Search Results for polarization
The New Polarization: Tribalism-Populism
It is now common enough to describe so many social dilemmas as a consequence of polarization, or a sharp division between two groups (e.g. conservative-liberal, Republican-Democrat, authoritarian-permissive).
Tribalism is characterized by a powerful cultural or ethnic identity that separates groups. It is based on strong relations of proximity and imagined kinship, as well as a relations rooted in the mutual survival of both the individual members and the group or tribe.
This tribalism and group identification leads to an authoritarianism that can, of course, be dangerous and violent. But what’s particularly interesting is the gravitational pull of some ideological groups. For example, a couple of decades ago scholars and public intellectuals alike would have described U. S. progress as expanding liberalism, and values focused on democracy, capitalism, and freedom. But if you look around today you will find increased authoritarianism – fortified by the presence of God – as well as more botched democracies.
What’s interesting is the new and expanded role of religion in these tribal and polarized times. From a statistical standpoint, religion is losing ground, and has been losing ground for some time. Church attendance is down and fewer people report membership and identification with religious groups. The actual appeal of religion is diminished.
Populism is not reliant on tribalism but still seeks to appeal to the “average” citizen who feels that his or her needs and values are ignored or disrespected. But right wing populism marries nationalism with populist ideology that places cultural blame on elites. Right wing populism also relies on charismatic leaders. Consequently, Donald Trump fails by any standard of competency and decency
But religion maintains its hold on many people and continues to be a symbol of power and psychological identity. The religion-secular divide is one of the most prominent. There are of course “holy” wars in Islam which are integrated into Islamic political life. Islamic holy wars are perhaps the most specific example of a religious-secular divide and the power of the motivating force of religion. The divide between the Islamic holy warrior and other tribal groups is the most sharp, and the least likely to be influenced by some moderating influence.
Other cultures have interestingly incorporated religious traditions into justifications consistent with modern authoritarian governments. China skillfully draws on Confucianism aligned with Marxism in order to justify its core social-secular values with religious traditions.
Given the exactitude and “correctness” associated with religion, it is often used to communicate strength and truth. So, violent and politically extreme groups incorporate religious symbols to communicate their seriousness and sense of strength. It is not uncommon to see crosses on helmets or other paraphernalia. The skull and cross bones printed across the back of a leather jacket has little or nothing to do with the ideology of a particular group but much to do with the expression of the group’s sense of itself as serious – as serious as death.
The Dangerous Trend Toward Polarization and Ideological Purity
The problem of polarization continues and is likely to be the defining political characteristic of contemporary United States. The US populace has been polarized before but it is typically over a single issue. Slavery, for example, in the 19th century. Below is some data from the Pew Foundation on the increasing tendency toward rigid opinions and polarized values.
As the Pew report concluded, the fault is structural; it is not the sort of problem that can be solved by an individual or piece of legislation. Political parties are more ideologically coherent than they’ve been probably at any time since the Civil War. As citizens spend more time talking to those who are like them – which is intensified in the current social media environment – they become more easily reinforced for their particular perspective. The literature by Sunstein and others conclude that this mediated world of interaction with others who hold the same opinion as you do causes those opinions to become rigid and increasingly unmovable. And the dynamic of polarization is increasing. But with the realignment of ideologies that started over the issue of civil rights in the 20th century, ideological purity became a bigger factor in American elections.
Ideological purity is a dangerous form of essentialism. One’s beliefs become so strong, and the sense of ingroup and outgroup become so clarified, that perceptions of the outgroup are assumed to be biologically natural.
The Table above shows that from 1994 to 2014 a larger percent of Republicans became consistently conservative. And a larger percent of Democrats were consistently liberal. The two groups – liberals and conservatives – consistently drifted toward more rigid ideological opinions that do not vary and are less subject to moderation and persuasive influences.
The data reflected in the bar graph above shows that the two parties have increasingly unfavorable attitudes about the other. From 1994 to 2014 the unfavorable attitudes about the other party has more than doubled. I don’t need to reiterate the danger of these data. They make working together and solving problems in any sort of bipartisan way almost impossible.
Post Truth
Posted by Donald Ellis
Since the ideas surrounding truth and post truth are circulating again given the polarization of American society, I thought I would republish this from Jan 4, 2021. More on related issues to come.
This enigmatic term – “post truth” – has been around for some time now and it is confusing for most people. Since the Oxford English Dictionary concluded that the concept of post truth was significant enough that it was identified as word of the year in 2016, we are certainly justified in trying to make more sense of it. What does it mean and how did the concept of post truth get so central to the interpretation of some important ideas in contemporary culture? It is no accident that the concept of post truth exists at the same time as ideas such as fake news. What follows is an explanation of post truth and how it informs the notion of fake news.
Briefly, post truth is the idea that objective facts are not so important in shaping opinion as opposed to emotional appeal and personal beliefs. The “anti-maskers who refused to wear a mask or quarantine during the Covid crisis because they didn’t recognize the validity of the science behind immunology or network theory are one example of a group of people who represent a post truth mentality. Some theorists have argued that political policies are no longer developed on the basis of facts and the distinction between fake and real is unimportant. Consequently, democracies become emotional political processes.
If facts become unimportant or nonexistent then they become victims of a strong social construction; that is, it becomes possible to have everyday citizens be the determinants of what gets defined as a “fact.” There is something terribly paradoxical about this. Facts are supposed to be the sine qua non of stable truth. If anything should not be subject to the whims of human emotion and variability, it is facts. How can you argue that facts are pushed to the background and unimportant? Are not facts supposed to be stubborn and true? The answer, within the post truth theoretical tradition, is “no” facts are subject to the same social influences as any other construct and hold no privileged position in political discourse. Facts can be redefined, manipulated, and reinterpreted to mean anything and the key issue is how many converts can I create.
Trump set about the business of delegitimizing the press. Of course, the press is the one institution that holds Trump’s feet to the fire. The single institution that fact checks him, exposes his lies and manipulations, and records his indiscretions. So, it makes sense that he would go after the press and he did so by making the distinction between fake news and real news. Of course, real news was only stories supportive of Trump. Anything critical was labeled fake news.
Facts are under siege. They are becoming highly politicized where people express their own facts – what they believe to be facts or want to be facts – in order to turn the concept into a rhetorical weapon. The term fake news is a good example. It is appropriated by political actors in order to attack opponents. The concept of “fake” is no longer a measurable or precise definitional question but one of political authority because the issue is who gets to control the definition in order to use it for his or her own purposes and is therefore in a position to dismiss others.
Trump’s appropriation of the term fake news is so extreme as to be laughable. A skilled manipulator of meaning will exploit certain commonalities of meaning in order to lend them some credibility. Those who accuse liberals on the left as being socialist have been effective because certain concepts and ideas that emerge from the political position termed “liberalism” do in fact have at least some similarity to positions emerging from theories of socialism. That is why those who attack liberals by deploying the word socialist have been successful. They conflate the two terms (liberal and socialist) sufficiently such that the relationship between the two terms is plausible and the narrower more aggressive and distasteful ideas associated with “socialism” are more easily transferred to “liberalism.” But Trump declared even before the election that if he did not win the process was rigged. He baldly asserted the “fact” that there were election improprieties even though no charge was ever accepted and not a single claim supported.
It is clearly possible to cite more precise meaning and fact-based issues that distinguish liberalism from socialism, but this is not my concern at the moment. Because the role of communication is so central to democracies, these democracies are saturated with disagreement over what is “real” and what is “false.”
of this essay will examine the nature of democracy and how one discourse follows another in terms of how much accepted disagreement it can tolerate. I will clarify how post truth rejects a rational political discourse that results in consensus; thus, post truth contends that maintaining a multitude of political voices, all contained in their subjective reality, is a more accurate reflection of the work of democracies and must grapple with the idea that logical and rational problem-solving is the definitive approach to managing differences, which is the goal of democratic processing.
Dealing with Extremists
One of the biggest problems facing deliberation is dealing with extremists. Below are five qualities of deliberation that benefit engagement with culturally and ideologically divergent groups. These five are followed by additional qualities of deliberation that are extended to the communication which is the engine that runs deliberation. As Ercan writes: “Deliberative democrats put communication at the heart of politics and emphasize the pursuit of reciprocal understanding between those who have different frameworks and ideologies.” The list is not meant to be exhaustive.
1.Because problems are complex and humans are limited, we have the problem of bounded rationality. Deliberation makes it possible for individuals to step beyond the boundaries of their own abilities and knowledge. Bounded rationality means we are limited to our own knowledge and abilities, but deliberation allows us to participate in the intelligence of others and step beyond those boundaries.
2.Deliberation forces a particular form of justification. At its base, deliberation is founded on “skilled disagreement.” There is much to skilled disagreement (e.g. a task focus, knowledgeable use of reasoning and evidence, perspective taking etc.). The deliberative forms of justification imply a comparative advantages orientation toward moving up from a personal opinion to a group judgment. Strong justificatory criteria help conflicting groups progress from the constrictions of selfish interest to choices made on the basis of inclusion of others.
3. Deliberation between conflicting groups increases cohesive consensus. The decision to subject communication to stricter argumentative criteria – even exceeding the boundaries of one’s own rationality – stimulates decisions that are more public, more shared by the collection of group members. The tensions between divergent groups that hold extreme opinions are such that the commitment to decisions is important if there is going to be progress implementing change. Deliberative communication is process oriented and the process must be perceived as fair and committed; the principles of deliberative communication confer substantial legitimacy since they are grounded in the individuals most affected by the outcomes. The source of legitimacy in the relationship between conflicting groups is not the will of the majority, but the outcome of the idea formation process.
4.The assembly effect the group experiences is beneficial. Errors and misinformation can be corrected, and deliberation does reduce variance, that is, groups converge after talking. Group members have more confidence in their judgments following deliberation and their confidence is high regardless of decision quality. Some cognitive convergence is necessary and communicative contact is the first necessary criterion. The assembly effect recognizes the non-summative nature of the group discussion.
5.Perspective taking is a crucial cognitive skill that allows one to morally appreciate and accommodate the position of someone with a different perspective than your own. Participants in a conflict must have the moral ability to “understand” the position of the other person or group. Thus, an Israeli must understand and respect the position of a Palestinian even if he disagrees with it. This is the core of deliberative disagreement. We can reject the charge that deliberation is too idealistic. On the contrary, deliberation will eventually be required, and authentic communication will engage the other as we expect.
For more on this kind of thinking see:
Landemore, H. (2013). Democratic reason. Princeton University Press.
Ercan, S. (2017). From polarization to pluralization: A deliberative approach to illiberal cultures, International Political Science Review. 38, 114-127.
Fake News and The Semantics of Post Truth
Since the ideas surrounding truth and post truth are circulating again given the polarization of American society, I thought I would republish this from Jan 4, 2021. More on related issues to come.
This enigmatic term – “post truth” – has been around for some time now and it is confusing for most people. Since the Oxford English Dictionary concluded that the concept of post truth was significant enough that it was identified as word of the year in 2016, we are certainly justified in trying to make more sense of it. What does it mean and how did the concept of post truth get so central to the interpretation of some important ideas in contemporary culture? It is no accident that the concept of post truth exists at the same time as ideas such as fake news. What follows is an explanation of post truth and how it informs the notion of fake news.
Briefly, post truth is the idea that objective facts are not so important in shaping opinion as opposed to emotional appeal and personal beliefs. The “anti-maskers who refused to wear a mask or quarantine during the Covid crisis because they didn’t recognize the validity of the science behind immunology or network theory are one example of a group of people who represent a post truth mentality. Some theorists have argued that political policies are no longer developed on the basis of facts and the distinction between fake and real is unimportant. Consequently, democracies become emotional political processes.
If facts become unimportant or nonexistent then they become victims of a strong social construction; that is, it becomes possible to have everyday citizens be the determinants of what gets defined as a “fact.” There is something terribly paradoxical about this. Facts are supposed to be the sine qua non of stable truth. If anything should not be subject to the whims of human emotion and variability, it is facts. How can you argue that facts are pushed to the background and unimportant? Are not facts supposed to be stubborn and true? The answer, within the post truth theoretical tradition, is “no” facts are subject to the same social influences as any other construct and hold no privileged position in political discourse. Facts can be redefined, manipulated, and reinterpreted to mean anything and the key issue is how many converts can I create.
Trump set about the business of delegitimizing the press. Of course, the press is the one institution that holds Trump’s feet to the fire. The single institution that fact checks him, exposes his lies and manipulations, and records his indiscretions. So, it makes sense that he would go after the press and he did so by making the distinction between fake news and real news. Of course, real news was only stories supportive of Trump. Anything critical was labeled fake news.
Facts are under siege. They are becoming highly politicized where people express their own facts – what they believe to be facts or want to be facts – in order to turn the concept into a rhetorical weapon. The term fake news is a good example. It is appropriated by political actors in order to attack opponents. The concept of “fake” is no longer a measurable or precise definitional question but one of political authority because the issue is who gets to control the definition in order to use it for his or her own purposes and is therefore in a position to dismiss others.
Trump’s appropriation of the term fake news is so extreme as to be laughable. A skilled manipulator of meaning will exploit certain commonalities of meaning in order to lend them some credibility. Those who accuse liberals on the left as being socialist have been effective because certain concepts and ideas that emerge from the political position termed “liberalism” do in fact have at least some similarity to positions emerging from theories of socialism. That is why those who attack liberals by deploying the word socialist have been successful. They conflate the two terms (liberal and socialist) sufficiently such that the relationship between the two terms is plausible and the narrower more aggressive and distasteful ideas associated with “socialism” are more easily transferred to “liberalism.” But Trump declared even before the election that if he did not win the process was rigged. He baldly asserted the “fact” that there were election improprieties even though no charge was ever accepted and not a single claim supported.
It is clearly possible to cite more precise meaning and fact-based issues that distinguish liberalism from socialism, but this is not my concern at the moment. Because the role of communication is so central to democracies, these democracies are saturated with disagreement over what is “real” and what is “false.”
of this essay will examine the nature of democracy and how one discourse follows another in terms of how much accepted disagreement it can tolerate. I will clarify how post truth rejects a rational political discourse that results in consensus; thus, post truth contends that maintaining a multitude of political voices, all contained in their subjective reality, is a more accurate reflection of the work of democracies and must grapple with the idea that logical and rational problem-solving is the definitive approach to managing differences, which is the goal of democratic processing.
Civility is More Than Good Manners
We must continue to underscore the concept of “civility” for democratic deliberation and political problem solving. It remains the case that too often civility is thought of as a simple nicety that makes things more pleasant and is the result of little more than good manners.
It is no accident that as civility declines in our polarized political culture argumentative complexity and sophistication suffers. So how do we attenuate this marked drop in civility and break the cycle of mutual incivility? How do we get both policymakers and ordinary citizens to at least approach the deliberative ideal? Alas, it is possible to make progress in this area.
Deteriorating civility causes citizens to be less trusting of democratic institutions. Institutions lose credibility and appear to be failing when they are characterized by diminished civility. Moreover, the spectacle of incivility draws attention away from the core content of the conflict. Citizens pay more heed to the displays of incivility than they do to the content of the messages exchanged between the conflicting parties. And, when participants in the democratic process are not paying attention to the core issues, they are more influenced by stereotypes and partisan cues which serve as reptilian responses that are not comprised of the thoughtfulness we desire during deliberation.
Three Tips on How To Be More Civil
Start with even a modicum of respect. Liberals often think conservatives are unevolved and less educated. And they waste no time communicating this. And conservatives believe liberals to be out of touch and naïve. Any conversation is going to be improved if I feel the warmth of your affection and respect. Everyone develops a political consciousness over time that is the result of multiple influences including family, education, social environment, and ethnopolitical identification. Take the time to understand, to quote the vernacular, “where someone is coming from”. Personally, I’m interested in why people believe what they do and how they came to those beliefs. Consequently, I find it useful, more respectful, and less likely to drift into extreme polarization if I ask questions and make contributions in a more engaged and circumscribed manner.
Listen fully, and don’t stop listening just when you hear something you disagree with. You have to treat yourself as a filter sifting through ideas but ultimately letting it all filter through before responding. Otherwise, you run the risk of quickly categorizing the other person and then never getting beyond those category boundaries. Civility will be emergent if the other person(s) in the conversation is convinced that they have your attention. Maintaining this attention, and the attendant civility, requires cognitive effort.
Ask a lot of open-ended questions. I am often surprised at the willingness of some people to blurt out an opinion that is clearly harsh and rigid with no consideration given to the context or presence of others. Just go to your neighborhood bar that has the news on television – a rarity these days for just the reason I’m talking about – and see how long it takes for somebody to curse at the screen and yell at Hillary Clinton, or Obama, or Trump. If I ask a question such as “What do you mean by that…” or “Tell me how you came to that conclusion…” or “What do you think about some issue” then these questions are going to open up the other person and require them to expand on challenging assertions and charges. Making confrontational accusatory statements or directly challenging the other result in two troublesome possibilities, namely, the categorization of the other which narrows the relationship between the two, or the perception of interpersonal threat which exaggerates differences and creates even wider gaps differentiating the two parties.
Learning civility helps people become explicable to each other and makes for deeper conversations. Ideally, the parties to the confrontation would engage in reciprocal conversation such that they would express themselves in a such a manner that they find out more about what they believe themselves. The interactional self finds its own image and the other in the network of interactions that he or she occupies. Civility is foundational. So, next Thanksgiving confront your right-wing uncle or your left-wing cousin in a manner consistent with the civility necessary for reflective conversation.
How Did We Allow Trump to Happen?
Yes, Trump lost the election. But he got 74 million votes: That means there is still work to do. There has been much analysis of Trump –his style, inelegance, crudity, and manipulation. But there has been considerably less analysis of the audience side of the relationship. What is it about our culture that allowed Trump to thrive and be elected in the first place?
I’m concerned about and threatened by the general intellectual (rather anti-intellectual) nature of our citizenry. Trump was a historical mistake, an anomaly, a monster from another planet, the trickster capable of fooling the creatures that grow in democracies.
Our democracy, and the Constitution that warrants it, is designed to manage and control differences. That’s what systems of control do. Political cultures are composed of differences and those differences can be exaggerated and out-of-control with asymmetrical power relations, or they can mollify differences. And the history of our democracy is one of expanding inclusion; that is, demagogues like Trump are held in check while the legitimate political class tries to understand the makeup of the electorate.
The citizenry of a democracy is supposed to hold primary agency and need to be prepared given effective educational and socializing systems. In a word, too many Americans (shall we say 74 million of them) were easily duped or at a minimum failing the cognitive requirements of sound political decision-making. I typically ask someone who voted for Trump what it was they were imagining. Given his history of corruption, fabrications, narcissism, and moral turpitude what justified a vote for Trump. Usually, and this is the case with the Christian right also, they recognize Trump’s character but do not care. How did we develop into a political culture that does not care about respect for others and generally moral behavior? There are three areas that must change in order to avoid future “Trumps.”
First, our polarization stretches us to opposite poles of opinion. The guardrails protecting us from extreme language and exaggerated points along with poor evidence-based reasoning have come tumbling down. People express themselves more extremely and make it impossible to find common intersections of agreement. Polarization is not the same as disagreement. The participants in our political culture must learn to disagree and maintain respect for an opponent that is an adversary and not an enemy.
Secondly, we have damaged one of our founding creeds which is pluralism. Our anxieties over cultural differences continue to deepen even in the face of calls for diversity in a society replete with messages about respect for differences. Structural discrimination is a continuing problem and will be dependent on civic practices of persuasion over coercion and toleration rather than resistance.
Finally, I have a gut feeling that our educational system is failing many students in the basic practices of democracy especially argumentation and decision-making. There should be a redoubled effort to return to teaching strategies of rhetorical practices and the benefits of evidence-based reasoning.
Teaching public life and the opportunities for an increased unity of public goals is a direct response to the threats of Donald Trump and will guarantee a citizenry prepared to resist the demagogic aspirations of some future Trump.
New Ways to Argue in America
America has always benefited from the tradition of rational discourse. It is part of our political DNA. And more than many other political cultures, we have at least approached the Habermasian ideal of moral communication conditions and the value of the best argument. The bases of American political history – that is, the foundational ideas upon which the nation is based did not fundamentally begin with religious precepts, the divine right of kings, or an oligarch’s economic theories. This is not to say, however, that we are not a religious country. We are. But a country in which Jeffersonian pragmatics and democracy were more important to our founding ideals then kings or religions.
There is no arguing with kings and religions. They have an immovable set of principles and everything is measured against those principles. The epistemology of ignorance begins with moral absolutes and the desire to consistently reproduce their truth value. It is what Jacob Siegel writing in Tablet calls the arguer-commander or that person who believes himself to be the deliverer of justice. It used to be the case that the American tradition of rational empiricism in the political realm sought truth and logically justified inferential conclusions. In the true scientific sense, it was possible to change your mind, be wrong, or accumulate new information that intellectually forced one to change or consider new options.
But the argument-commander, who rejects science for example, emerges more from a tradition of religiosity than deliberation. This new form of argument is populated by people who do not represent the tradition of reasoning from empirical premise to conclusion but consider themselves rhetorically untouchable. For example, a racist who holds a set of distorted beliefs about racial characteristics that he or she considers inviolate, thereby concludes that certain issues are beyond dispute. The person will consider a right to be beyond argumentation.
And holding these moral commandments that are so true they are beyond justification is not the sole province only of the left or the right – although it is more characteristic of the right – because both positions can hold commanding precepts that the arguers are more interested in perpetrating than in some type of genuine deliberation.
Holding a moral-political position that one considers so fundamentally true that it releases him or her from the normal requirements of reason and reflection is related to the polarization in American society.
The basic component of the epistemology of ignorance is that ignorance underscores distortions in thinking such as racism, sexism, or ethnic stereotypes and establishes arguments based on different assumptions; it has the potential to reveal the role of power in the construction of what is known and provide a lens for the political values at work in knowledge practices. Rather, they play a role in promoting racism and white privilege. But ignorance is not simply a tool of oppression wielded by the powerful. It can also be a strategy for survival, an important tool to wield against white privilege and white supremacy.
There are distinct and deep-rooted traditions of rational empiricism and religious sermonizing in American history. But these two modes seem to have become fused together in a new American mode of argumentation that is validated by elite institutions like the universities, The New York Times, and especially on the new technology platforms where battles over discourse are now waged. Intermingling the technical vocabulary of reasoning with endless moral generalities about rights and truths, held passionately by individuals, results in the corruption of defensible discourse. The arguer-commander is animated by rhetorical purgatory—unremitting racial oppression that never improves despite myths about progress and society as a ceaseless subjection to identity assault. “In possession of justice, the arguer-commander is free at any moment to throw off the cloak of reason and proclaim you a bigot—racist, sexist, transphobe—who must be fired from your job and socially shunned.”(See Siegel reference above)
Practitioners of the new argument bolster their rationalist veneer with constant appeals to forms of authority that come in equal parts from biology and elite credentialing. Again, as Siegel points out “Have you noticed how many people, especially online, start their statements by telling you their profession or their identity group: As a privileged white woman; as a doctoral student in applied linguistics; as a progressive Jewish BIPOC paleontologist —and so on?”
In the end, the execution of Michael Brown, George Floyd, Treyvon Martin and others is a white supremacy lethal public health issue that should be treated as such. I will continue to make the case but increasingly “I don’t know how to argue in America anymore.”
New Ways to Argue in America
America has always benefited from the tradition of rational discourse. It is part of our political DNA. And more than many other political cultures, we have at least approached the Habermasian ideal of moral communication conditions and the value of the best argument. The bases of American political history – that is, the foundational ideas upon which the nation is based did not fundamentally begin with religious precepts, the divine right of kings, or an oligarch’s economic theories. This is not to say, however, that we are not a religious country. We are. But a country in which Jeffersonian pragmatics and democracy were more important to our founding ideals then kings or religions.
There is no arguing with kings and religions. They have an immovable set of principles and everything is measured against those principles. The epistemology of ignorance begins with moral absolutes and the desire to consistently reproduce their truth value. It is what Jacob Siegel writing in Tablet calls the arguer-commander or that person who believes himself to be the deliverer of justice. It used to be the case that the American tradition of rational empiricism in the political realm sought truth and logically justified inferential conclusions. In the true scientific sense, it was possible to change your mind, be wrong, or accumulate new information that intellectually forced one to change or consider new options.
But the argument-commander, who rejects science for example, emerges more from a tradition of religiosity than deliberation. This new form of argument is populated by people who do not represent the tradition of reasoning from empirical premise to conclusion but consider themselves rhetorically untouchable. For example, a racist who holds a set of distorted beliefs about racial characteristics that he or she considers inviolate, thereby concludes that certain issues are beyond dispute. The person will consider a right to be beyond argumentation.
And holding these moral commandments that are so true they are beyond justification is not the sole province only of the left or the right – although it is more characteristic of the right – because both positions can hold commanding precepts that the arguers are more interested in perpetrating than in some type of genuine deliberation.
Holding a moral-political position that one considers so fundamentally true that it releases him or her from the normal requirements of reason and reflection is related to the polarization in American society.
The basic component of the epistemology of ignorance is that ignorance underscores distortions in thinking such as racism, sexism, or ethnic stereotypes and establishes arguments based on different assumptions; it has the potential to reveal the role of power in the construction of what is known and provide a lens for the political values at work in knowledge practices. Rather, they play a role in promoting racism and white privilege. But ignorance is not simply a tool of oppression wielded by the powerful. It can also be a strategy for survival, an important tool to wield against white privilege and white supremacy.
There are distinct and deep-rooted traditions of rational empiricism and religious sermonizing in American history. But these two modes seem to have become fused together in a new American mode of argumentation that is validated by elite institutions like the universities, The New York Times, and especially on the new technology platforms where battles over discourse are now waged. Intermingling the technical vocabulary of reasoning with endless moral generalities about rights and truths, held passionately by individuals, results in the corruption of defensible discourse. The arguer-commander is animated by rhetorical purgatory—unremitting racial oppression that never improves despite myths about progress and society as a ceaseless subjection to identity assault. “In possession of justice, the arguer-commander is free at any moment to throw off the cloak of reason and proclaim you a bigot—racist, sexist, transphobe—who must be fired from your job and socially shunned.”(See Siegel reference above)
Practitioners of the new argument bolster their rationalist veneer with constant appeals to forms of authority that come in equal parts from biology and elite credentialing. Again, as Siegel points out “Have you noticed how many people, especially online, start their statements by telling you their profession or their identity group: As a privileged white woman; as a doctoral student in applied linguistics; as a progressive Jewish BIPOC paleontologist —and so on?”
In the end, the execution of Michael Brown, George Floyd, Treyvon Martin and others is a white supremacy lethal public health issue that should be treated as such. I will continue to make the case but increasingly “I don’t know how to argue in America anymore.”
We Probably Need to Reinstate the Fairness Doctrine
The problem of polarization continues and is likely to be the defining political characteristic of contemporary United States. The US populace has been polarized before but it is typically over a single issue. Slavery, for example, in the 19th century. Below is some data from the Pew Foundation on the increasing tendency toward rigid opinions and polarized values.
As the Pew report concluded, the fault is structural; it is not the sort of problem that can be solved by an individual or piece of legislation. Political parties are more ideologically coherent than they’ve been probably at any time since the Civil War. As citizens spend more time talking to those who are like them – which is intensified in the current social media environment – they become more easily reinforced for their particular perspective. The literature by Sunstein and others conclude that this mediated world of interaction with others who hold the same opinion as you do causes those opinions to become rigid and increasingly unmovable. And the dynamic of polarization is increasing. But with the realignment of ideologies that started over the issue of civil rights in the 20th century, ideological purity became a bigger factor in American elections.
Ideological purity is a dangerous form of essentialism. One’s beliefs become so strong, and the sense of ingroup and outgroup become so clarified, that perceptions of the outgroup are assumed to be biologically natural.
Some data suggest that the problem of bias is characteristic of both liberals and conservatives (Baum and Groeling, 2008, Political Communication) are responsible for polarization because both parties have media outlets that are biased in one direction or the other, and attract large audiences. It might be time to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine”, which legally guarantees equal time and presentation of both sides of an issue. And although such a political policy would be difficult if not impossible to institute, it is a step in the right direction with respect to the benefits of hearing both sides and suppressing the power of money in campaigns.
The Table above shows that from 1994 to 2014 a larger percent of Republicans became consistently conservative. And a larger percent of Democrats were consistently liberal. The two groups – liberals and conservatives – consistently drifted toward more rigid ideological opinions that do not vary and are less subject to moderation and persuasive influences.
The data reflected in the bar graph above shows that the two parties have increasingly unfavorable attitudes about the other. From 1994 to 2014 the unfavorable attitudes about the other party has more than doubled. I don’t need to reiterate the danger of these data. They make working together and solving problems in any sort of bipartisan way almost impossible.
Note: An earlier version of this posting was October 30, 2019.
Intellectual Tolerance
The desire to be civil, in its most robust form, is a desire to be moral, to treat others humanely, with respect, toleration and consideration. But if one wants to be moral, one must also know that in order to be good, sometimes one cannot be nice. This dilemma holds for making democratic based arguments as well.
The imperative to treat others civilly is never total because sometimes a moral good is won in rudeness. To display disrespect or enmity, to mock or shun, to insult or shame – these can be moral gestures. For even as we need to respect humanity, valuing human beings can sometimes require disrespecting some of them, precisely the ones who deny or damage our shared humanity. To show such people respect and consideration might let them have their way a bit, let them continue in their destructive ways.
I believe that righteous incivility is sometimes better than civility and that it can indicate a pattern of reasoning we morally need. Civility typically requires conformity to social conventions that symbolically signal prosocial values; we follow customs of courtesy to display respect, consideration and toleration for each other.
Democracies demand engagement, especially intellectual and argumentative engagement. Argument and disagreement are the “stuff” of democracy and the playing field in which battles take place. It’s just shy of impossible to live in and value democracy as just described without offending someone. It is perilously easy to make an argumentative point – one that is presented honestly and clearly and without undue passion – and still appear intolerant, uncivil, or just plain mean.
Stanley Fish has written eloquently about the consequences of students who are blind to anything but offenses when they are exposed to arguments alien to their own perspectives. Some students are so concerned with micro-aggressions and “safe spaces” (that would be spaces where there is no vigorous discussion or intellectual challenges) that they demand simple differences of opinion to be sufficient reason for sanctioning the speech of the other. The students claim that they have a right not to be exposed to unpleasant opinions, or perspectives that make them uncomfortable.
Well, democracy is advanced citizenship. You need experience, training, and practice. And a cultural recognition of these qualities is less clear and intense as it used to be. Subject matter in high schools and colleges used to include more rhetoric and argumentation along with clear demonstrations of the value of debate. Such instruction fostered mental strength and resilience.
There will never be simple categories composed of definitions beyond reproach when it comes to defining hate speech, acceptable free speech, or the limits of tolerance and instability. And controversies, boundaries, and responsibilities will always be a little fuzzy when it comes to expectations about their definitions. But none of this makes for a slippery post truth world that has no meaning. On the contrary, sharper sense of meaning will emerge as a result of engaged and tolerant interaction. The solution, then, is equivalent to the problem; what is called for is more speech and passionate engagement.
Peace and Conflict Politics 