Polarization

Thomas B. Edsall quotes a study in his Times article: "...concluded that “social media shapes polarization through the following social, cognitive, and technological processes: partisan selection, message content, and platform design and algorithm.” Although they cautioned that “social media is unlikely to be the main driver of polarization, we posit that it is often a key facilitator.”

I mean modes of communication will of course be a factor in what is going on. It's not just the 4 network's news and the newspapers now, information comes flying in from everywhere, and it's hard to evaluate the sources when it's not moderate network news.

It gives me a chance to reflect on my own polarization. I think my polarization has come at the hands at watching the criminality of Trump, the loss of accountability, and the realization that under Trump the right doesn't want a political discussion, they just want power moves and dada lying, death cult, and just to wreck up the place to prove the federal government doesn't work. I'm against that. As the concentration of wealth furthers, we seem to have taken 2 steps back. With the loss of healthcare for women threats, the rise of book banning, and the attack on minorities, things have been really bad. Now if that makes me polarized, that the right seems to be really winning these days, I guess I'm polarized. 

One line struck me, that people are more ideological. It's not being ideological to see the concentration on wealth, the loss of the middle class, the kind of third worlding of America. 

I want to have counterexamples put to me, I want a discussion and I only want to get my way through democratic methods, not by cheating or dastard tricks. I don't forgive the stealing of 2 justices from Obama, and I find the choices of Kavanagh and Barrett offensive, and it's having long term consequences. Further the cult like behavior of the wife of a justice, has made me question his objectivity and shown that once in a cult, another cult is tempting. 

They say, do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy? I spend time in the park and I asked people who they were going to vote for in the mayoral primary. Only one person could name one candidate and someone even made fun of me voting. The eventual winner didn't even make my top five in the first ranked voting in NYC.

I read r/conservative, and I find it really weird to have beliefs attributed to me, so perhaps conservatives aren't a death cult, and maybe I do apologize for Biden more than needs to be done. I would love to have a real discussion with people who are conservative, but 2 of my conservative friends I don't think I'll ever talk to again because one didn't think January 6th was a threat to our democracy, and another believes in the big lie. I told a woman at the park who thought January 6th was a protest, not an insurrection, that I couldn't talk to her because we didn't share the same reality. I've had 3 breaks. Not to talk to these people ever again.

I don't care if you're conservative, just don't be a fucking asshole. My polarization is a reaction to assholes. Lying is a profoundly anti-social act. Wanting to wreck America to get your way ideologically pushes me in the other direction. 

I still discuss with people who don't like taxes, who vote conservative because of that. I still discuss with people who want less government, instead of more. I think it's an important dialectic. I just don't experience it as sincere most of the time any more. I don't think the progressive viewpoint is always right, but it's hard to see where it's going wrong lately, because it's never getting its way. 

My grandparents voted for Reagan. They grew up during the depression and witnessed the largest expansion of government in the history of America. They are part of the great generation. I don't think government can solve every problem and people need to take individual responsibility. You can combine the two like Clinton did. Clinton by the way was to the right of Nixon. The drift of politics has moved things so right, that I'm not going to be unpolarized in my lifetime, I don't expect. 

The idea that we would move so far left is a delusion. The problem with Russia and China's communism was that it wasn't that so much as it was authoritarian. They ditched the left politics in favor of authoritarianism. That is what has stayed. That is the danger. And it's obviously a growing danger in America. I don't think we need a right wing paradise just because the right fears their straw man of communism. If that's polarization, then I guess I'm polarized. I think relatively I have good epistemic character and look for counterexamples and ways in which my ways of thinking might be limited. I don't imagine I contain all the truths. I would like a good faith discussion, and not just script flipping. The lurid carnival barkers on the right don't deserve my attention. I seek out reasonable articulate views on the right but I'm so often disappointed. We're not going to get rid of the internet. The genie is out of the bottle. Education is our only hope. And I don't hold out much hope for that. Video games, streaming and social media are more interesting than reading, writing and arithmetic. Trump's model of power grabs, backroom decisions and intimidation are not a good example of democracy. 

Maybe America needs a step back to take some steps forward. But it's been a dark, painful and stressful  time. I've lost many friends. I see America segregating, the right in Florida and Texas, and the left into cities. The farmers in middle America have an outsized vote, and they swung right. What happened to Wisconsin? All my friends move to Minnesota. 

I recently read Inherent Vice, around the time of the Manson trials. People in Hollywood thought the bacchanalia had gone too far. Polanski filming Sharon Tate's threesomes and drug use in the household had brought the Manson murders upon them. That's clearly not true, and somewhere in there, the cult members made a choice to give up their responsibility and free will, even if they experimented with acid and other drugs. America likes to draw the wrong puritanical conclusions. 

If America knows what's good for it, there's going to be a swing left in voting. Biden will get a second term. Trump will not be allowed to run again, and perhaps serve some time for his crimes, like the other insurrectionists. 

And I'll entertain ideas of banning abortions when the people who imagine it to be wrong stop doing it. You can't be against it if you've had one, or you've asked someone who carries you child to have one. That eliminates most. 

"Of course, no one should care that Boebert allegedly had two abortions—people of all political leanings have abortions!—we just care that she wants to ban abortion nationwide and deprive other people of the choice she reportedly made. The shameless hypocrisy is the problem." (Source)