Tribalism has come to the West - "The more she spoke, the more I recognised her broad disposition as something I had experienced earlier in my life. Her attitude was almost entirely tribal. Two things, in particular, stood out: an almost blind hatred of a particular group (Republicans); and secondly, the use of deeply personal attacks on individual researchers to justify that hatred. Today, ten years later, this attitude seems to be the prevailing norm. Numerous studies support the hypothesis that American life — not just politics, but life in general — has become deeply polarised. The deeply divided society we now live in increasingly reminds me of clan or tribal behaviour in Africa... In tribal communities, neutral institutions of civil society that Westerners take for granted — such as the police, impartial courts, and the rule of law — simply do not, and cannot, exist. In such societies, everything is tribalised, and the task of building civic institutions is laden with difficulties. In Somalia, I was taught to be suspicious of anyone from a different clan, to always think harm was coming my way and to be guarded against anyone that was “other.” I come from the Darod clan, and was taught to constantly listen to accents, examine face shapes and overanalyse all non-verbal cues, searching for any indications of a different tribe. I can still identify a Somali (and usually their clan) from across a room. We were captives of an echo chamber, hearing constantly of the evils of the neighbouring Hawiye clan. We were taught from a young age that the Hawiye were coming to rape, rob, and destroy us. In response, we amassed weapons, hoarded food and exhorted young men (as young as 12) to join the military. The looming threat of the Hawiye was so great that my mother eventually sent my sister and me abroad. In the end, because of such protracted tribal tensions, Somalia collapsed into civil war... While such violence is yet to seize America, all the tribalist ingredients are present... Some of this has its absurd side: for instance, the strange ways that public-health measures such as mask-wearing and vaccination have become politicised, to the point that I know of fully vaccinated people in California who say they will continue to wear masks for fear of being mistaken for Republicans... We are, I fear, close to the precipice of serious destabilisation. Many American cities are either militarised (Washington, DC), near a social boiling point (Minneapolis), or have capitulated to anarchist protests and pressures (Portland, Seattle)... Another friend of mine has a daughter who attends a private school outside of San Francisco. Last year, when it was revealed that she had expressed mild support for President Trump, she was pushed down the stairs by a fellow pupil... The beautiful story of America, the reason so many people around the world still yearn to come here, is to a large extent founded on our rejection of tribalism and our establishment of civic, neutral institutions, based on the fundamental principle of equality before the law... If we continue to slip down this path, the thirst for tribalism will be unquenchable. That’s why moderate liberals need to stand up to the destructive forces that are taking over the Democratic party, just as moderate conservatives need to resist the tribal impulse that often grows in reaction to the other side’s excesses."
Critical Race Theorists don't believe in equality before the law and promote tribalism, so
Polarization in American politics - "Differences between the right and left go beyond politics. Three-quarters of consistent conservatives say they would opt to live in a community where “the houses are larger and farther apart, but schools, stores and restaurants are several miles away,” while 77% of consistent liberals prefer smaller houses closer to amenities. Nearly four times as many liberals as conservatives say it is important that their community has racial and ethnic diversity; about three times as many conservatives as liberals say it is important that many in the community share their religious faith.
The center has gotten smaller: 39% of Americans currently take a roughly equal number of liberal and conservative positions, down from 49% in surveys conducted in 1994 and 2004. And, those with mixed ideological views are not necessarily “moderates.” Despite their mixed ideological views in general, many express very conservative – or very liberal – opinions, depending on the specific issue. As a result, many current policy debates, such as immigration, gun control and health care policy, inspire nearly as much passion in the ideological center as on the left or the right.
The most ideologically oriented Americans make their voices heard through greater participation in every stage of the political process... To those on the ideological right and left, compromise now means that their side gets more of what it wants."
Study: Quitting Facebook Makes You Less Politically Polarized
Why Do Democrats and Republicans Hate Each Other? - "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... 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 times more 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... 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... 15% of Republicans and 20% of Democrats thought the country would be better off if large numbers of opposing partisans “just died.”... 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... Dissent and disagreement are necessary in order to sharpen our thinking and come to better conclusions"
The liberal cope will be that there's nothing wrong with hoping large numbers of Republicans die, because they are evil
What Is the True Cost of Polarization in America? - "Once rare, government shutdowns have become more frequent, as the major parties fail to compromise enough to even keep the federal government funded and open. The shutdowns are one consequence of rising social and political polarization in the United States. Polarization is not the same as disagreement about how to solve public policy problems, which is healthy and natural in a democracy... Here’s a list of reasons why Americans should strive to avoid worsening social and political antagonism—and to build bridges with each other.
1. We’re segregated in our own communities.
2. Our political culture is more and more antagonistic.
3. We judge and loathe members of other political parties.
4. Our families are being undermined. A recent study found that Thanksgiving dinners were significantly shorter in areas where Americans share meals across party lines. The effect was worse in areas with heavy political advertising...
5. We’re less likely to help each other out.
6. Our physical health is probably suffering.
7. We’re more and more stressed out.
8. We feel pressure to conform in our groups.
9. Deception is more likely.
10. Gridlock is damaging our government institutions.
11. Our pocketbooks are hurting.
12. We’re losing trust in key institutions.
13. It’s hard for us to solve problems even when we do agree.
14. Violence is more likely."
3 Strategies to Address Political Polarization in the Workplace - "In the U.S., if you patronize Starbucks, you are likely a Democrat; Dunkin’ Donuts, a Republican. In Hungary, magazines dedicated to hobbies as seemingly benign as fishing and bird-watching are now split down ideological lines. Research suggests that politics seep into non-political domains when differences of opinion are viewed not merely as disagreements, but as reason to disdain or even loathe the person holding those views. For example, studies have shown that Americans tend to regard those with differing political views as hypocritical, selfish, and closed-minded, and a majority of both Republicans and Democrats feel that political polarization is more insurmountable than racial or socioeconomic divisions... people often overestimate the level of disagreement between themselves and members of opposing political groups, the prevalence of extreme beliefs among those groups, and the extent to which those people view them negatively. We call this effect “false polarization bias” — and it is a global phenomenon... Across multiple industries, research suggests that exaggerated perceptions of political difference can significantly increase employee turnover, create hostility between coworkers, and lead employees to try to hide beliefs they feel may be viewed negatively — all of which can reduce both job satisfaction and effectiveness. This hyperpolarized environment also means that both purchasing and employment decisions can be driven by political leanings, with businesses forced to pick a side to attract customers and talent...
1. Build an environment of cooperation, not competition.
2. Encourage meaningful contact between groups.
3. Create a safe environment for people to share their views."
The link which claims that bans on politics at work don't work has no evidence
Meme - "Republicans are bad" - chalkboard in classroom
"Republicans are bad" - Movie
"Republicans are bad" - TV News
"Republicans are bad" - Concert
"Republicans are bad" - Reading from newspaper
"I disagree"
"You'RE JuST BRAINWASHED"
Meme - The New York Times @nytimes: "A South Korean tour group's van became stuck in the snow outside a house in Williamsville, New York. They homeowners, luckily, had a well- stocked kitchen. And so began an unlikely holiday weekend."
Donna @DonnaHa54890914: "Thank goodness it wasn't in a red state. I'm sorry to have to say that but, we all know the truth about how the feel about foreigners."
How Can We Break Our Addiction to Contempt? - Freakonomics - "BROOKS: You know, entrepreneurship means rolling out something new. And by the way, I might never succeed. But remember that the average successful entrepreneur has 3.8 bankruptcies. I had a couple of bankruptcies. I mean, it wasn’t bankruptcies...
Trying to insult somebody into agreement is the stupidest thing you can possibly do... I mean, it’s completely ineffective, but it feels good. It feels satisfying in the very short run... Ninety-three percent, if you believe Tim Dixon’s data on this, 93 percent of us hate how divided we have become as a country...
The current American polarization has been building for a while now. Here’s an example: In the 1960s, only 42 percent of votes in the U.S. Senate were party-unity votes — that is, votes in which the majority of Republicans opposed the majority of Democrats, or vice versa. By the 2010’s, that number had risen to 63 percent. Here’s some more data to consider: In 1935, the Social Security Act was passed with 90 percent Democratic support and 75 percent Republican support. So — not unanimous, but united. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed with just 60 percent Democratic support but, again, 75 percent Republican. If you look at the major legislation passed in recent years, however, it’s a different story. ObamaCare made it through Congress with zero Republican votes. President Trump’s 2018 tax-reform bill made it through with zero Democratic votes...
We don’t see racial differences and we don’t see gender differences. And we actually don’t see differences between right and left. What we do see is differences in consumption of media. So the more time you consume political information on social media, the more you’re going to be both a victim and a perpetrator of contempt. The more that you watch cable television, you’re going to be a victim and perpetrator of contempt. For example, answering questions like, “What do you think is the biggest threat to the United States?” The likelihood of you saying it’s a person of the other party is directly related to how much political news that you consume. And I don’t even have to know what political news you consume. It’s funny, but it’s not, right? It’s straight hits off the bottle for people who just can’t handle it...
BROOKS: There’s a really great psychiatry professor at Stanford Medical School named Anna Lembke, who has a big new book out about dopamine. And she talks about addictions to video games and gambling and substances and pornography. What they all have in common is that they stimulate dopamine. So if you’re a media addict and you’re watching six hours a day of Fox News or M.S.N.B.C., the reason is because your brain is lighting up like a Christmas tree. The problem is that you’re neutralizing the pleasure you get from that almost immediately, leading you to have to take the drug again and again and again and again. These are the sort of the neurochemical predictors of falling happiness. And then at the more meta level, what you find is that contempt is going to drive love out of your life. There’s a very famous study called the Harvard Study of Adult Development, which is an 80-year longitudinal study of people, when they get old, what do they all have in common if they’re happy and well, and the answer is love. It’s just all you need to know. Happiness is love, full stop...
He focused his research on philanthropy, primarily the motives that lead people to donate money. Out of this research came his first book, in 2006. It was called Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. BROOKS: There was one thing in that book that people either liked or didn’t like, which was that as a general matter — this wasn’t very political, it was more religious in nature — that people who have strong religious commitments give more to all causes and charities, including secular causes and charities, than people who don’t have strong religious commitments. And people who are more religious tend to be more conservative"
Of course, many Americans believe that anyone can take out a business loan and succeed so if you don't succeed it's your fault
So much for the liberal cope that conservatives don't give more to charity - they just give more to religion (even if we pretend that religious institutions don't do charitable work at all)
Which Countries are the Most Polarized? - "Here are all six of the countries considered to be severely polarized:
Argentina
Colombia
United States
South Africa
Spain
Sweden"
Five Case Studies On Politicization - "One day I woke up and they had politicized Ebola. I don’t just mean the usual crop of articles like Republicans Are Responsible For The Ebola Crisis and Democrats Try To Deflect Blame For Ebola Outbreak and Incredibly Awful Democrats Try To Blame Ebola On GOP and NPR Reporter Exposes Right Wing Ebola Hype and Republicans Flip-Flop On Ebola Czars. That level of politicization was pretty much what I expected... I’m talking about something weirder. Over the past few days, my friends on Facebook have been making impassioned posts about how it’s obvious there should/shouldn’t be a quarantine, but deluded people on the other side are muddying the issue... everyone supporting the quarantine has been on the right, and everyone opposing on the left. Weird that so many people suddenly develop strong feelings about a complicated epidemiological issue, which can be exactly predicted by their feelings about everything else... Do Republicans believe certain other things for their own sake, and then adapt their beliefs about Ebola to help buttress their other beliefs? Or do the same factors that made them adopt their narrative in the first place lead them to adopt a similar narrative around Ebola? My guess it it’s a little of both. And then once there’s a critical mass of anti-quarantiners within a party, in-group cohesion and identification effects cascade towards it being a badge of party membership and everybody having to believe it. And if the Democrats are on the other side, saying things you disagree with about every other issue, and also saying that you have to oppose quarantine or else you’re a bad person, then that also incentivizes you to support a quarantine, just to piss them off... At worst this choice to emphasize different issues descends into an unhappy combination of tragedy and farce. The Rotherham scandal was an incident in an English town where criminal gangs had been grooming and blackmailing thousands of young girls, then using them as sex slaves... The Left then proceeded to totally ignore it, and the Right proceeded to never shut up about it for like an entire month... you would think that the systematic rape of thousands of women with police taking no action might be a feminist issue. Or that it might outrage some people on Tumblr, a site which has many flaws but which has never been accused of being slow to outrage. But the goal here isn’t to push some kind of Platonic ideal of what’s important, it’s to support a certain narrative that ties into the Blue Tribe narrative. Rotherham does the opposite of that... All those conservative news sites that couldn’t shut up about Rotherham? Nothing on Ferguson – unless it was to snipe at the Left for “exploiting” it to make a political point. Otherwise, they did their best to stay quiet about it... what I really liked was the Ferguson coverage started branching off into every issue any member of the Blue Tribe has ever cared about... The Red Tribe and Blue Tribe have different narratives, which they use to tie together everything that happens into reasons why their tribe is good and the other tribe is bad... When an issue gets tied into a political narrative, it stops being about itself and starts being about the wider conflict between tribes until eventually it becomes viewed as a Referendum On Everything.
From 2014. Meanwhile in 2020 it became the left supporting quarantines and travel bans
Of course, after this we found out that the Ferguson shooting (Michael Brown) was justified, so. But the left tying it to Climate Change, OTOH...
A Warning From a Democrat in a Red State - The Atlantic - "Sometimes it feels as though all citizens of red states are lumped together, as if everyone here, especially those in rural areas, is the same. In early December when McConnell shot down the $908 billion stimulus plan, Twitter lit up with hatred for Kentuckians. Shortly before the November election, the MSNBC journalist Joy Reid tweeted her dismay with the state’s voters. Her followers responded by talking about the stupidity of Kentuckians, many posting memes of shirtless men with mullets or declarations that all people in the state are white supremacists. After the election, the hashtag #FuckKentucky was popular on Twitter. Social media is not known for its decorum, but what troubled me more than the hashtag was the way Kentuckians were painted with broad strokes as hicks, hillbillies, and a host of derogatory terms who live in “the armpit of America” and who wouldn’t deserve pity even if we were “ravaged by COVID.” These volatile responses trouble me, not only because I don’t like being reduced to a stereotype, but also because that response feeds the GOP rhetoric I hear at home: The liberals just think you’re deplorable, so why not flex your muscle any way you can to spit in their faces?"
I like how the moral of the story is not "don't demonise people" but "don't demonise a state because there're liberals who live there"
Thread by @MoreBirths on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Inter-political marriages are less common today than interracial marriages! @jburnmurdoch reports in a great thread how political polarization among young people is driving down marriage and fertility. How can we maintain marriage and families in such a divided world? An analysis by @FiveThirtyEight not long ago found that only about 4% of new marriages in the US are between Democrats and Republicans (versus 20% of new marriages that are interracial)! Given the political divide between young men and women, this doesn't bode well. But looking at @FiveThirtyEight's data, we see a way forward. A lot of young people in the US are identifying as independent (and they are presumably more moderate and tolerant of difference). And those independents are succeeding with all types!"
Ryan Burge 📊 on X - "The finding that young women are becoming a lot more liberal while young men are becoming a lot more conservative DOES NOT REPLICATE in the Cooperative Election Study. In fact, the two lines have run in almost perfect parallel for the last 15 years. "
How Selective Empathy Can Chip Away At Civil Society - "Konrath collected decades of studies and noticed a very obvious pattern. Starting around 2000, the line starts to slide. More students say it's not their problem to help people in trouble, not their job to see the world from someone else's perspective. By 2009, on all the standard measures, Konrath found, young people on average measure 40 percent less empathetic than my own generation — 40 percent!... when the wife of white nationalist Richard Spencer recently told BuzzFeed he had abused her, the question debated on the lefty Internet was: Why should we care that some woman who chose to ally herself with a nasty racist got herself hurt? Why waste empathy on that?... The new rule for empathy seems to be: reserve it, not for your "enemies," but for the people you believe are hurt, or you have decided need it the most. Empathy, but just for your own team. And empathizing with the other team? That's practically a taboo. And it turns out that this brand of selective empathy is a powerful force. In the past 20 years, psychologists and neurologists have started to look at how empathy actually works, in our brains and our hearts, when we're not thinking about it. And one thing they've found is that "one of the strongest triggers for human empathy is observing some kind of conflict between two other parties," says Fritz Breithaupt, a professor at Indiana University who studies empathy. "Once they take the side, they're drawn into that perspective. And that can lead to very strong empathy and too strong polarization with something you only see this one side and not the other side any longer."... Researchers who study empathy have noticed that it's actually really hard to do what we were striving for in my generation: empathize with people who are different than you are, much less people you don't like. But if researchers set up a conflict, people get into automatic empathy overdrive, with their own team. This new research has scrambled notions of how empathy works as a force in the world. For example, we often think of terrorists as shockingly blind to the suffering of innocents. But Breithaupt and other researchers think of them as classic examples of people afflicted with an "excess of empathy. They feel the suffering of their people." Breithaupt called his new book The Dark Sides of Empathy, because there's a point at which empathy doesn't even look like the kind of universal empathy I was taught in school... Breithaupt proposes an ingenious solution: give up on the idea that when we are "empathizing" we are being altruistic, or helping the less fortunate, or in any way doing good. What we can do when we do empathy, proposes Fritz, is help ourselves. We can learn to see the world through the eyes of a migrant child and a militia leader and a Russian pen pal purely so we can expand our own imaginations, and make our own minds richer. It's selfish empathy. Not saintly, but better than being alone."
When people talk about "empathy", they usually mean weaponised selective empathy
Meme - Patrick Ruffini @PatrickRuffini: "*median Democrat becoming much more consistently liberal, while median Republican stays quite moderate* Remember that it’s Democrats’ massive lurch left that’s driving political polarization and the culture war. Republicans pointing out an extreme thing the left did does not make a culture war. The extreme thing does. “I can’t believe you’re talking about this” usually means the thing is bad and you don’t want to talk about it."