Political polarization - causes, remedies, current state

[Grinkle]

But one nagging thought I have about all this, is that there are many Trump voters who know Trump lied about voter fraud and just wanted to ignore the election and keep the presidency and they are OK with it.

For what its worth, this is how things look to me from the inside of all this mess. After I wrote this, it seemed so aimless to me that I debated whether to even post it. Anyway, FWIW.

The US is extremely politically polarized. Many Democrats I know do not at all engage in critical thinking and reflexively want Democrats in power. Polarization is bad, and it requires both sides to be entrenched in order to take root.

IMO, Trump takes many bad things one can do in office to a new level - I am not arguing there is equivalency of scope or impact between the Trump administration and the modern day Democratic party.

That said, there is plenty to criticize on the Democrat side with regards to wanting policy that protects their own power - Democrats are as willing to gerrymander as Republicans are, for instance. It was Democratic congressional leaders who seriously discussed the idea of packing the (Supreme) court in order to re-install a liberal bias in the SCOTUS, as another example. Many in the Biden inner circle imo deliberately and knowingly downplayed the effects of aging on President Biden motivated mainly by a desire to be around for a second term. I heard Xi said of the 2024 election that Americans had to choose between 'two cups of poison' when it was Biden vs Trump - Trump poison is worse, but I agree with Xi's sentiment.

Trump is a natural at keeping folks away from critical thinking. He keeps his left leaning opponents so full of hatred that they have little or no desire to speak with anyone who supports Trump - this helps keep people polarized as much as the news media, imo.

Trump can leave people the conviction that everyone is bad, lets have a bad person with policies we like in office. He may be a bastard, but he's OUR bastard.

I am much more dissapointed when I find a never-Trump person who refuses to even engage in a policy discussion (because they only talk about how much they despise Trump and view any other topic with suspicion that I might be trying to trap them into saying they agree with some Trump policy or other) than I am when I find a MAGA person who says they have doubts about who won the 2020 election, honestly. And I find both. I guess I just don't expect much more from the MAGA person. I've always thought left leaning people are more thoughtful in general, I no longer believe that to be the case. Its as hard for me to find someone on the left that I consider thoughtful as it is for me to find someone on the right.

 

[MindlessPieces]

For what its worth, this is how things look to me from the inside of all this mess. After I wrote this, it seemed so aimless to me that I debated whether to even post it. Anyway, FWIW.

I am very glad you decided to post this. I find it very interesting.
My view of USA is via media as I don't live there or anywhere near there.

The US is extremely politically polarized. Many Democrats I know

As an outsider, I don't like that your people register as Democrats, Republicans and Independants.
I know people register so they can vote in the primary elections, but by my thinking, if you are registered as a Democrat, do you then start to associate with that party? Feel like a member? and then what chance to you have to change your vote come the proper election? And then as a registered Democrat, do you feel the urge to take on the Democrat policies as your own? Do you then feel you must be pro trans, pro gay, pro gun control, pro progressive taxes, pro healthcare like what the Dems are promoting?....

Anyway, in my country people don't associate as a Nationalite or a Laborist. We are just people, and when the election comes up we vote however we see fit at the time. We are voting for parties that aren't us. Sure there are some people that have always voted National and wouldn't consider voting Labour but they don't call themselves "Nationalites" or whatever the word would be. They are just voters, in this way everyone is independant.

But also I don't get why in USA you guys feel the need to vote for the party's presidential candidate. And then come national election day, you vote for the President rather than the party.

In NZ we vote for the party, not the party leader. It's a British parliamentary system we have. And this way if the party find themselves in a position where they don't like, or don't trust their leader, even if their leader is the Prime Minister then the party can always have an internal No Confidence vote and remove the leader from their party. With this type of system the party can protect itself from a rogue leader and just vote them out.

With USA you have the impeachment process which needs both parties to agree, and needs the pretense of high crimes and misdameanors. And if both the President and VP have done corrupt things then the leader becomes the speaker of the house which could be a person that belongs to the other party. This is just nutz.

Many Democrats I know do not at all engage in critical thinking and reflexively want Democrats in power. Polarization is bad, and it requires both sides to be entrenched in order to take root.

I'm not there so I don't really know. But I feel USA Democrats are more normal. Would probably fit in, in any other non USA democratic country. I seriously doubt Democrats would support their own Democrat president if they found out the guy was trying to instigate an insurrection or cheat at an election, or had been found liable for rape.
Sure the Democrats voted against impeachment and removal of Clinton, but Clinton didn't rape anyone or commit sexual assault, he simply cheated on his wife and lied about it.
Now I'm not about to defend all Democrats or the Democrat party on everything, I have no affiliation to the Democrat party, but they seem reasonable.

But in saying that, RFK Jr is absolutely nutz and he was a Democrat. So there must be others like him in that party, but I don't hear about them.

BTW most of these USA culture wars are non events in NZ. We would never have a major political party campaigning on Anti gay, anti Trans, on abortion, on gun control.

That said, there is plenty to criticize on the Democrat side with regards to wanting policy that protects their own power - Democrats are as willing to gerrymander as Republicans are, for instance.

Gerrymandering is a terrible thing. Voting public should punish anyone that participates in extreme gerrymandering regardless whether you like that party and the policies. You first need to have integrity in your elections above all else.

It was Democratic congressional leaders who seriously discussed the idea of packing the (Supreme) court in order to re-install a liberal bias in the SCOTUS, as another example.

The Republicans had already packed the court with young far right judges, not just the Supreme Court but also the lower courts. Clarence Thomas is totally corrupt and shouldn't be in the Supreme Court. Alito seems corrupt also. Kavanaugh seems to have committed serious sexual assaults which the Republican FBI refused to investigate. And Mitch McConnell blocked the vote on Garland for almost a year which was disgusting. I can see why the Dems felt cheated and wanted to take measures to fight back. If I were a conservative and loved the conservative policies etc I still would have voted against the Republicans for that stunt alone.

The problem as I see it with USA is that your voters are willing to ignore these shenanigans and just for for your own party regardless. At some point you need to let these politicians know that this won't be tolerated otherwise they will keep doing it.

Many in the Biden inner circle imo deliberately and knowingly downplayed the effects of aging on President Biden motivated mainly by a desire to be around for a second term. I heard Xi said of the 2024 election that Americans had to choose between 'two cups of poison' when it was Biden vs Trump - Trump poison is worse, but I agree with Xi's sentiment.

Biden even at his age is way better than Trump. Way more honest, more ethical, more clued in.
But in saying that he was way too old, he never should have run for 2024. Kamala was given not enough time to campaign properly.
The right wing media did a great job of smearing Biden. calling him in mental decline. He was nowhere near as bad as they made out. There was no handshake to noone, it was all nonsense, but people fell for it.
The political debate was a disaster, Biden obviously had a cold and was breathing through his mouth which looked bad, like an old person in decline. He also wasn't sharp. That was a very bad performance. However his State of the Union address was the best I've ever seen from anybody. But people focussed on his one bad performance because it confirmed all the rumours the right wing media was spreading.

Trump is a natural at keeping folks away from critical thinking.

It's not just him. It's the whole right wing media thing. Tucker Carlson, Hannity, Piro, Ingraham, Alex Jones, etc, they dress their shows up to be "News" but its not, its propoganda and commentary.
And their viewers just watch that nonsense, they don't seem to watch real news, nor do they consider the news from the other side. They don't try to verify the news they are getting. I don't see any difference between Fox News vs State run Russian "News" shows.
USA has a real problem in getting their people informed of what is actually happening.

On the left you have Rachel Maddow, she is honest and journalistic, but unfortunately she is left leaning and not neutral, she selects to say bad things about Republicans and good things about Democrats. It would be better if she would investigate both sides equally.

He keeps his left leaning opponents so full of hatred that they have little or no desire to speak with anyone who supports Trump - this helps keep people polarized as much as the news media, imo.

I don't think it is about hate of Trump. I think it is about fear of Trump doing illegal and unethical things, of him taking over the DOJ, of him extorting lawyers, extorting universities, extorting media companies, corrupting elections and public perception of elections. There is alot to be worried about there.

I am much more dissapointed when I find a never-Trump person who refuses to even engage in a policy discussion (because they only talk about how much they despise Trump and view any other topic with suspicion that I might be trying to trap them into saying they agree with some Trump policy or other)

I do think, with the level of unethical things, in the destroying of public trust in elections and justice system, etc that Trump engages in, that policies are irrelevant now in USA.
Even if I liked all the Republican policies, I would never vote for a president that did such a huge campaign on getting the public not to trust elections, that tried so hard to get election officials to throw out the votes and just declare the Republicans the winners.

Regardless of policies I don't think anyone who values democracy and wants elections, I don't think any of these people should be voting for Trump.

So I agree with the people you are disappointed in. It would seem odd to me to argue about the benefits of Trickle down economics or tarrifs if the guy looking to get that vote had tried to steal the election, had tried to instigate an insurrection.
There is no usefulness in debating over what colour the table cloth should be, when the house is on fire.

 

[Grinkle]

I am opening this thread in the Global forum because I think political polarization is an issue for democracies everywhere, not just in the US. I am moving a couple posts from @MindlessPieces and myself to this thread both to continue that discussion without highjacking the other thread and to hopefully pull others into the discussion. I hope we can discuss all of the aspects in the title.

 

[Grinkle]

As an outsider, I don't like that your people register as Democrats, Republicans and Independants.

This is determined state-by-state. In Texas, one simply registers - there is no party affiliation and one can vote in either the Democrat or Republican primary election. One decides when one votes - one requests one ballot or the other. It is necessary to record which ballot one took, in case of a run-off, so its not anonymous, but one is free to do the opposite in the next primary election, there is no party commitment involved in this choice. The primary election is where the party selects which candidate they want to compete in the general election, fyi.

I also don't like registering to vote with a party affiliation, for all the reasons you mention and it discourages, imo, people who don't identify with either party from even participating. It is surely a system that encourages polarization.

The Republicans had already packed the court

The term "packing the court" refers to the hypothetical process of passing a law increasing the number of SCOTUS judges from 9 to some other number and then filling those new vacancies with judges who's political leanings one likes. Whatever non-democratic things McConnell did during the last 18 months of Obama's 2nd term, it wasn't that - that was a Dem battle-cry and if really carried out would be disastrous for the SCOTUS. Tying it to the topic of this thread, its an idea so destructive and outlandish it can only be talked about in an environment of extreme polarization, where people are mostly not critically thinking but instead reacting emotionally and willing to support anything that sounds like it would hurt the other side, not matter what it does to the system itself.

I don't think it is about hate of Trump. I think it is about fear of Trump doing illegal and unethical things, of him taking over the DOJ, of him extorting lawyers, extorting universities, extorting media companies, corrupting elections and public perception of elections.

Its not an either / or, it can be and is often is all of the above, and the hate, in my experience, colors the ability to think about issues in a way that enables discussion with people who disagree with you. It really benefits Trump when people who are never going to vote for him also hate him, because that isolates his supporters from people who might have some influence over them if they were still on speaking terms.

Even if I liked all the Republican policies, I would never vote for a president that did such a huge campaign on getting the public not to trust elections, that tried so hard to get election officials to throw out the votes and just declare the Republicans the winners.

Me as well.

There is no usefulness in debating over what colour the table cloth should be, when the house is on fire.

I view the death of debate/dialogue/communication or whatever one wants to call it between those who disagree as the fundamental fire in the house - if we are at the point where debate is useless, then we are lost, imo.

 

[fresh_42]

I observed the same here, but I am thinking of whether this was new. Divide and conquer is quite old. So maybe, it all breaks down on 'divide', and we only lost tolerance and a functioning debating culture. It would be easy to blame social media, but they certainly provide a much bigger lever than we had before.

I think such divisions always happened when people thought that it could not go on like this anymore, whatever the it is for people. And fascism wasn't acceptable for a long time. Now it returns in many countries. 'America first' is nothing less than a fascistoid division into us versus them. We hear the same tunes in many European nations, too. Them may vary, but the fascist propaganda is the same.

 

[MindlessPieces]

I view the death of debate/dialogue/communication or whatever one wants to call it between those who disagree as the fundamental fire in the house - if we are at the point where debate is useless, then we are lost, imo.

Oh, I think people should be able to discuss politics cordially. People should be talking with each other, should be debating stuff.

But when it comes to being on the fence, deciding whether to vote for Trump or the other party, to me all Conservatives that value a functioning and stable society, an ongoing democracy, they should be voting against Trump.

Online, I find that trying to debate against USA conservatives is very difficult, they seem to come across as very trollish, they see you as the enemy and don't seem to want to engage in a considered way, they don't listen nor do they try to understand your points or point of view.

It is rare that they want to discuss economics, it seems many are just into the Culture War issues, and even then they get the Democrats side of that all wrong.

Some of them come across extremely racist when discussing immigration issues. I know it's a difficult topic not to sound racist on, especially if you are for stopping them coming into the country, and especially if you listen to lots of FoxNews and certain right wing personalities.
Once I was talking to someone about the Hatians, I was saying that they weren't eating people's cats and dogs. He said, well, those Haitians, they aren't like you and me. I found this to be extremely racist statement, but I didn't call him that as I wanted to keep the conversation going.

I think there is an aspect on the USA right were a lot of White Christians are afraid that the cultural identity of USA will change. They claim to be patriotic, and I think a large part of their patriotism is based on their perceived identity of USA. They want USA's identity to be aligned with their own identity. They don't want a melting pot, they don't like diversity, if foreigners come in, they want them in small numbers and they want them to assimilate. They fear a changing face of America and so they are very fearful of immigration, especially when those people coming in aren't white or aren't Christian. ESPECIALLY if they aren't white.
They would vote against this "brown invasion" and would be willing to compromise on almost everything else to "save" America's identity. I think the dog whistle of "Liberals HATE America" is about Liberals allowing brown people to come in, in large numbers and change America's identity.

 

[MindlessPieces]

I am opening this thread in the Global forum because I think political polarization is an issue for democracies everywhere, not just in the US. I am moving a couple posts from @MindlessPieces and myself to this thread both to continue that discussion without highjacking the other thread and to hopefully pull others into the discussion. I hope we can discuss all of the aspects in the title.

Yeah, I'd be interested to know if other democratic countries are experiencing this polarisation. Are people associating with political parties, are they wearing political merch, are they distrusting people from the other side, are they starting to distrust government, distrust elections, distrust courts, distrust the media? Are things falling apart? Are people wanting to fight rather than vote?

 

[MindlessPieces]

The term "packing the court" refers to the hypothetical process of passing a law increasing the number of SCOTUS judges from 9 to some other number and then filling those new vacancies with judges who's political leanings one likes.

I would call that Expanding the Court, followed by packing the court.


Both parties are always trying to pack the court. It goes to show that one can predict which way a judge will generally rule based on that judge's political leanings. Unfortunately judges political leanings should be irrelevant, but it doesn't seem to be.

The Republicans went to extreme measures blocking Garland for almost a year, to the detriment of the country and to the detriment of ethics. It was disgraceful behaviour and for me would have been enough for me not to vote for them even if I liked that party and all their policies.

The idea some Dems had, including Biden of expanding the court did seem to be retaliatory to get back in kind against what the Republicans did. Biden mentioned that they were working through this idea, but did not commit to actually doing it. I think it is good that they decided not to do it.

When the Republicans were in office, they prioritised on young and strongly right leaning justices, they didn't care about experience or qualifications. They had the votes >50% to get through anyone they wanted, and they got a lot of garbage through. There were many very embarrassing nominations going through the confirmation process.

What the really bad thing is about the USA justice system is that many of these Justices get a lifetime appointment and the Supreme Court Justices don't seem to have any ethical rules on them. It seems that taking bribes is OK.
In my view it is to USA's great shame that Clarence Thomas, Alito and Cannon are still sitting justices. They are completely corrupt.

Whatever non-democratic things McConnell did during the last 18 months of Obama's 2nd term, it wasn't that - that was a Dem battle-cry and if really carried out would be disastrous for the SCOTUS. Tying it to the topic of this thread, its an idea so destructive and outlandish it can only be talked about in an environment of extreme polarization, where people are mostly not critically thinking but instead reacting emotionally and willing to support anything that sounds like it would hurt the other side, not matter what it does to the system itself.

I agree it is good the Dems didn't do it, otherwise what would happen when the Repubs get into office, they would expand it again and pack it with far right justices. The supreme court is a real problem in USA. It is corrupt.

But what the Republicans did was really, really disgusting too. I don't see the Dems idea as worse than what the Repubs actually did.

There are lots of talk about lots of ideas that both parties think about, many of these ideas are total rubbish. The idea of defunding the police was nonsense also. But really it comes down to what the parties actually do or actually try to do, rather than ideas that they are thinking about. Often people think about thinks and then after thought they think the better of doing that.

I also think the Dems were under great pressure and are under great pressure by the public. The Repubs seem to be able to do anything, they don't seem to be constrained by legal or ethical rules, their base don't care about ethics, they just want to win at all costs. But that doesn't apply to the Dems, the Dems seem to have to follow the rules otherwise their base won't vote for them.
But then the Dems base is angry at the Dems because they are being steamrolled by the Repubs and don't seem to have a come back. They are appearing weak. But if they try something, try to fight back, they get hammered by their base who say that is unethical or undemocratic. They can't win either way. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Back in the 1970s when I was first old enough to vote in the UK, the differences between parties seemed like a matter of personal choice based on subjective weighting of the importance of different factors. The main problem then as now is the "first past the post" voting system, which was supported by the main two parties because it was to their advantage, but appeared to result in gradual polarization of policies to the opposite of whatever the other party supported, even if a middle line would be best. I have always voted for the third party that is now called the Liberal Democrats simply because one of their primary policies is some form of proportional representation, and they also generally supported more "common sense" balanced ideas. There have been some moves here by the main two parties back towards a more central approach, especially by Tony Blair's Labour government from 1997-2007, but it seems that in response the Conservatives moved even more to the right.

Now it seems that not only here but in much of the rest of the world the rapid and extreme amplification by social media of every possible criticism is now making politics a constant battle of extreme negatives and polarization.

Humans naturally divide everyone into "us" and "them". Christians have long recognised (as in the parable of the Good Samaritan) that we need to extend our concept of "us". Astronauts talk about the "overview effect" when they get to see the whole planet as home. We need to focus on what we have in common, not on our differences.

It seems that what is needed is a way to extend "us" to include everyone who is in some sense well-behaved (acting for the greater good, or at least not acting against it) plus ways to motivate those who are not well-behaved in that sense to become more so.

The carrot is much more likely to succeed than the stick, as positive actions help to create balance and stability, plus the trust needed to improve trade and other dependencies, leading to more links and fewer barriers.

The extreme cases around the world which lead to violence all seem to follow a common pattern.

When life is difficult because of (real or perceived) shortages of basic needs, then it is clear that humans will react defensively, classifying their competition for resources as "them" and acting only in the interests of their own community, including resorting to criminality and violence. No amount of punishment will cure their need to defend themselves, and it will only add to their determination. In such cases, the logical solution is to remove the source of their grievances by providing them with what they need in exchange for agreements to move towards being more well-behaved. And to expedite the process I would not want the initial provision to be conditional on anything immediate, but only subject to review depending on progress from the other side.

There are obviously some very difficult situations, such as where different people want the same piece of land, but what they want can often be modified by giving them something else in exchange.

This sort of process is obviously made more difficult by the huge existing inequalities around the world, made more visible by online media. Everyone wants more, and they will always be able to find some case where it someone is apparently getting a better deal than they are. Of course advertising within capitalist societies is adding to this pressure. It should certainly be very hard to justify owning a totally disproportionate share of the world's resources, and people who do so should be required to be highly responsible in the way they use their wealth, or should be expected via taxation and similar to share it out.

I don't know how to make good things happen. But from how humans work, it needs to be based on the carrot approach. End of sermon!

 

[Grinkle]

Yeah, I'd be interested to know if other democratic countries are experiencing this polarisation. Are people associating with political parties, are they wearing political merch, are they distrusting people from the other side, are they starting to distrust government, distrust elections, distrust courts, distrust the media? Are things falling apart? Are people wanting to fight rather than vote?

I am trying to come up with a list of symptoms we can use to define polarization - I'll start with your list and give my assessment of R / D symptoms here in the US. I modified a little.

Just for fun, I'll score both R and D 1 to 10 on each category. 1 is too little to notice, 10 is expect this from essentially everyone. I'll also hazard a score for self identified Independents, although there is no such party, its mostly people who don't want to identify as either R or D.

	Symptom	R	D	I	Comment
1	Are people associating with political parties?	7	3	2	Some self identified independents will still say "I lean R or I lean D and do identify with the parties to a degree.
2	Are they wearing political merch?	7	3	2	Most of what I see is MAGA merch
3	Arey they starting to distrust the government?	7	6	9	I think independents are very disillusioned - I am including lost-faith in effectiveness as a kind of distrust here.
4	Are they distrustful of any government institution currently under the control of the opposition party?	10	10	9
5	Distrust elections?	7	2	2
6	Distrust courts?	7	7	5	Very few R's or D's trust that decisions going against their party are being made in good faith as opposed to politically motivated
7	Distrust local news media?	2	2	2	Local news is still mainly neutral and mostly trusted
8	Distrust the other sides national media?	8	8	5
9	Trust their own sides national media?	7	7	9	By independent media for the 9 rating I mean how much independents trust genuinel centrist media - I think there is still a great deal of trust there, for example, with Allsides I think anyone who reads that is trusting what they read
10	Do they believe things are falling apart?	6	10	8
11	Are people wanting to fight rather than vote?	8	10	5	By fight, I mean complain, be discontent, be hostile, be bitter - not necessarily be violent. By the word "rather", I mean get more satisfaction from, I don't mean do one or the other. People do both. Maybe we can work on this symptom's wording a bit? If I were answering this question during the Biden administration, I'd reverse the R and D scores.

Edit: I replaced the text list with a table that is at least somewhat readable.

 

[Jonathan Scott]

Today's Washington Post has an article on the background to the increasing polarization in the US:

"In 1990, a bipartisan Congress passed historic bills. Then it cracked apart."​

https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...-congress-bush-trump-immigration-environment/