Why Are We So Politically Divided?
Wide interest in our political divide is sweeping across our political landscape. Dr. Tim Anderson explores the divide in game theory terms. He notes the differences between the left and right. The right is focused while the left is disparate. The divide pervades almost every aspect of our cultural life, climate change, Covid-19 vaccinations and masks, women’s rights to choose, food choices — meat vs vegan, craft beers vs Budweiser — urban vs rural, evangelical Christianity vs secular humanism.
The Atlantic weighs in that the divide threatens our foreign policy.
I expand on the consequences of the political/religious divide here.
On CNN Fareed Zakaria proposed it’s due to the secularization of America.
All of this highlights a new reality: you cannot really understand America any more by looking at averages. It has become two countries. One is urban, more educated, multiracial, secular, and largely left of center; the other rural, less educated, religious, white, and largely right of center.
Dr. Anderson has the opportunity to delineate the cause, but instead falls off the trail saying it is something worsening the divide, rather than being the cause of it.
Technological changes may also bring about political reform but so far is making it worse. Social media for a while seemed like it might stop the polarization trend by forcing people to be exposed to differing views. Then it was found that social media seemed to be increasing polarization, and the theory was that it allowed people to join “echo chambers” where only like minded people expressed their views. But increasingly, scientists have found that it is the opposite. As people are exposed to differing views on Twitter, they become more entrenched in their own views, but only Republicans are affected:
[S]tudies … observe asymmetric polarization in roll call voting wherein Republicans have become substantially more conservative whereas Democrats exhibit little or no increase in liberal voting positions.
Thus, it seems that social media may be poisoning the political well, at least for Republicans. Thanks Big Tech.
He misses the cause for effect. Big Tech is not just aggravating the divide, but is actually the cause of it to begin with. The Tech Revolution, PC computers, smart phones, social media…some have embraced it, and some haven’t. Those embracing it, young people in Universities the engines of the new Tech Revolution, Hollywood where it is expressed in movies and television, companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, even where we get our latte’s, Starbucks, in the urban cities where literature and art are fermented.
Those not embracing the Tech Revolution are left behind, the rural parts of our country, desperately seeking traditional values, Evangelical nationalism, flag-waving patriotism, women and children submitting to their husbands and fathers, skeptical of science and government, susceptible to conspiracies denying climate change, Covid-19 vaccinations and masks.
The forces causing this divide are not diminishing, but are getting stronger.
This isn’t the first time something like has happened. In the 17th Century England, with the emergence of the Capitalism, something like the Tech Revolution, produced a similar social divide, those that embraced the change versus those left behind.
In 17th Century England, those left behind were the Royalty, much like our conservative Oligarchs, the Koch Brothers, Elon Musk, the Peers, like DeSantis, Donald Trump, Abbot, struggling against the progressive tide. And the Anglican Church and their adherents, the peasants in the pews depending on its largesse, like the Evangelicals today.
Those embracing the future then, were the bourgeoisie with the burgeoning wealth from manufacturing, new raw materials, cotton, sugar from the New World, and the newly industrialized agriculture, and the Puritans over the Anglicans.
The political and religious divide did not go away. In 1640 the King lost his head. Emerging Capitalism won out. Oliver Cromwell, was chosen to lead the nation until a new Royal line was established. The reactionary Anglican religion lost to the Puritans.
An exploration of the religious issues could be useful, especially because religion is an important aspect of the current divide. The 17th Century religious divide was between the Anglicans and the Puritans. The Anglican Church was a central part of the life of the English peasants supporting the traditional economic and political system maintained by the Royalty. An essential part of that were the Anglican rituals, the Mass every Sunday, the Eucharist, the weekly homily. The Puritans, on the other hand, eschewed ceremony, emphasized everyone’s being able to develop their own relationship with their Creator. Their disdain of Anglicanism, it’s rituals, the authoritarianism of the clergy over the flock, was deep.
Today we are looking at the Evangelicals versus the large swath of humanists, people espousing the spiritual, atheists, agnostics, the no religious affiliations, that are those embracing the new reality. The divide here is interestingly similar. In the 17th Century England it was the traditionalist Anglican Church with its ritual devotions to tradition, followers subject to the authority of their priests and bishops versus the Puritans who declared that everyone establishes their own relationship with Jesus. I believe the same forces are operating today, the authoritarian relationship versus the freedom to decide for oneself what to believe.
If what is happening today is anything like what happened five centuries ago in England, the resolution will be something extreme, maybe even violent. Then, those embracing the changes won, but I’m not so optimistic about now. The reactionary traditionalists are more fervent. They are willing to exercise undemocratic methods to gain an advantage, voter suppression, gerrymandering to acquire control of Congress despite their being a minority, manipulation to seize control of the Supreme Court. As Dr. Anderson points out, they are far more focused. Those embracing the Tech revolution are unfocused, unaware of the danger to their Tech way of life.
A new kind of reactionary force is available to those left behind that wasn’t available in the 17th Century, Fascism. They can use the new media for their own purposes, the marginalization of out groups, forcing women back into the kitchen by overturning Roe v. Wade, forcing the LGBTQ+ back into the closet, broadcasting the fear among white people of their replacement by Black and brown people, of anti-intellectualism creating fear of a University education. They espouse a mythic past, cleansed of all the genocide of the Indigenous, of slavery, Jim Crow. Deviants who kneel during the Anthem are cast out. White nationalism is encouraged because it feeds a mounting rage among their base to overthrow the Tech Revolution.
Where are we now? My own estimation is that the reactionary forces are greater than the unfocused progressive forces. We may be looking at an authoritarian government, a Handmaids Tale, a Christian Taliban. Progressives may need to be thinking, like the Jews in 1930 Germany, of where to find a new place to live.
