Why We're Polarized

by Ezra Klein

We are so locked into our political identities that there is virtually no candidate, no information, no condition, that can force us to change our minds.

think covid deaths

toxic systems compromise good individuals with ease. They do so not by demanding we betray our values but by enlisting our values such that we betray each other. What is rational and even moral for us to do individually becomes destructive when done collectively.

Systems thinking, he writes, “is about understanding how accidents can happen when no parts are broken, or no parts are seen as broken.”

The term “identity politics,” in this usage, obscures rather than illuminates; it’s used to diminish and discredit the concerns of weaker groups by making them look like self-interested, special pleading in order to clear the agenda for the concerns of stronger groups, which are framed as more rational, proper topics for political debate.

Appreciating the logic of the polarizers’ argument, alongside the wreckage produced by their success, is a bracing antidote to both a golden view of the past and overly confident prescriptions for the future.II

parties are dividing over fundamental identities that tend to generate intolerance and hostility, and the issue conflicts are just one expression of that division.

This is the whole point of racial and ethnic stereotypes: the greed, criminality, venality, or idiocy we ascribe to others justifies our hatred or fear of them.

in how thin the film of human civilization really was, how near to the surface our barbarism lurked, and how flimsy yet central group identity could be—how quickly it could shift from being meaningless to becoming the only thing that mattered.

To hate like this is to be happy forever

This helps illuminate a long-running debate, particularly on the left, about whether working class voters who pull the lever for Republicans are betraying their self-interest in voting for a party that will cut taxes on the rich and break the unions that protect the poor.

Politicians, of course, are not equally responsive to all their constituents. They are most concerned about the most engaged: the people who will vote for them, volunteer for them, donate to them. And the way to make more of that kind of voter isn’t just to focus on how great you are. It’s to focus on how bad the other side is. Nothing brings a group together like a common enemy.

The most effective politicians thrill their supporters. But they do so in the context of the threat their opponents pose. And as politicians become less well-known and capable on the stump, they rely more and more heavily on activating fear of the other side.

spend some time watching television commercials and ask yourself whether they’re advertising products or identities.

“reason is both decentralized and dispersed across multiple individuals. It is not possible to be rational all by yourself; rationality is inherently a collective project.”

“The idea is that anyone or any deliberative body that exercises power over anyone else has an obligation to use that power in good faith, and has the obligation to use that power competently. If they’re not going to use it in good faith, and they’re not going to use it competently, that’s a claim against them having any kind of authority or any kind of legitimacy.”

The smarter the person is, the dumber politics can make them.II18

People weren’t reasoning to get the right answer; they were reasoning to get the answer that they wanted to be right.

More information can help us find the right answers. But if our search is motivated by aims other than accuracy, more information can mislead us—or, more precisely, help us mislead ourselves. There’s a difference between searching for the best evidence and searching for the best evidence that proves us right.

As Kahan’s term suggests, our reasoning is most vulnerable when our identities are most threatened. And for many, this is an era of profound threat.

There is nothing that makes us identify with our groups so strongly as the feeling that the power we took for granted may soon be lost or the injustices we’ve long borne may soon be rectified.

Among participants who lived in the western United States, those who read that whites had ceded majority status were more than 13 points likelier to subsequently say they favored the Republican Party.

“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”III26 There’s truth to this line, but it cuts both ways. To the extent that it’s true that a loss of privilege feels like oppression, that feeling needs to be taken seriously, both because it’s real, and because, left to fester, it can be weaponized by demagogues and reactionaries.

ie, don't just brush away people's feelings/concerns, even if how unreasonable they may be, because it might come back to bite asses

who counts as a “winner” at any given moment is hard to answer, and American politics is often a chorus of contradictory voices persuasively claiming victimhood at the same time. Most of us are winners in some ways and losers in others, and we feel the losses more acutely than the victories. Making matters worse, the losses that stem from demographic change are difficult to talk about, and they are often cloaked in more socially acceptable, and politically defensible, language.

In our eagerness to discount our opponents as easily triggered snowflakes, we’ve lost sight of the animating impulse behind much of politics and, indeed, much of life: the desire to feel safe, to know you can say what you want without fear.

In 1994, 39 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of Republicans said discrimination was the main reason “black people can’t get ahead these days.” By 2017, 64 percent of Democrats believed that, but only 14 percent of Republicans.

The Republican Party will not be able to win elections without an enthused white base. Democrats will need to build a platform that’s even more explicit in its pursuit of racial and gender equality, while Republicans will need to design a politics even more responsive to a coalition that feels itself losing power. This dynamic is behind much of the panic about “identity politics.” When a single group dominates the political agenda, its grievances and demands are just coded as politics, and the vast majority of policy is designed in response to its concerns.

But as Obama found after he was elected, leadership in this era requires delivering for diverse coalitions, taking sides in charged cultural battles, and thus becoming part of the very conflict you’re trying to calm. The cycle of unity giving way to conflict, of hope about the future activating fear about the present, is likely to continue. And as long as much of the

The deeper our commitment to our group becomes, the more determined we become to make sure our group wins. Making matters worse, winning is positional, not material; we often prefer outcomes that are worse for everyone so long as they maximize our group’s advantage over other groups.

Obama’s presidency was an example of the younger, more diverse coalition taking power; Trump’s presidency represented the older, whiter coalition taking it back.

the ones that make sweeping pronouncements about what kind of nation we truly are based on whether 3 percent of the Midwest vote swung left or right, or the predictable postelection screeds in which liberals discuss moving to Canada and conservatives wonder if Texas should secede;

Democrats believed 44 percent of Republicans earned over $250,000 a year; it’s actually 2 percent. Republicans believed that 38 percent of Democrats were gay, lesbian, or bisexual; the correct answer is about 6 percent.

Many of us who wrote about politics on the internet before the rise of social media lament the feeling that something has been lost, that a space that once felt fresh and generative now feels toxic and narrow.

Defunding parties empowers the purists over the pragmatists.

it’s a channel through which racist lies and xenophobic demagoguery can travel as easily as overdue truths.

Individual donors want to fall in love or express their hate. They’re comfortable supporting candidates who offer less chance of victory but more affirmation of identity. Institutional donors are more pragmatic. They want candidates who will win, and they want candidates who, after they win, will get things done.

If individual donors give money as a form of identity expression, institutional donors give money as a form of investment. Individual donors are polarizing. Institutional donors are corrupting.

American politics, thus, is responsive to two types of people: the polarized and the rich.

The Supreme Court, in a series of rulings dating back to the ’70s, has decided that political spending is constitutionally protected speech, so you can’t regulate it out of politics. But that means that the workable reforms tend to toss us between plans that amplify the powers of small donors, which worsen the problems of polarization, or plans that permit institutional money to flood the system, with all the attendant corruption.

the core of that nationalization is an inversion of the Founders’ most self-evident assumption: that we will identify more deeply with our home state than with our country.

“Rather than asking, ‘How will this particular bill affect my district?’ legislators in a nationalized polity come to ask, ‘Is my party for or against this bill?’ That makes coalition building more difficult, as legislators all evaluate proposed legislation

Nelson. Rather than being celebrated back home for cutting Nebraska such a sweet deal, conservative media pounced on him.

Filibusters were rare in past Senates (with one gruesome exception: they were used routinely to block anti-lynching and civil rights legislation).

But freed from the need to appeal to the median voter, Republicans have hewed to a more conservative and confrontational path than the country would prefer. They have learned to win power by winning land, rather than by winning hearts and minds.

Absent an external unifying force like a war, the divisions—or worse—we see today will prove the norm, while the depolarized politics of mid-twentieth-century America will prove the exception.

And if we can’t reverse polarization, as I suspect, then the path forward is clear: we need to reform the political system so it can function amid polarization.

I have no illusions about “solving” social media’s tilt toward outrage, the human brain’s sensitivity to identity, or the dizzying escalation of political conflict.

We know that politicians are becoming more responsive to a media that amplifies conflict and a base that loathes weakness.

the filibuster’s worst sin is that it drains the system of accountability. In theory, the way American politics works is that a party gets put in charge, that party governs, and then voters decide whether they like the results. In practice, the filibuster allows the Senate minority to hamstring the majority.

and then it makes the majority look bad at getting things done, so the minority then get elected.

The idea here is to become more aware of the ways that politicians and media manipulate us.

the 50 Senate Democrats represent 41 million more Americans than the 50 Senate Republicans.