IN/bill/HB1040/2022
[2] doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdab120
Jonathan 06.01.22 at 2:49 pm
Alex SL @9,
Most societies in human history have been dysfunctional by this standard. Civil wars are not exactly rare in human history. The 157 years since the last civil war in the USA is probably well above the mean-time-between-civil war for societies in human history.
That being said, past societies tried to manage political polarization using techniques that we would find repugnant. Examples would be shrinking the number of people who can exercise political power to as small of a group as possible and violently suppressing alternatives along as many axes of identity as possible. If we reduced the franchise to the white Protestant men on the Forbes 400 list, political polarization would probably be a lot less of an issue. The challenge is how do we handle polarization with a democratic system of government in a diverse society?
Ray Vinmad 06.01.22 at 9:48 pm
This is out of left field so apologies for that but is the intensity of political affiliation partly due to the weakening of religious intensity?
Religion is usually political but political feelings have triumphed over religious feelings in many congregations. I read a fascinating article a while back that claimed the first squawks over CRT happened in a Baptist congregation where one pastor purged the other by associating his concerns about racism with CRT and Marxism. Certain evangelical churches have become more politically right wing by pushing out anyone who isn’t in line with the particular political orientation and some schisms in mainstream congregations have created politically orthodox further right sects.
We don’t do faith the same way people once did, I suspect…It’s amazing to realize how far some formerly Pentecostal pacifist sects are from that creed. They were responding to political events in order to create a protected zone where the state could not reach rather than trying to overtake the state to reflect their creed.
Maybe the doctrinal energy has to flow somewhere in terms of how one lives one’s life and it’s spilling over into political identities? This is not to say political identities are the same thing but they do substitute for a) sense of belonging b) sources of norms c) passionate expectations and fears about the future that religion once provided.
It’s startling to see how readily political affiliations override religious authority such that religious authorities like the Pope are waved away if their perspective clashes with one’s favored political views. You don’t see right wing Catholics in politics fretting over Laudato Si, Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change.
On a completely different topic, I can’t make sense of any of these ideas about magnets for people of marginalized identities who are trying to survive wherever they are. Recent events have made this harder and harder and this has nothing to do with magnets or bubbles. This book seems not to keep pace with the current moment which is an acceleration of attacks on people for political gain and cannot be remedied by shifting our attitudes.
Tom 06.02.22 at 12:17 am
Gina, thanks, great series of posts (btw, I believe we met once – in a liberal enclave – through a common friend). I wanted to follow up on the question:
“Is geographical sorting then something to regret in its own right?”
No, not for me. People underestimate how off the chart the US is in many regards, with some parts more off the chart than others. Widespread diffusion of firearms? Check. Widespread influence of organized religion on policy? Check. Off the chart obesity rates? Check. Widespread lack of health insurance? Check. And so on.
Especially if you have a family, I think it is perfectly reasonable to try to find areas to live where weapons are more regulated, you can read about evolution in all schools, there is a bit more attention to better food, support for health insurance, etc.
As to depolarizing ourselves, an easy thing for me is to try to read news from sources I disagree with. At least it lets me see what the other side has in mind.
But in general I do not believe in individual lifestyle changes affecting political outcomes. The change is always through politics. So I try to support politicians who favor more universalist policies (Medicare for All comes to mind) such that they can create allegiance and shared values across both sides.
I also refuse to believe that polarization is inevitable. But this comment is already getting long and so maybe I will try to elaborate later.
nastywoman 06.02.22 at 3:04 am
and by being back in Verona (Italy) and:
‘two households both alike in dignity’ –
there is a very practical old recipe about how to “depolarize ourselves”
Y’all join US on Friday evening in Jacqueline Lee Bouvier’s favourite ‘via’
(the Via Sottoriva)
and then we Duke it out – by deciding who has to commit suicide
FIRST!
MFB 06.02.22 at 10:07 am
Amen to TM. It was a silly anecdote cited by a partisan hack in praise of his Dear Leader.
I suspect that the polarisation of politics has a great deal to do with the collapse of democracy — one pays no attention to policies, since one has no power over them, but instead pays attention to one’s own identity and to attacking the identity of others.
The restaurant metaphor can easily be explained by the power of niche marketing, and by the fact that if you self-identity as a member of a tribe who eats at a particular place, you will eat at that place.
TM 06.02.22 at 11:32 am
NM 15: “one which forbade Athenians from refusing to take sides in stasis, on pain of losing their citizenship: if there’s an existential conflict in the community, sitting it out is not an option.”
It occurs to me that the US has abysmally low election participation rates. 66% was record high in the US but by most countries standards, it’s low. And most US elections have far lower rates, usually below 50%. This leads to another criticism of the polarization thesis: why if Americans are so polarized do so many citizens simply not care about partisan politics, and why do so many of those who care claim to be in favor of “bipartisanship”?
The review in the New Republic argues along these lines that the US is actually “Not Polarized Enough”. If “polarization” is the sorting of political parties by policy preferences (this is at least one way in which Klein uses the ill-defined term), a process that indeed happened in the US since the 1960s, then it is actually a healthy development. That’s what political parties are supposed to do, offer a coherent policy platform that competes with other such platforms. Outside the US nobody thinks of this as a problem. The American bipartisanship fetish is an outleir in international comparison, and not in a good way. In most parliaments, party discipline is expected and often enforced. Which doesn’t per se preclude compromise. Sinema and Manchin have, by refusing party allegiance, done a lot of damage.
Ultimately the real problem that Klein apparently wants to address without saying so openly isn’t polarization but the radicalization of the GOP, a development that simply has no equivalent at the other “pole”. The review in NY Magazine makes this point (“The GOP is the problem”) but somehow the reviewer in the end nevertheless endorses Klein’s approach – aftre demolishing most of his premises – on the grounds that pretending the problem is symmetric might appeal to right-wingers. Delusional.
https://newrepublic.com/article/157599/were-not-polarized-enough-ezra-klein-book-review
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/polarization-republicans-democracy-ezra-klein-book-review.html
Jake Gibson 06.02.22 at 12:21 pm
I go to Cracker Barrel mostly to enjoy the food I grew up on. Things like fried Okra, Turnip greens, country ham, biscuits and gravy. Can’t get Poke Sallet and eggs anywhere though.
I am pessimistic about us becoming less partisan.
So much of our political identities have become weaponized culture war. And for the right, compromise equals the left completely surrending.
steven t johnson 06.02.22 at 2:46 pm
This seemed to be the only point of interest: “Kahan doesn’t find it strange that we react to threatening information by mobilizing our intellectual artillery to destroy it. He thinks it’s strange that we would expect rational people to do anything else. ‘Nothing any ordinary member of the public personally believes about the existence, causes, or likely consequences of global warming will affect the risk that climate change poses to her, or to anyone or anything she cares about,’ Kahan writes. ‘However, if she forms the wrong position on climate change relative to the one [held by] people with whom she has a close affinity—and on whose high regard and support she depends in myriad ways in her daily life—she could suffer extremely unpleasant consequences, from shunning to the loss of employment.’ This effectively makes it individually rational to put group dynamics ahead of objective evidence when we think about politically-charged issues. This is what Kahan calls ‘identity-protective cognition.’: ‘What we believe about the facts,’ [Kahan] writes, ‘tells us who we are.’ And the most important psychological imperative most of us have in a given day is protecting our idea of who we are and our relationships with the people we trust and love”. [Tried to clean up the quotation marks to distinguish when Klein was quoted from when Klein quoted Kahan, sorry for any errors.]
The part where Kahan notes serious possible social and economics consequences to nonconformity, such as unemployment, is surprisingly relevant to the real world. But this point somehow by the ends turns into a psychological problem of protecting not our livelihoods but our…self-image? And by the end of the OP these problems are to be resolved by individual acts of…consumption?
The notion that consumption defines the human strikes me as wrong. Socioeconomic status is not class. Politics in a district where the property values are declining and families can’t stay together but the children have to leave are different from the politics where property values are rising, and the leaving issue turns into, where do we buy a vacation home?
Kahan’s observation could I think be read in a safely polite/obscurantist manner as something like, local elites can exercise power over the majority, who have to conform from a very practical material self-interest…and the psychology follows. This does fit with the way most political districts in the US are not competitive. One party dominates, with the local elites (…) factionalizing behind the scenes, in primaries, etc. Only a few districts are scenes of real partisan strife, usually highly populated, wealthy areas where no single band of elites can dominate while the lower orders can find power in numbers.
Lastly, the whole notion of polarization seems here to omit completely the notion that the rich may be increasingly disaffected from bourgeois democracy. The idea they should pay annual tribute to the campaigns of politicians abusing them with the mandates of the people (rather than stakeholders) seems to be increasingly galling. The increasing desire to turn back the clock is driven I think by the increasing difficulty of making enough money in an economy that keeps (inexplicably in their view) reinventing business cycles and crises. Somehow the economy hasn’t returned to trend for decades. Also, the cost of politics when most people’s families real wages have stagnated for decades, and the children they can afford have to move away to have trouble paying for a home of their own. Trying to satisfy those real needs would be expensive. Better to satisfy illusory needs?
The whole view of politics as personal self-expression, a profession of faith (including non-denominational and universalist, aka “secular,) a pattern of good taste in what you buy, strikes me as misleading. But however convenient such a wrong approach to politics can be for those gaming the system, politics is about policies, personnel, program. About who gets what?
J, not that one 06.02.22 at 4:49 pm
Also @ Neville Morley, are we really better off when people like Klein feel obligated not to take sides, rather than the opposite? But there’s a contradiction in his pretense not to take sides, because he is very public about what he believes and what side he feels himself to be on, and anyone can see that he bends over backwards to explain the beliefs of the other side in as good a light as possible, This is what he calls “objectivity.” He would never, ever look for the strongest arguments on the left and weigh the two sides logically. There’s something almost postmodern about the attitude that I can’t put my finger on, but I feel like it actually goes a lot farther than some kind of journalist-scholar’s impartiality of a layperson who reads think tank white papers and simply reports their contents.
Is it possible that when an obviously partisan person claims the mantle of objective truth, it tends to polarize others? Or is it possible that someone like Klein should be considered justified to claim that mantle by everybody, and the problem is “lack of trust in the institution of journalism”? Maybe this is even more off-topic.
nastywoman 06.02.22 at 4:54 pm
and about:
‘People underestimate how off the chart the US is in many regards, with some parts more off the chart than others. Widespread diffusion of firearms? Check. Widespread influence of organized religion on policy? Check. Off the chart obesity rates? Check. Widespread lack of health insurance? Check’.
Don’t forget the main being ‘off the chart’ – by ‘having absolutely no filter anymore and being empowered by Racist Right-Wing Science Denying Idiots to say or tweet or even act out anything Idiotic and Stupid a Right-Wing Racist Science Denying Idiot LOVES to ‘shoot’ – while in so called ‘polite’ societies most people STILL try to keep their lowest instinct in ‘check’.
And so – a contraire to what MFB believes I suspect that the polarisation of politics has a great deal to do NOT with some ‘collapse of democracy’ — BUT in order to say it in the utmost simplistic (and stupid) way: with TOO MUCH DEMOCRACY – where any amount of idiots can vote for any amount of ‘trump’ (the Worlds new Word for: Utmost Racist Right-Wing Science Denying Idiocy) in order to make the (non-political) STUPIDITY of ‘trump’ THE RULE’ –
AND what did ‘Shakespear’ say:
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
“Sweet are the uses of adversity which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”
OR
“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”
AND Kant added:
“He who is cruel to IHOP becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of avocado toast.”
AND NOBODY in Italy EVER would disrespect Spaghetti Al Dente!
Capisce?
can one pays no attention to policies, since one has no power over them, but instead pays attention to one’s own identity and to attacking the identity of others.
nastywoman 06.03.22 at 3:53 am
and that:
‘Lastly, the whole notion of polarization seems here to omit completely the notion that the rich may be increasingly disaffected from bourgeois democracy’ – made me want to throw the Avocado Toast at Johnson as in the US reality it is NOT ‘the Rich’ who are so disaffectedly… rude and polarizin stupid – as most of these Avocado-Toast-Eaters very well hedge their low instincts in order to be able to keep on making tons of money an the back of all these much poorer victims who just can’t hold back to expose every little bit of their lowest instincts for the whole world to see -(and not only on TEH INTERTUBES) but more and more in our daily lives – like this old man – who followed me around yesterday on the Via Mazzini – yelling:
YOU ARE NOT ITALIAN!!!
(as if that would be as bad – as it actually is!)
Gina Schouten 06.03.22 at 11:06 am
Michael (3) and others on why SHOULD we try to shake up our magnets: Thanks for these thoughts, which I’ve been pondering. I’m not yet convince by any of the challenges raised that there’s no intrinsic reason to care about learning to live well in close proximity to people with very different politics. Some of the challenges raised (see below) DO make me think that this reasons are powerfully weighed against by other considerations. But setting aside the intrinsic question to anticipate what’s coming in the next (and last) two posts, I do think that Klein makes a compelling case that the institutional contribution to polarization relies in important ways on geographical sorting. And (with my limited imagination) it’s difficult for me to see the institutional stuff getting better if the direction and extent of geographical sorting continues as it has been.
Tom (32): Thanks! Just wanted to say that the firearm regulation element of this is something that’s been bugging me about what I wrote. After I drafted this but before I posted it, I started to think harder about how a state’s regulation of firearms interacts with any kind of moral reasons for geographic mixing we might have. No answers, just wanted to say that that’s a piece of this that I’m especially struggling with.
nastywoman 06.03.22 at 11:55 am
‘I’m not yet convince by any of the challenges raised that there’s no intrinsic reason to care about learning to live well in close proximity to people with very different politics’.
There was the Giro Italia going through Verona last weekend and besides that an Australian won there are all these young -(and very joyful funny Dutch) who all learned just in one day how to live well in close proximity to people with very different (Italian) politics’. BUT that’s the talent of ‘the Dutch’ – while some Americans here have a very tough time – especially if they confronted with Italians who laugh about them and mumble – ‘trumple’…
nastywoman 06.03.22 at 12:01 pm
and as somebody who always enjoyed to care about learning to live well in close proximity to people with very different politics’ -(even in Egypt where it can be quite challenging to be ‘female’) the best advice I can offer – NEVER talk with Americans about politics – or only if you are ‘very European’ and they excuse you by saying:
Oh you are sooo European!
appalachian diaspora 06.03.22 at 9:06 pm
if you cross a deep red state’s event horizon fox will gleefully run clips of you being crushed and re-emitted as useless heat
as an alternative, you could live in a purple state within walking distance of a red state border
then vote and pay taxes in the purple, be a campaign worker in the red
fwiw, i also register as a republican and vote for the moderate in the primary
bonus: they waste money sending me campaign literature and gotv workers in the general
Alex SL 06.03.22 at 10:14 pm
politicalfootball,
Or, I guess, more generally some political catastrophe that discredits extreme tribalism for the next generation.
Jonathan,
I haven’t done the stats on civil wars per century, but I find that unlikely. In the European middle ages there were, for example, lots of wars between states or fights between two dukes who both wanted to be king/emperor, but even the latter isn’t a civil war in the sense of a population polarised along class, ideological, or regional lines. Civil wars in the sense relevant to this post were so rare that history books discuss them in terms of e.g. “the” (one) time of peasant uprisings in Germany instead of, say, “the 4th civil war of the Holy Roman Empire”.
England, for example, had “the” (one) English Civil War between major ideological factions of society; everything else was nobles offing each other for the crown. France had the Huguenot wars and… maybe I am missing something, but that’s it? Even the 30 years war in Germany, although starting as a war between Catholic and Protestant nobles, was soon down to foreign powers using Germany as a chess board to renegotiate the balance of power in Europe.
Your suggestion for managing political polarisation seems counter-productive. If a faction with a legitimate grievance (e.g. grinding poverty as opposed to something ridiculous like “I hate how woke things have become”) is suppressed, they can only resort to violence to express themselves. That will only make the alienation worse. There is a reason why conflicts in the past were often managed by expanding the franchise, starting with giving the top nobles and then rich patricians a say on the king’s budget and finding its culmination so far with women and the working class. That gives people the feeling they are heard (whether true or not) and creates buy-in into the common project of the nation.
Michael Newsham 06.04.22 at 4:59 am
Somewhat OT
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservatives-frank-wilhoit.html
Fake Dave 06.04.22 at 5:50 am
I despise Whole Foods. It’s completely budget-breaking for me to shop in “natural” food stores like that and I have no use at all for the endless aisles of magic water, placebo supplements, and status symbol “super foods.” Even if I was a gluten intolerant vegan with a desperate kale addiction, I’m sure I could find other options and I would seek them out because I hate shopping there. Also it’s owned by a crooked oligarch who escaped from a Superman comic, but that’s actually not as big a deal to me as a consumer as whether I like shopping there. I try to pick the lesser evil among the big chains, but I’m not affluent enough to vote with my wallet and I’m not going to give up what little control I do have over where I live and how I spend my money to fulfill some neo-liberal fantasy of conscientious consumers healing the world and themselves by paying $10 for a bag of kale chips. My “identity” isn’t really relevant. It’s a class issue. They don’t have a lot of Cracker Barrels in California, but it sounds like my money would go a lot farther there and I do like biscuits and gravy, so why not?
Maybe if you’re Ezra Klein or his close personal friend Barrack Obama or someone else who’s living the yuppie dream with a good career in some eclectic high-income cosmopolis, then you really don’t see the distinction between shopping at the bougie specialty chain that only opens in “nice” neighborhoods and the big-portion diner by the highway. I’m a lifelong Democrat, socially liberal, and probably well to the left of most Whole Foods customers, but I don’t have a professional income or an advanced degree. Ideology and identity aren’t the reasons I don’t “choose” to live in a Manhattan townhouse (or buy a big house in the country, for that matter). David Brooks can write as many books as he wants, but Ive never made enough money to be bourgeois or been cool enough to qualify as bohemian. Most liberals, progressives, Democrats, and Leftists (all distinct political “poles” that are not interchangeable) aren’t yuppies or bobos either and maybe don’t even like those subcultures or share their values. Political “lifestyles” (liberal or otherwise) are an affluent affectation and seem to have more to do with aspirational status-chasing than real ideology. The Democratic party isn’t even particularly leftwing. Its biggest organizing pillars are traditional labor unions and the Black Church, not limousine liberals or campus radicals. If Democratic pundits looked more like Democratic voters (who overwhelmingly chose the two “working class” candidates over a diverse dream team of overeducated yuppies and bored rich people), we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Tm 06.04.22 at 9:43 am
41: “I’m not yet convince by any of the challenges raised that there’s no intrinsic reason to care about learning to live well in close proximity to people with very different politics.”
Is this supposed to be parody? Can one imagine a more individualized approach to addressing structural political problems? Liberal democracy in America is going down the drain and the answer is why can’t we all be nice to each other and eat more Cracker Barrel food.
J-D 06.04.22 at 10:14 am
It is grotesque to suppose that the merits of this issue can be meaningfully assessed at all at so high a level of abstraction. Without more specifics the question is meaningless.
At so high a level of abstraction, the expression ‘people with very different politics’ could conceivably include, among others, people with a deep political commitment to a doctrine that entailed that I, and people I love, and people like us, are vermin who should be driven out of the country or exterminated. If the Ezra Klein reaponse is ‘When I said “People with very different politics”, that’s not what I meant’, then I ask, ‘Well, in that case, what did he mean? Does he know?’
engels 06.04.22 at 11:07 am
Today, I suspect that my general orientation toward eating out is something like an identity, in the sense that it can be activated and threatened
Some evidence perhaps: the left-wing part of Twitter has been a furious bar fight for the last week because someone suggested that restaurants would not exist under communism.
J, not that one 06.04.22 at 2:26 pm
Gina Schouten @ 41
Thinking about my own local political commitments, I think I would support the idea that we should “care about learning to live well in close proximity to people with very different politics,” but I assume there are lots of people who have tried to do just that and maybe we should start with listening to them, even if our first response is that they haven’t yet successfully followed Klein’s prescriptions or that we feel they’re too in thrall to “identity” for us to like them.
mw 06.04.22 at 5:01 pm
Tom @32:
“Is geographical sorting then something to regret in its own right?” No, not for me. People underestimate how off the chart the US is in many regards, with some parts more off the chart than others. Widespread diffusion of firearms? Check. Widespread influence of organized religion on policy? Check. Off the chart obesity rates? Check. Widespread lack of health insurance? Check. And so on.
I think you’re overestimating — obesity rates in the U.S. are only marginally higher than Australia and Canada (U.S. adult rates at 36% vs 30% in the latter two). And the U.K. isn’t so far behind. Rising obesity rates are a global issue. Also, obesity rates in the U.S. are highest in subgroups that progressives count as part of their coalition (but now seem in some danger of losing) — namely African Americans and Hispanics. And I was under the impression that fat-shaming wasn’t really the thing any more.
What would be the examples of ‘widespread effects’ of organized religion on policy? (And, again, keep in mind that African Americans and Hispanics have high levels of religiosity — do you want to avoid living anywhere near them because they tend to be overweight and religious?
Widespread lack of health insurance? Does 9.6% (as of 2021) count as widespread? Yes, it’s quite a patchwork (Medicare for the elderly and disabled, Medicaid for the poor, subsidized Obama care for the lower-income non-poor, employer-provided coverage for most of the rest), but there is coverage available for those who want it.
Especially if you have a family, I think it is perfectly reasonable to try to find areas to live where weapons are more regulated, you can read about evolution in all schools, there is a bit more attention to better food, support for health insurance, etc.
But gun crime rates correlate poorly (actually probably negatively) with regulation. That is certainly the case for the ‘ordinary’ urban gun crime that accounts for the vast majority number of homicides, but it may also be true even for the rare mass shootings (Sandy Hook, CT, New York City, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, even Columbine — all left-leaning metros and states with stricter that average gun laws).
With respect to evolution, the Supreme Court ruled decades ago that teaching ‘Intelligent Design’ in public schools is unconstitutional. Of course various state legislators continue to introducing bills that would legalize ‘teaching the controversy’ that they know would be struck down if passed (for much the same reasons as Hillary Clinton once co-sponsored an anti-flag burning law in the Senate that she surely knew was unconstitutional). But as far as I know, there’s nowhere you could live in the U.S. where creationism is included in public school textbooks or curricula.
Reading between the lines, it seems to me that you find it more congenial to live in a place surrounded by people who share your interests, tastes and values. Well, fine — so do I. Our college town is a better cultural fit than an exurb or small town (even though I’m more liberal than leftist and roll my eyes at some of the crazy expensive schemes).
But I don’t think there’s really a need to justify the choice of where to live by exaggerating how scary and deeply ‘off the charts’ those religious, gun-toting, fatties out there in the hinterlands are. Especially since the combination of ‘religious’, ‘gun owning’, and ‘overweight’ is just as common among some key groups in the progressive coalition — they might get confused and take it personally.
I have the sense that some of my progressive acquaintances kind of enjoy the frisson of imagining ‘there be monsters out there’ out there in the conservative-leaning countryside. But there aren’t. Yeah, if they spent much time there, they’d probably feel culturally isolated and get bored with the dining and entertainment options and so on. But that’s about it. Let’s not go overboard and generate fear and polarization out of an overactive imagination.
For some reason, this topic makes me think of a couple of great SNL skits. They seem to embody a kind of bemused tolerance and fellow-feeling that we should be aspiring to.
We can have political disagreements (even sharp ones) without hating on each other and while recognizing our common humanity, can’t we?
byzantium 06.04.22 at 11:15 pm
Polarization as business model
In the US, our political system has for decades failed to address the increasing anxiety large numbers of Americans experience on economic issues. Economic insecurity in the context of high inequality is a fertile ground for anger.
And now the match: the business model of many media companies literally depends on making Americans hate each other. There are billions to be made activating the amygdalae. And media companies have vast amounts of data to develop behavior models and calibrate their content. The specifics of that hate are not at all important. It is possible to cast any side of any policy debate in such a way that it aligns with your advertisers needs and winds up the viewers enhancing “engagement”.
J-D 06.05.22 at 2:08 am
What would have been the argument ‘to care about learning to live well in close proximity to people with very different politics’ in the context of England in 1640, or France in 1789, or Mexico in 1910, or Russia in 1917, or Italy in 1922, or Brazil in 1930, or Germany in 1932, or Spain in 1936, or China in 1946, or Iran in 1979, or Myanmar at any time in the last sixty years?
nastywoman 06.06.22 at 8:57 am
@48 asked:
‘Is this supposed to be parody? Can one imagine a more individualized approach to addressing structural political problems? Liberal democracy in America is going down the drain and the answer is why can’t we all be nice to each other and eat more Cracker Barrel food’.
and @52 answered:
‘For some reason, this topic makes me think of a couple of great SNL skits. They seem to embody a kind of bemused tolerance and fellow-feeling that we should be aspiring to.
We can have political disagreements (even sharp ones) without hating on each other and while recognizing our common humanity, can’t we?
YES WE CAN!
nastywoman 06.06.22 at 9:07 am
and as my favourite ‘political’ TV program was finally cerdited here –
LET ME (MOI!)
say that much:
‘Why We’re Polarized’
is strictly and entirely a ‘White-Peoples-Problem’!
Right?
(that’s why I shouldn’t have even… blabbered in)
notGoodenough 06.07.22 at 6:26 am
Mw @ 52
“But gun crime rates correlate poorly (actually probably negatively) with regulation.”
Yet sadly you don’t seem to cite any sources for this – perhaps you should, so that we can see how you arrived at this conclusion?
“That is certainly the case for the ‘ordinary’ urban gun crime that accounts for the vast majority number of homicides,”
While data is difficult to reliably gather, at the time of writing the GVA [1] suggests that (with respect to reported deaths relating to homicide, murder, defensive gun use, and unintentional in 2022), there appear to have been 151 incidents in California (ca. 3.8 per million people), 190 in Texas (ca. 6.4 per million people), and 69 in Louisiana (ca. 14.79 per million people). This correlates with the trend seen in the CDC 2020 data [2], where the death rates per million people are 8.5 for California, 14.2 for Texas, and 26.3 for Louisiana. To the best of my knowledge, Louisiana has just a wee bit less gun regulation than California.
Of course, one must make caveats regarding collection, methodology, and interpretation (I by no means posit these numbers as definitive), but these initial results do seem to contradict your assertion. Again, it would be appreciated if you link to your data, so we may see where the discrepancy lies.
“but it may also be true even for the rare mass shootings (Sandy Hook, CT, New York City, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, even Columbine — all left-leaning metros and states with stricter that average gun laws).”
Odd that you forget to mention Sutherlands Springs, El Paso, Killeen, and Uvalde – well, there are so many, no doubt it is difficult to remember them all.
Again, I caveat with the usual warning about methodology and data, but (defining a “mass shooting” as one with > 4 victims) the data [1] suggests there have been 246 mass shootings in 2022, with 22 in California (giving a rate of ca. 0.56 per million people), 24 in Texas (giving a rate of ca. 0.81 per million people), and 16 in Louisiana (giving a rate of ca. 3.43 per million people).
Again, this does rather seem to contradict your hypothesis.
”I have the sense that some of my progressive acquaintances kind of enjoy the frisson of imagining ‘there be monsters out there’ out there in the conservative-leaning countryside.”
I wonder if you have the sense that your conservative acquaintances also have the feeling that “there be monsters” in more liberal/left leaning places (such as, picking an example purely at random, believing that liberal/left leaning places are more violent without evidence)?
Or is it that you think polarisation is monodirectional?
[1] https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm
Tom 06.08.22 at 1:31 am
mw @52. Thanks for your comment, it encapsulates the exact position I am arguing against. The fact that you self-identify as liberal reinforces my point. Let me address your points, with no hate, obviously, and recognizing our common humanity.
1) “What would be the examples of ‘widespread effects’ of organized religion on policy?” Let’s just take one egregious recent example: the challenge to Roe v. Wade in Mississippi. In the future, abortion rights will vary more and more by state, with some states defending them and others making it very hard to obtain an abortion. I want to live where abortion is available (not sure how race or ethnicity enter the picture here: if an African American or an Hispanic person are against abortion rights, then I disagree with them, as much as I disagree with the many Whites who hold the same position. I am replying to a post on CT, not building a political coalition).
2) “there is [health insurance] coverage available for those who want it.” There is a lot of churn in and out of coverage and so the snapshot coverage rates are misleading. If your wife is pregnant and you lose your job that provided family health insurance coverage, you may have to pay the very expensive COBRA premiums on your own to keep your doctor. If you are poor, you can fill out many forms and maybe get Medicaid (until you lose it because you do not qualify anymore). Also, many US states explicitly gave up free federal money that could have been used for Medicaid expansions. They probably think that you can get coverage if you want it. The US is one of the few countries in the world without universal healthcare.
3) Not sure why you are comparing the US obesity rate (36%) to the few other big countries with widespread (though still lower) obesity, rather than to, say, Germany (22%) or Ireland (25%). There is also variation within the US, and some variation within each state. This is a health issue, fat-shaming is useless, and, yes, this perverse system affects certain groups more than others. We should devote more policy attention to it (Michelle Obama had started some work on this). But in the meantime I find it reasonable if parents try to live in areas where daycares devote more time to outdoor play and where deep-fried Oreos are not that common.
4) I have a different recollection about the literature on the effect of gun control laws but my point is not just about the gun regulations, it is also about the gun culture. I don’t want my family to live in a place where there is a culture of guns or there are unregulated gun fairs where it is normal to just go and buy a gun. In terms of gun ownership, the US stands out by order of magnitudes relative to other countries (since you like to keep track of these statistics, let me add that gun ownership is much higher for Whites than for other racial or ethnic groups).
In the US all of the above is sorting by income, not by ideology. It is not only liberal and progressives that live in Whole Foods areas (btw, I never go to WF, too expensive). Rich republicans live in the single-house suburbs too. I believe this sorting by income is disastrous for the country but, as I said, it can only be changed with policies and not personal choices.
Finally “reading between the lines, it seems to me that you find it more congenial to live in a place surrounded by people who share your interests, tastes and values”. Thank you for kindly sharing your insights into my personality. But I never said that I like this arrangement, so to speak, as I actually don’t. Other than that, I have a hard time answering personal comments like these – especially on an anonymous forum – as I am not sure what would convince you of the opposite (maybe I will do a Census of my friends’ BMI and religious attitudes and report back).
TM 06.14.22 at 7:43 am
47: “They don’t have a lot of Cracker Barrels in California, but it sounds like my money would go a lot farther there and I do like biscuits and gravy, so why not?”
I can assure you that Cracker Barrel is not a low budget alternative to Whole Foods, or to any grocery chain, because it doesn’t sell groceries, and as a restaurant it’s not cheap. I don’t personally have a strong opinion of Whole Foods but I would point out that you don’t have to buy the expensive processed foods (like your example of kale chips) that these chains generate much of their profit from. If you buy eggs, yogurt, rice, lentils and fresh vegetables at Whole Foods, it will be a bit more expensive than at Walmart but it will be far far less expensive than for example regularly eating at reputedly cheap and “non-elitist” joints like McDonald’s.
Fake Dave claims that shopping isn’t about identity but he consciously makes his hate for Whole Foods part of his identity. What a waste of energy.
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