Book Review: “Uncivil Agreement”
Our book, We: Declare Our Interdependence, included a chapter on how the two-party system (or duopoly) contributes to our extreme divisions. The political scenario in the United States has been rapidly degenerating.
“Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity” by Lilliana Mason (published in 2018) references Trump’s take-over of the former Republican party. However, when the book was published there was still room to doubt that his take-over of the Republican Party would last.
After Trump lost the 2020 election and after the insurrection of January 6, 2021, Trump’s intentional efforts to divide Americans by any means, including violence, led us to a very frightening election season in 2024. Although Lillian Mason’s book is slightly dated, it still provides an academically rigorous examination and analysis of our increasing “us versus” them political climate. We recommend the book to anyone interested in increasing their understanding of how we got to the extreme divisions we face in 2024.
The book begins by describing The Robbers Cave experiment conducted with two groups of fifth-grade boys in 1954. The groups were as nearly identical as possible: white, Protestant, and middle-class. At the beginning of the three-week summer camp, the boys were separated into two teams, the Eagles and the Rattlers. The teams were kept separate for the first week. Even before they had met the other group, the boys began referring to the others as “outsiders” and “intruders.”
Their first interaction was at a baseball tournament (with just their two teams). By the second day of their interaction, both teams were regularly name-calling the other team. By the end of the second week, the boys had formed two nearly warring tribes. By the end of the three-week camp, the animosities had negatively affected the boy’s abilities to judge objective reality.
The Robbers Cave experiment was one of the first to explore the effects of group membership and intergroup conflict. This seventy-year-old experiment plays out in 2024 and is visible in our current political conflicts. The two dominant political parties engage in stereotyping, prejudice, and fear-mongering. Politics is no longer about policy outcomes or the common good (the kitchen table needs of the majority). Although the major media outlets and political pundits try to predict elections based on what issues should matter most to average voters, these “issues” do not have much influence on voters.
Mason outlines two types of political polarization: social polarization, and issue-based polarization. Social polarization refers to increased partisan conflict, emotional reactivity, and activism. Social/Political polarization and the demonization of the “other” party discourage compromise and encourage conflict. Between 2018 and 2024, the conflict has moved from verbal to actual physical violence, including politically motivated mass shootings.
Those of us who are committed nonpartisans must be less susceptible to social polarization than Republican or Democratic party loyalists. Reading “Uncivil Agreement” through our lens of interdependence, we found almost no reference to the millions of US voters who do not submit to the pressures of the two dominant parties. Millions of voters reluctantly vote for the lesser of two evils and are increasingly disgusted by our political divisions. One of the studies cited in the book included individuals who reported no allegiance to either party in an election survey as members of the party they reported leaning toward. This flawed study concluded that 86% of voters are partisan.
Mason has done an excellent job reporting on political surveys completed over seven decades. Clearly, we have become much more polarized primarily because of social polarization. Our issue-based divisions have taken a back seat. People consistently vote against their interests to support their chosen political party. Political advertising increasingly demonizes the opponents (character) rather than promoting issues the candidate supports. Candidates no longer feel they have to declare their position on issues that are very important to the majority.
“Uncivil Agreement” provides a historical overview of American political divisions, tracing the issue back to President George Washington. George Washington warned the new nation about partisan politics, calling the threat of extreme partisanship “a frightful despotism.” He noted a natural inclination towards factionalism and warned that it could cause citizens to consider each other enemies.
One of the book’s key points is that anger and enthusiasm are the primary emotional drivers of political action, and they are NOT drivers of thoughtful information processing. Identity-based influences (us versus them) evoke prejudice, offensive action, and anger. Issue positions do not follow identity politics.
Uncivil Agreement is a valuable analysis of our deeply divided nation, how we got here, and why our divisions threaten our future. However, it nearly ignores independent voters or swing voters. The book also completely ignores the influence of billionaires, dark money, and the lengthy human history where the wealthiest 1% use their power to pit the masses of people in an ancient strategy of “divide and conquer.” We know the mega-billionaire “plutocrats” are funding our social polarization. They control social media, mainstream media, and other sources of propaganda used to fuel our divisions and incite fear, hatred, and violence.
We conclude our review of “Uncivil Agreement” with two quotes from the author.
“While activism is generally a desirable element of a functioning democracy, blind activism is not. These results demonstrate that American partisans are working hard to participate in politics, but the ones who are most active tend to be those who cannot be convinced to change their minds.”
“The proportion of the electorate that has the best chance of remaining calm in the face of political conflict is shrinking. Candidates and campaigns that intentionally engage in social polarization (us versus them politics) are not even interested in finding common ground on policies. As long as a social divide is maintained between the parties, the electorate will behave more like a pair of warring tribes than like the people of a single nation, caring for their shared future.”
If you share our concern about our social polarization, and the threats we face related to the 2024 election, please follow Unity Prophet, and the publication “We: Declare Our Interdependence.”
We are currently accepting submissions for the publication.
