Ezra Klein's new book "Why We're Polarized"

This is a great summary - I’ve been focussed on the displacement of traditional media as gatekeepers, but the fact that people are much more exposed to the more strident voices on both sides as discussion, not as information, might be even more important. Because it brings our tribe-brains to the fore, and our tribe brains really really want to fit in and be on the winning side as a matter of basic survival.

Perhaps you’re actually too far away to understand what’s going on over here? The Democrats impeached Trump not because they thought it would succeed, but because they thought it was their duty. In any slide into an authoritarian state there are always those who put up futile resistance, but we don’t usually upbraid them for so doing.

And maybe you should point to the data which suggests the impeachment is harmful to their chances of winning the next election?

Do I have to say ‘allegedly’ when he’s admitted to the facts? When even his defenders have admitted to the facts? I don’t think so.

Maybe you can answer the question I put to @FinnegansFather? Where would those who support Trump despite his manifest wrongdoing draw the line? Not at institutionalized racism and bigotry. Not at internment camps. Not at defrauding elections. Where, then?

He does go into that, basically because of sorting any attack on any part of one’s apparently disconnected identity group is an attack on all of them. So you might think that in theory a conservative Christian might not immediately follow that an attack on, say, military policy, should cause them to become defensive. But because the parties have sorted almost completely into non-overlapping groups, this person views an attack on the military as an attack on their larger group identity, and so an attack on Christianity, and so an attack on them. So it means people are increasingly disincentivized to ever vote against their group despite apparently having multiple identities which could or should pull them away in theory.

It’s clear that party identification is a big problem in America - but the problem for Klein is that ideological sorting also means you suddenly can provide representation to underrepresented groups. It’s a paradox I don’t think he really knows how to solve. The polarized, dysfunctional political system today effectively doesn’t function - but before huge swathes of the country had little or no political representation at all, so the implication to fix the political system is in many ways to reduce representation of minority groups, something he’s obviously not give credence to for a second out loud. It’s a real problem for progressive theorists, that the time when the political system in the US is perhaps most broken as a functioning system (which is bad) is also the time of the most diversity in representation (which is good). I think another of his unspoken critiques to liberals today is that “it’s not that bad”… at least compared to the arc of history.

Is that a good example? Trump is famous for attacking veterans, wounded soldiers, dead heroes, etc. etc. and it doesn’t seem to cause any undue concern on the evangelical right.

That’s not really an attack, that’s demagoguery. The important thing is if they perceive it to be an existential attack, imo, and sort of by definition a Republican cannot “attack” the military in an existential way because they’re a Republican and therefore support the military.

Doesn’t that render the actuality of the ‘attack’ irrelevant? If Republicans haven’t attacked the military even when they have, then Democrats have attacked the military even when they haven’t. The attack is in the mind of the observer. It’s a kind of dissociation with reality.

Is there a similar disfunction on the left?

Yeah, you’re going to have to explain it to me like I’m 5 because what you wrote made zero sense to me.

Let me put forward an alternate explanation: the average republican voter has long since left behind reason, logic, memory, history, and facts in order to become a more perfect re-programmable meat bag. We would look at statements like “republicans support the military” and “republicans are attacking the military” and see a contradiction, but that’s because our brains haven’t been sanded down to a perfectly smooth sphere by Fox news.

From another non-American, it’s simple: Trump bribed a foreign agent with state money to interfere in the elections. If anything, Democrats held back in order to not rock the boat too much.

Projection, and laughing at someone else is an effective way to distract from the crumbling of EU ideals, as the conflicting nature of those is coming home to roost.

The problem I have with that is that the internet and social media are pushing us into siloed off echo chambers that take things out of context and not present nuance. This pushes people to extremes of their identities and is also encouraging negative arguments against the other side. Then people get defensive, turn off logic and reasoning and start taking the disagreements personally and push themselves further into their own corner and the perpetual cycle repeats.

This is not meant as a “both side-isms” but the right especially knows how to press this hard and force the left to go ballistic over little things, which then pushes right leaning further to the right as part of their defense. This prevents constructive conversations that would allow non-repulsive republicans to feel like they can actually give up some of the reprehensible beliefs without feeling like they are “surrendering” or giving up.

I don’t see a logical way out of that cycle though with the way things are.

If Republicans can stomach a defense that argues that a sitting President could e.g. jail his electoral opponents to secure re-election if that President believes his/her own re-election to be in the best interest of the country, I don’t think there are any non-repulsive Republicans. Which Republicans have publicly repudiated that argument? I haven’t seen any.

This is completely disregarding human nature and the tribalism factor we have. They didn’t start with where we are now and are now solidifying in. They have been slowly being pushed to the idea that their identity is fundamentally tied with republican ideologies over the course of many years, even decades. They have slowly moved their line in millimeter increments over that time that now admitting the party is doing bad shit means utterly throwing away all they’ve associated themselves with for the past decades.

Ever minor infraction a republican has done has been fraught with hyperbolic arguments on both sides so they convinced themselves it was fine and the other side was being crazy. As the republican infractions became more and more major they had no choice but to either dig in further or admit they were wrong before, something humans are terrible at. The sunk cost fallacy is a real thing.

It’s easy to laugh and point fingers and call them repulsive. I agree that it is but that doesn’t do anything to help the situation because that just causes more defensiveness and digging themselves further in. And the reality is there is a non-trivial number of people who have dug themselves in so much that the scenario is that there’s a very likely chance that Trump can get elected again, because not electing him again means they have to admit they were wrong in 2016.

It’s easy to do that because their actual behavior is repulsive. That they have Reasons for that behavior doesn’t make it less repulsive. And I am not laughing.

I keep hearing that if people on the left were nicer to people on the right, people on the right wouldn’t be authoritarian cretins. But where is the example which shows this is so? Wasn’t the Obama presidency eight years of trying that approach? What did it accomplish?

All well and good but not understanding how the situation came to be or even if they understand why it’s repulsive (if they only watch Fox news they legitimately may not actually know) doesn’t do anything to help the situation. It just further solidifies it.

I’m not arguing that.
It is irrelevant WHY they did it. It’s a move that is likely to achieve the opposite of what they set out to do. Outcomes matter, intentions not really.

Maybe you should stop asking for data about points in the future?
It’s just common sense and populism 101 - and populism is the most effective method nowadays, it seems.
After Trump does not get impeached, the Republicans can spin this into a great victory while the Democrats will look defeated and powerless. Who among those who do not vote the same side every time anyway or those that generally don’t vote to begin with will then vote for defeated and powerless?
And who knows, some might actually switch sides just to be on the winning team (afaik, some already did).
This entire thing has “backfire” written all over it.

But hey, ask me again about that data at the end of the year after the election and I’ll provide everything you need, if you really do wanna hear a “told you so” then.

Oh boy, give me a break.
It is really clear now that you are just totally lost in your narrative of how bad and evil the other side is.
There is no point in discussing this with you any further.

Projecting what? And laughing at the circus somewhere else has nothing to do with losing confidence in a nation that used to be held in high regards.

Sorry, I edited my post. See my response here:

Why? The data suggests that impeachment has hurt Trump’s re-election chances, if it has had any effect at all.

What’s really clear is that you aren’t willing to hazard a safe guess as to where they would draw the line.

It’s not about being nice though, and that I think is the fundamental misunderstanding we have. It’s about understanding the root cause and untangling that in a strategic effort. It’s not about telling people they are wrong in their thinking but having constructive discussions that allow them to slowly walk their line back. That’s not something that’s easily do-able in our current climate though as it’s too easy to google out of context info that confirms your suspicions (even if the details don’t).

It’s like how coal minors and manufacturing workers dig in when democratic candidates nicely explain why coal and manufacturing jobs are never coming back here, and here’s a great free plan to help re-train you for other jobs, and yeah it might not pay as well as you had, and yeah you might be 50 years old and retraining and getting a new job at that age sucks, but it’s the reality we live in.

Those people immediately see “you want me to do what” and will vehemently fight against it, and if that means aligning themselves with the devil for the potential to be able to work in their chosen field for the last 15 years of their working career then that’s what they are going to do.

It’s a very hard thing to untangle and I don’t know if there is a situation that can. I just think think that trying to fight against it without a fundamental understanding of why the situation is what it is is harmful.

You did, in fact, argue that, here:

Forgive my shorthand. What you describe is, to me, the entirety of the Obama presidency. He certainly understood the root cause of of the polarization, and he put more effort into trying to have constructive discussions with the other side than any President in my lifetime. And absolutely none of it worked.

So, again, what is the evidence that that approach will work?

Our own electoral issues, or haven’t you heard that all populist problems started with Trump? Bless you if you haven’t.

In case you didn’t read the first post, this isn’t politically abnormal; so the question is rather why does the European media paint it as new at this point in time? What makes it that much bigger breach of trustworthiness and respect then, say, a disastrous illegal war, being constantly spied on, forcibly deporting citizens to the gitmo gulag or being told who they can’t grant asylum to?
It’s a convenient distraction.