“The very existence of a two-party system of government is designed to create duality, separation, and thus, opposition. Those truly in power have used the age-old, ever-successful method of pinning the public against each other in order to create a cloud of dust around the decisions truly being made and their effects on the public.
Imagine a potion being concocted by the wealthy corporate and political elites. There are a number of ingredients tactical to both maintain their power and build their wealth. It all revolves around domesticating and brainwashing the public into believing and acting against their own best interests, and done so under the guise of democracy and freedom. Here are some of those ingredients:
Fear. Both parties add a dollop of fear, though the Republican party is especially tactical in their usage. Right now, right wing media is filled with rhetoric around an ‘unrecognizable America’ if Biden wins the election, a scheme by Democrats to take our liberties away, etc. Generally unfounded on evidence, this fear-mongering rhetoric leads to irrational views and actions by the people in its wake.
Beyond just the media, fear is a natural reaction to change. Amidst one of the greatest eras of transformation in the world’s history, naturally a large percentage of the population has reacted with profound fear of the unknown. This is a natural reaction, yet a hurdle of being human that we are evolving through. Until our collective consciousness has evolved, this fear of the unknown will be easy pickings for those in power looking to manipulate large masses of the public.
Values. Certain ‘values’ have been politicized to such an extent that a single value alone can dictate one’s entire political affiliation. This is especially true within the Republican platform. Values such as gun rights, religious views (anti-abortion, alliance with Israel), anti-immigration hostility, distrust of government, amid many others, are often such strong views that they trump all else in regards to political affiliation. The more locked in to any one of these values, the more antagonistic the other side seems.
Dishonesty. The public is being fed news through a few select vessels of their choosing. Yet all news is filtered somehow, all news is funded somehow, and thus, all news is biased somehow. Each political parties play by their own ‘games’, relatively, however they share a common theme of sugarcoating reality to protect their image. Thus, like a wheat mill, the media is distorting reality, and we are being fed this processed version. We can only be so ‘woke’. Whether subtle distortion or blatant dishonesty (as the GOP has normalized), feeding the public a smorgasbord of distorted reality is guaranteed to stir up confusion and disdain.
These three ingredients are key in the potion of our political divide. They have, for centuries, been successful means for maintaining power and compounding wealth among the ‘sheep herders’, and today, a modern-day updated version of the same software is still being used to herd the sheep around. I believe we are en route to evolving through this model, however have a ways to go. Until then, we must continue to strive for truth, maintain presence, and call out injustice whenever and wherever possible.”
“When your party’s presidential candidate is trailing in the polls by nearly 10 pointswith a little over three months to go, it’s natural to start worrying about what will happen if he loses. And if you’re a Republican, there’s an entire cable network devoted to filling your evenings with terror.
Consider what Tucker Carlson, the highest-rated cable TV host of the moment, told his viewers Thursday night:The presidential election, in fact, believe it or not, is almost right here. In some places, early voting begins in just over a month. The results of that voting will define the country’s future. If Democrats take both the Senate and the White House, and they could, you will not recognize America a year from now.
This kind of message has particular resonance for conservatives, since by definition they’re inclined against change. And those who seek to mobilize them — such as Republican candidates or right-wing TV hosts — will almost inevitably wind up telling them that the change that will come will be not just unpleasant but downright cataclysmic. We hear this every four years, without fail.
It’s not that Democrats don’t predict disaster if they lose, because they do. But the conservative warnings of doom have a particular theme: the end of America as we know it.AD
I can’t count how many times in 2008 Republicans said that Barack Obama had a secret plan to remake the country into something utterly unrecognizable. And what did he do with the eight years he was in office? Exactly what any sane person would have predicted: He governed as a reasonably liberal Democrat, with some successes and some failures. By the time January 2017 rolled around, America could still be recognized.
Now make no mistake, having your party in the opposition is undoubtedly a drag. You have to open up the paper or turn on the TV every day to see that the president has begun some new initiative you disagree with, or appointed some high-ranking official you dislike. It’s frustrating.
But all of us, no matter our party, will have to endure multiple presidents from the other side over the course of our lifetimes. It’s the nature of democracy. And yes, that’s sometimes downright awful. But at least since 1865, the country has always remained intact.
But I suspect that fear of change is going to grow more intense on the right, not because Joe Biden is such a terrifying figure (I mean, c’mon), and not even because President Trump has taken conservatives to such a paradise that they can’t bear the thought of losing it.AD
No, it’s because Trump has failed.
I don’t mean the failures you may be thinking of, which are legion. I mean that as Trump supporters contemplate the unsettling prospect of future change, they can’t help but realize, even if unconsciously, that Trump hasn’t delivered on the most basic change he promised, which was to arrest and reverse the deep and fundamental social changes so many conservatives find so troubling.
That was the heart of “Make America Great Again”: the idea that we could revert to some point in the past, unwind the clock to when things were great. Keep in mind that for many conservatives, nearly all the social developments of the past few decades have ranged from objectionable to horrific. Kids don’t respect their elders, fewer people are going to church, women demand equality, gay people can get married, everyone’s talking about racism, and when you go down to your local supermarket, you hear people speaking a bunch of different languages.AD
And guess what: Donald Trump couldn’t do a thing about any of it.
He’s been president for four years, and no reversal of history has taken place. Young people are still driving you nuts, that rap music is everywhere you go, and you aren’t given the respect you think you deserve. This is the most anti-immigrant administration in a century, and yet the country is still full of immigrants.
It turned out that these are deep and fundamental changes, changes any one president can’t control.
Look at the campaign Trump is running, all about how chaos is overtaking the streets. Yes, it’s exactly what Fox News viewers have been warned about every night for years. But whatever you think is happening (even if your view is distorted and exaggerated), it’s happening while Trump is president, not because some permissive Democrat is letting the hooligans run wild. Surely even some of Trump’s supporters are aware of the irony.
In the end, that may be the most frightening thing for them: not that a Democratic president would bring distressing change to America but that the change will come no matter who is president. If America is going to become unrecognizable to conservatives, it won’t be because we pass universal health care or raise the minimum wage. It’ll be because time will continue to move forward.AD
That is what Trump promised them he could stop. But he never could. And soon they’ll be more upset about it than ever.”
“Partisans on both sides of the aisle significantly overestimate the extent of extremism in the opposing party. The more partisan the thinker, the more distorted the other side appears. And when we see the opposition as extremists, we fear them. Our tribal thinking prepares us for battle.
More In Common (2019) Perception Gap StudySource: Image by Pamela Paresky
What’s the solution? More information? More political engagement? More education?
Surely more information leads to better judgment. But social scientists at the international initiative More in Common find that having more information from the news media is associated with a less accurate understanding of political opponents. Part of the problem appears to be the political biases of media sources themselves. Of all the various news media examined, only the traditional TV networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS, are associated with a better understanding of political views.
What about more political engagement and education? Here again, we’re out of luck. Those who are most accurate in their understanding of each side’s political views are the politically disengaged. They are three timesmore accurate than the most engaged and passionate partisans. Even education is handicapping — at least for those on the left. The accuracy of Republicans’ views of Democrats is not affected by higher education, but liberals with postgraduate degrees are the least accurate about their ideological opponents. They are also the most afflicted with “affective polarization,” hostile feelings toward people of the opposing political party.
This discrepancy may be a result of the lack of political diversity among professors and administrators on campus. As political scientist Sam Abramsfound, the average left to right ratio of professors nationwide is 6 to 1 and the ratio of student-facing administrators is 12 to 1. Democrats who have few or no Republican friends see the other side as more extreme than do those with more politically diverse friends. And the more educated Democrats are, the less likely they are to have friends who don’t share their political beliefs.
As a result, there aren’t many opportunities on campus for the left to gain a nuanced understanding of their ideological opponents. Nor is there much chance for students to watch professors model cross-partisan friendships or friendly disagreement. And many of those who hold unpopular political views are unwilling to reveal their thinking. Self-censoring and the associated misrepresentation of preferred views (what social scientists call “preference falsification”) both lead to and result from what is known as “pluralistic ignorance.” This is the incorrect assumption on the part of many members of a community that the majority subscribe to an orthodox view.
All of this suggests that the way to close the perception gap is to expose people to a more intellectually diverse group of people and set of views, and turn down the tribalism.
Newspaper op-ed pages can make a difference by hiring — and fiercely protecting — opinion columnists whose views don’t square with those of the majority of their readers. Think tanks, which often follow a certain ideological bent, can hire scholars who are willing to amicably challenge the conclusions of their colleagues.
And nowhere is the need for intellectual diversity more urgent than in higher education — the very institutions that were once supposed to protect unpopular thinkers and expose students to uncomfortable ideas. But thanks to the emergence of what is now called “cancel culture,” students, faculty, and visiting speakers are targeted for opposing prevailing campus orthodoxy.
Consider some well-known examples of contrarians and gadflies from the past few years: Ronald Sullivan, the Harvard law professor, whose position as dean of an undergraduate residential college was terminated because students complained that his legal representation of Harvey Weinstein made them “feel unsafe”; Allison Stanger, the political scientist at Middlebury who was physically assaulted by students for her discussion with libertarian scholar Charles Murray; Bret Weinstein, the Evergreen State College biologist who was hounded from his position for opposing a “day of absence” when only people of color were welcome on campus; Lucia Martinez Valdivia, the self-identified mixed-race and queer professor at Reed College accused by students of being a “race traitor,” “anti-black,” and “ableist” because she spoke about questioning feelings of oppression; and Joshua Clover, the UC Davis professor whose manifestly uncivil anti-law-enforcement comments were met not with arguments for the value of civil and productive disagreement and against his preferred ad hominem tactics, but with a rally and petition to have him fired.
What these and similar cases have in common isn’t the political leanings of the ostracized faculty members (though many of them are, to one degree or another, politically liberal). It is the apparent inability of their accusers to accept that other points of view should be entertained and discussed on campus, much less accepted as valid perspectives.
That inability is a function of an ideological monoculture in which any view that runs contrary to the prevailing moral code is seen as making people “unsafe;” that the mere presence on campus of people who hold “problematic” views is “harmful;” that words are violence.
An understanding of the value of sharp yet productive civil disagreement with ideological opponents is largely absent. One recent study even found that 15% of Republicans and 20% of Democrats thought the country would be better off if large numbers of opposing partisans “just died.”
Liberal democracy is built on a philosophy of freedom of expression combined with a set of social norms that allow the articulation of unpopular opinions without fear of retribution. It relies on an ability to acknowledge the humanity of those whose views we don’t like and a commitment to defend their right to speak. Embodying these principles today is too rare and requires too much courage.
So what can you do?
Consume news from sources that don’t merely confirm your views. Insist that your preferred news media platforms provide an intellectually diverse slate of writers — and that they fiercely protect them when the mob comes. Ask your university to commit to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s 5 ways university presidents can prove their commitment to free speech. Resist the temptation to join in the outrage on social media. And make sure you have friends who don’t share your views.
Whether on a college campus or in the wider world, find what C.S. Lewis called “second friends.” A second friend is someone you like and respect who disagrees with you. “He has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one,” explained Lewis. “It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it.” Cherish these friends. And listen to them.
We have lost touch with a fundamental premise of a functioning democracy: Our ideological opponents are not our enemies. It is not even a matter of “tolerating” those who disagree. Dissent and disagreement are necessary in order to sharpen our thinking and come to better conclusions. We need each other in order to do the essential work of creating a more perfect union. The good news is that we have more in common than we think.
But if we keep doing what we’re doing, we’ll continue hating each other too much to see it.”
The divisions between Republicans and Democrats on fundamental political values – on government, race, immigration, national security, environmental protection and other areas – reached record levels during Barack Obama’s presidency. In Donald Trump’s first year as president, these gaps have grown even larger.
And the magnitude of these differences dwarfs other divisions in society, along such lines as gender, race and ethnicity, religious observance or education.
A new study by Pew Research Center, based on surveys of more than 5,000 adults conducted over the summer, finds widening differences between Republicans and Democrats on a range of measures the Center has been asking about since 1994, as well as those with more recent trends. But in recent years, the gaps on several sets of political values in particular – including measures of attitudes about the social safety net, race and immigration – have increased dramatically.
Government aid to needy. Over the past six years, the share of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents saying the government should do more to help the needy, even if it means going deeper into debt, has risen 17 percentage points (from 54% to 71%), while the views of Republicans and Republican leaners have barely changed (25% then, 24% today). However, Republicans’ opinions on this issue had shifted substantially between 2007 and 2011, with the share favoring more aid to the needy falling 20 points (from 45% to 25%).
The result: While there has been a consistent party gap since 1994 on government aid to the poor, the divisions have never been this large. In 2011, about twice as many Democrats as Republicans said the government should do more for the needy (54% vs. 25%). Today, nearly three times as many Democrats as Republicans say this (71% vs. 24%).
Racial discrimination. In recent years, Democrats’ views on racial discrimination also have changed, driving an overall shift in public opinion. Currently, 41% of Americans say racial discrimination is the main reason many blacks cannot get ahead – the largest share expressing this view in surveys dating back 23 years. Still, somewhat more Americans (49%) say blacks who cannot get ahead are mostly responsible for their own condition.
When the racial discrimination question was first asked in 1994, the partisan difference was 13 points. By 2009, it was only somewhat larger (19 points). But today, the gap in opinions between Republicans and Democrats about racial discrimination and black advancement has increased to 50 points.
Immigration. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) say immigrants strengthen the country “because of their hard work and talents.” Just 26% say immigrants are a burden “because they take our jobs, housing and health care.” Views of immigrants, though little changed from a year ago, are more positive than at any point in the past two decades.
As with views of racial discrimination, there has been a major shift in Democrats’ opinions about immigrants. The share of Democrats who say immigrants strengthen the country has increased from 32% in 1994 to 84% today. By contrast, Republicans are divided in attitudes about immigrants: 42% say they strengthen the country, while 44% view them as a burden. In 1994, 30% of Republicans said immigrants strengthened the country, while 64% said they were a burden.
“Peace through strength.” About six-in-ten Americans (61%) say good diplomacy is the best way to ensure peace, while 30% say peace is ensured by military strength. Opinions in both parties have changed since the 1990s; Democrats increasingly say peace is ensured by good diplomacy, while Republicans say it is military strength that ensures peace. Today, 83% of Democrats and Democratic leaners see good diplomacy as the way to ensure peace, compared with just 33% of Republicans and Republican leaners.
The surveys were conducted June 8-18 among 2,504 adults and June 27-July 9 among 2,505 adults, with a follow-up survey conducted Aug. 15-21 among 1,893 respondents. This report was made possible by The Pew Charitable Trusts, which received support for the surveys from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
Party gaps much larger than demographic differences
The partisan shifts on political values over the past 23 years have had different trajectories across different sets of issues. While there has been greater movement among Democrats than Republicans on several issues, on others Republicans have shown more change.
In views of stricter environmental laws and regulations, for example, there has been a larger long-term change among Republicans than Democrats. Republicans are far less supportive of stricter environmental laws than they were in the mid-1990s, while Democrats have become somewhat more supportive.
But the bottom line is this: Across 10 measures that Pew Research Center has tracked on the same surveys since 1994, the average partisan gap has increased from 15 percentage points to 36 points.
Two decades ago, the average partisan differences on these items were only somewhat wider than differences by religious attendance or educational attainment and about as wide as the differences between blacks and whites (14 points, on average). Today, the party divide is much wider than any of these demographic differences.
Partisan gaps have grown even on measures in which opinion in both parties has moved in the same direction, such as support for societal acceptance of homosexuality. Currently, 70% of Americans say homosexuality should be accepted – the highest percentage ever.
For the first time, a majority of Republicans (54%) favor acceptance of homosexuality; just 38% did so in 1994. Yet over this period, the increase in the share of Democrats saying homosexuality should be accepted has been much larger (from 54% to 83%). As a result, partisan differences have gotten larger.
The surveys find that while Republicans and Democrats have grown further apart, there are sizable divisions within both parties on many political values. Younger Republicans differ from older Republicans in attitudes about immigration and several other issues. Among Republicans and Republican leaners younger than 30, 62% say immigrants strengthen the country; half as many Republicans ages 65 and older say the same (31%).
In recent years, there has been a decline in the share of Democrats who say that most people can get ahead if they work hard. Only about half of Democrats (49%) express this view, down from 58% three years ago. A large majority of Republicans (77%) continue to say hard work pays off for most people.
Democrats are divided by education and race in their views of hard work and success. White Democrats and those with higher levels of education are less likely than nonwhite Democrats and those with less education to say that hard work leads to success.
Other important findings
Partisan antipathy remains extensive. The shares of Republicans and Democrats who express very unfavorable opinions of the opposing party have increased dramatically since the 1990s, but have changed little in recent years. Currently, 44% of Democrats and Democratic leaners have a very unfavorable opinion of the GOP, based on yearly averages of Pew Research Center surveys; 45% of Republicans and Republican leaners view the Democratic Party very unfavorably. In 1994, fewer than 20% in both parties viewed the opposing party very unfavorably.
Big house, small house. Our studies of political polarization and partisan antipathyboth found that the disagreements between Republicans and Democrats go far beyond political values and issues. They also have markedly different preferences about where they would like to live. Most Republicans (65%) say they would rather live in a community where houses are larger and farther apart and where schools and shopping are not nearby. A majority of Democrats (61%) prefer smaller houses within walking distance of schools and shopping.
Deep differences over factors for nation’s success. About half of Americans (52%) attribute the country’s success more to “its ability to change,” while 43% say the nation’s “reliance on long-standing principles” has been more important. Most Democrats (68%) link the nation’s success more to its ability to change, while 61% of Republicans point to its reliance on principles. In addition, there are wide age differences, with young people far more likely than older adults to say America’s success is mainly linked to its ability to change.”
Recent Comments