Category Archives: Random Blogging

Political Tribalism

One of the more intriguing “factoids” that emerged during 2019 was the shift in parental views on intermarriage. Objections to their children marrying across racial or religious lines  continued to diminish; however, the proportion of people who didn’t want their children marrying across political lines increased substantially. In fact, more parents would object to their child marrying into a family with a different political persuasion than would be upset by an inter-racial union.

Political identity has become a potent–albeit not perfect– marker of a range of attitudes about race, women’s rights, economic justice, and (as one political scientist has quipped) one’s favorite grocery store.

The vastly increased saliency of political identity recently led Thomas Edsell to pose a question.

Is the deepening animosity between Democrats and Republicans based on genuine differences over policy and ideology or is it a form of tribal warfare rooted in an atavistic us-versus-them mentality?

Is American political conflict relatively content-free — emotionally motivated electoral competition — or is it primarily a war of ideas, a matter of feuding visions both of what America is and what it should become?

Edsell quotes Lilliana Mason, a leading scholar of partisanship.

“Group victory is a powerful prize,” Mason writes, “and American partisans have increasingly seen that as more important than the practical matter of governing a nation.”

The recent party-line vote on Impeachment in the House of Representatives certainly supports Mason’s thesis. For that matter, the importance of group victory to partisans is all that can explain the behavior of Republicans in both the House and Senate during Trump’s Presidency; they have consistently put the interests of their party above the interests of the nation and the concerns of governance.

Edsell also quotes Shanto Iyengar, a political scientist at Stanford, for the proposition that “policy preferences are driven more by partisans’ eagerness to support their party rather than considered analysis of the pros and cons of opposing positions on any given issue.”

Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, disagrees. He doesn’t believe that partisanship dictates ideological and policy decisions; instead, he argues that ideological differences drive polarization.

Democratic and Republican voters today hold far more distinctive views across a wide range of issues than they did in the past. And it is among those Democrats and Republicans who hold views typical for their party, that is liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, that dislike of the opposing party is strongest.

Alexander Theodoridis is a political scientist at the University of California-Merced. He appears to think it goes both ways–that people originally identify with a party based on ideological compatibility, but then “adjust” or harden their positions in response to partisan messaging:

For most people, party identity appears to be far more central and salient than particular issue positions. We see increasing evidence of people adjusting their issue positions or priorities to fit their party allegiance, more than the reverse. We are very good at rationalizing away cognitive dissonance. More important than this chicken-or-egg question is the reality that ideology and party have become very highly sorted today. Liberal and Conservative are now tantamount to Democrat and Republican, respectively. That was not always the case. Furthermore, all sorts of descriptive and dispositional features (ranging from religion and race to personality type and worldview) are also more correlated with political party than they were in the past. All this heightens the us-versus-them nature of modern hyperpolarization.

Whichever came first, we are now at a point where most Republicans and Democrats inhabit different realities, informed by different “facts,” and espouse distinctly different values.

When disagreements are about policy, compromise is possible. When those disagreements are about morality, not so much.

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Other Than Voting Blue, What Can Good People Do?

A recent article in The Guardian reminded me of a long-ago discussion with my mother.

The article was about a Japanese trader named Chiune Sugihara, who saved the lives of 6,000 Jews during the second World War.

Over six weeks in the summer of 1940, while serving as a diplomat in Lithuania, Chiune Sugihara defied orders from his bosses in Tokyo, and issued several thousand visas for Jewish refugees to travel to Japan.

The discussion with my mother followed a television show about the Holocaust, and the German citizens who stayed silent while their Jewish neighbors were subjected, first, to official demonization, then required to wear yellow stars, then deprived of their businesses, and finally dragged from their homes and transported to death camps. My mother declared that she would not have been one of those who pretended not to see–that she would have resisted, even at the risk of her own life and the lives of her family. I remember responding that I wished I could be so sure that I would do the right thing.

At the time, of course, it was all hypothetical.

Suddenly, it isn’t.

We need to recognize that we’re at the beginning of what threatens to become a very dark time in America. Under Trump, we already see (brown) children in cages; we already see the deliberate encouragement of white nationalism, and the demonization of immigrants, Muslims, and “others”; we already see reckless and dangerous foreign adventurism; we already see disdain for–and noncompliance with– longstanding democratic norms and the rule of law; and we already see  concerted, persistent attacks on the media outlets that report these things.

We don’t face the equivalent of SS troops in the streets (although it is worth noting that a number of Trump supporters have threatened civil war should he lose in November), so the costs of activism are minuscule in comparison to the risks run by people like Sugahari or Schindler.

Several commenters to yesterday’s post made a valid point: the time for sharing dismay is over and the time for action is here.

The question is: what does that action look like?

I am assuming that most Americans appalled by what is happening are already working to get out the vote–volunteering for candidates, bringing lawsuits to counter the GOP’s constant efforts to disenfranchise people who might vote Democratic, calling their Senators and Representatives, writing letters to the editor and posting opinions on blogs and social media. I hope–but do not know–that marches and demonstrations are being planned; if they are, even old folks like me will participate.

Yet none of this seems adequate to the challenge.

I ended yesterday’s post with a question asking readers to characterize the last decade. I will end this one with a far more important question: what should we be doing that we aren’t doing? What additional, specific actions can ordinary people take that will be effective? 

Our current situation is the result of the deterioration of democratic practices and civic participation that has been going on “under the radar” for a number of years. But I am convinced that, once the Trump administration made the consequences of that deterioration too visible to ignore, most Americans have been appalled. I continue to believe that–no matter how unAmerican the behavior of our federal government , no matter how contrary to our ideals and self-image– the majority of Americans are good people who do not and will not endorse policies grounded in stupidity, hatred and bigotry.

The question is: What are the concrete steps those good people can take to ensure that “it can’t happen here”?

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Goodby To The Decade Of —What?

As we head into the year 2020, it’s hard to know whether to be fearful or hopeful. (Despite it being “20/20” I’m not seeing very clearly.)

So far, the 21st Century has left a lot to be desired.

When I was young–many years ago–I imagined we’d make great progress by the 21st Century. My anticipation had less to do with flying cars and computers and more to do with things like world peace; in any event, I wasn’t prepared for the renewed tribalism and various bigotries that have grown more intractable in the years since 2000. (I was definitely not prepared for a President reckless enough to Wag the Dog.)

It’s hard to know whether the problems we face are truly worse than they have been, or whether–thanks to vastly improved communication technologies– we are just much more aware of them. In any event, as we turn the page on 2019, pundits and historians are proposing terms to describe the last decade.

 Washington Post opinion writers came up with six, one of which seems particularly fitting, at least to me: the Age of Unraveling.

“Unraveling” was the descriptor offered by Dana Milbank, one of the Post opinion writers offering their perspectives on the last ten years. I think Milbank got the decade right.

It began with the tea party, a rebellion nominally against taxes and government but really a revolt against the first African American president. At mid-decade came the election of Donald Trump, a backlash against both the black president and the first woman on a major party ticket.

Milbank attributes much of the ugliness of our time to the fury of white Christian men who realized that they were losing their hegemony. He saved some opprobrium for social media:

It gave rise to demagoguery, gave an edge to authoritarianism and its primary weapon, disinformation, and gave legitimacy and power to the most extreme, hate-filled and paranoid elements of society.

Molly Roberts had a somewhat different take; she characterized the decade as one of (over) sharing. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like have ushered in “full-frontal confessionalism to a country full of emotional voyeurs.” In the process of baring our souls, we also, inadvertently, shared a lot of private information.

To maximize our engagement, those platforms played on the preferences all our sharing revealed — which meant shoving inflammatory content in our faces and shoving us into silos. All that connection ended up dividing us.

Jennifer Rubin has been turning out a stream of perceptive columns the past couple of years, and her take on the decade didn’t disappoint: she dubbed it the Decade of Anxiety, “one in which we lost not simply a shared sense of purpose but a shared sense of reality.” Rubin, a classical conservative, is clear-eyed about what has happened to the GOP.

The Republican Party degenerated into a cult, converted cruelty into public policy and normalized racism. Internationally, U.S. retrenchment ushered in a heyday for authoritarian aggressors and a dismal period for international human rights and press freedom.

Christine Emba, with whom I am unfamiliar, characterized the period as a Decade of Dissonance–a period during which our reality and our expectations kept moving further and further apart.

For her part, Alexandra Petri called it the Decade of Ouroboros. I had to Google that one. Turns out it’s a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. (I’ll admit to some head-scratching; she either meant a time when we set about destroying–eating– ourselves, or a time when everything is ominous.)

The final offering, from the economist Robert Samuelson, struck me as appropriate, if depressing. He called it the Decade of Retreat.

It’s not just the end of the decade. It’s the end of the American century. When historians look back on the past 10 years, they may conclude this was the moment Americans tired of shaping the world order.

At my house, it has been a decade of civic disappointment–and exhaustion. (Persistent outrage really tires you out….)

How would you characterize the decade? And more to the point, where do you see America after another ten years?

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An Open Letter to Tom Steyer And Mike Bloomberg

Okay–here’s the thing.

Neither one of you is going to be the Democratic nominee. And I certainly hope neither of you plans to splinter the vote and help Trump by running a third-party candidacy.

Steyer, you are just a (much) smarter, saner version of Trump. Your ads make it clear that you are unacquainted with the complexities of governing; you seem to think that because you were able to make a lot of money (which, to be fair, in your case you actually earned), you have what it takes to run the country.

Would you take your toothache to a dentist who was really smart and who’d made a lot of money but had never gone to dental school or filled a cavity? Of course not.

Bloomberg, you would actually be a more plausible Chief Executive than Tom Steyer–anyone who has been mayor of New York City for three terms understands federalism, Separation of Powers and the function–and limitations– of the Executive branch. But you are smart enough to know that the considerable baggage that experience generated means you have little chance of winning the nomination and initiating what would be billed as a fight between billionaires (a fight that would turn off the party’s Left, whose presence at the polls will be critical) despite the unholy amounts of money you are currently spending on advertisements.

Both of you need to put your massive egos aside and your billions to better use. Permit me to suggest some of those uses:

Buy Fox “News” and turn it into an actual news organization. If Newscorp refuses to sell–or even if you do get that done–go after Sinclair Broadcasting and/or other high-traffic propaganda outlets. (They can still tilt conservative, as that term used to be understood. Just not Trumpian.) (Longterm, you might consider funding that “Seal of Approval” media organization I’ve blogged about…)

If you MUST blanket the airwaves and Internet with political advertising, find the most creative people you can and go after McConnell and Trump and vulnerable Republican Senators. Hard.

Do you know what I would do if I were as rich as the two of you?

I’d hire the best private investigators I could find, and charge them with digging up the tax returns and other financial records Trump is so desperate to keep hidden, and with identifying his and “Moscow Mitch” McConnell’s connections to Russia. I’d instruct them to follow the tantalizing leads suggested in the Mueller report that were left unexamined. I’d send them looking for the high school grades and college transcript Trump doesn’t want anyone to see–not to mention the seamy details of his long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. (I’d also ask them to find out what the hell it is that Trump has on Lindsay Graham.)

The two of you have the financial wherewithal to save the country. Don’t waste it on ego trips.

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Happy Holidays!

Today is Christmas.

Sunday night was the first night of Chanukah, which will end on the 30th. Kwanzaa starts tomorrow and ends January 1st, and many other traditions are also marking important dates.(Historians tell us that many holidays occur during December and January, not because the dates of the events being celebrated are necessarily accurate, but because we need a break from the dark and cold.)

My holiday wish is pretty simple: A world in which people respect their neighbors–including those who differ from them– and wish them well. A world where we learn from each other, care for each other, and give each other the benefit of the doubt.

A world where that bumper sticker that uses symbols to spell out “coexist” is descriptive rather than aspirational.

I’m not pontificating today. I’m not even going to beat my head against the nearest wall. I hope you and your loved ones all have a wonderful holiday, and I hope those of you who are regular readers and commenters know how much I appreciate you.

I’ll be my grouchy self again tomorrow. Meanwhile, have a happy holiday!

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