Our polarized political landscape is not a dead end
We've been here before and there is hope for the future
When journalist and social critic Walter Lippman claimed a century ago:
“ We are unsettled to the very roots of our being . . . We have changed our environment more quickly than we know how to change ourselves.”
he could have easily been referring to the era we currently live in.
In this new millenium, each passing year, especially during election cycles, distrust and animosity between ideological opponents is increasing.
Many citizens do feel today, like Lippman described in the 1920’s, less grounded in their old assumptions as if the carpet was quickly being dragged under their feet.
Respect for long standing institutions like mainstream media, scientific bodies, governments, and so forth, is also rapidly fading.
How about our personal lives ?
Well, passionate discussions, between friends and family members, on important social issues or political ideas tend to quickly heat up at best or be avoided altogether at worst.
I’m old enough to remember a time when we were able to debate at the diner table with our families. It was once possible to be in a heated conversation with loved ones and still be willing to share an extra glass of wine once the scrimmage was over.
These days, lighter subjects are addressed.
Since people will most likely activate their auto-censorship mode in the face of social adversity, the paradox is that this loosely superficial consensus in public turns into a truly fragmented landscape when you examine election results and polls.
One thing is for sure though, citizens feel more and more socially isolated, less empowered to change public affairs and have grown increasingly cynical of the political process.
Acclaimed political scientist Robert Putnam argues that the decline in what he termed “social capital” represents the driving force behind this trend. In his bestselling book Bowling Alone back in 2000, Putnam was already highlighting the long term trends that led to where we stand today.
In his work, he thoroughly describes the slow descent of political, civic, religious and informal social participation that brought the collapse of the “community” at large. Thus fragmenting American society. And since the US and Canada are highly aligned at a high level culturally speaking, his analysis extends across the US border.
Society, he argues, has gradually swung from a community oriented social structure to espousing more individuality since the 1960’s. Thus opening the possibility for polarized politics. The post World War II conformity gave way to a gradual breakdown of all formal structures that glued citizens together.
The United States of 2020 came to represent the end game for this trend as liberals and conservatives (read Democrats and Republicans) engaged in an all out rhetorical warfare, all while ignoring facts, basic decency and actual results in real life.
For example, what many social network enthusiasts coined “Trump Derangement Syndrome” last year, left leaning activists (and even mainstream news media for that matter) demonized, challenged every single policy coming from the Trump white house; even when the factual outcomes on the ground turned out to be positive.
Economy was booming, unemployment within minority groups was at an all time low, energy prices were down, no wars were started abroad, a first in decades by a president, and so on and so forth.
It did not matter, facts are unfortunately a secondary variable in a polarized political world.
In the opposing camp, vocal conservatives and right wing supporters have been aggressive as well towards their ideological opponents and cooked up their own recipe of hyperbolic and exaggerated rhetoric such as tagging the left as new communists or hard core socialists for every social program proposed.
Everybody notices how political behaviours have been increasingly polarizing. So much so that real collaboration between political opponents have not only become rare but even undesirable according the hard nosed militants within some political organization.
When average individuals do not engage in politics as much as before or they don’t attend Knights of Columbus gatherings like before or any other formalized social activities, Putnam suggests that people lack the social capital necessary to level and harmonise political positions.
Still think this diagnosis is overblown or just another journalist talking-point ?
Look at the following charts from the PEW research center.
On distrust in government, while there are short-term and circumstantial increases, such as the 9/11 era, the long term slide since the 1950’s is pretty clear.
On political polarization, there are clear signs that "centrists” are decreasing. We could also call centrists the type of governing representatives and citizens you would normally need in strong supply to make political compromise possible.
Democrats vs Republicans in the US, Liberals vs Conservatives in Canada, the names differ but the same dynamics are at work. Mixed and nuanced positions are decreasing. Picking a side as become an increasing prerequisite in public discourse. Political leaders are constantly pushed in adopting clear-cut policy positions.
The climate debate is the most telling in this respect as you can only be a Greta Thunberg style activist willing to halt our current way of life in a few years regardless of other costs or a climate-skeptic lunatic aiming to destroy the environment long term for short term monetary gains.
As if most people were fundamentally in either of these two camps. Life in general and public policies specifically are surely more complicated than slogans or utopian societal constructs (but let’s move on).
In Canada, where a form of consensus-style politics represents a greater force (see my prior essay as reference), the tendency recently has been a shift to the left of all parties which triggered the creation / renewal of other political parties on the other side of the spectrum.
In short, most parties have radicalized their positions making moderates political orphans.
In hindsight, the last couple of decades has shown us a clear trend. Political discourse in the public square has become abrasive, intolerant, agressive, ideologically tainted, and so on. We’ve all noticed it in our daily lives; at family dinners, in the workplace and on television broadcasts.
The middle ground, the space for compromise is vanishing. And gradually, we’ve come to accept this state of affairs as normal.
Food for thought
Jordan B. Peterson, Canadian clinical psychologist, as often reminded us on the importance of the duality of right (conservative) and left (liberal) ideas in society. He claims our goal should be to aim a certain equilibrium otherwise society looses some stability. Think of the yin and yang symbol as an image.
If the right dominates too much, our system ossifies and new ideas can’t emerge.
If the opposite happens and left ideas dominate, our social systems will lack structure and turn to chaos.
A good image from Peterson is that right leaning personalties tend to be good managers and left leaning people tend to have creative personalities.
Both have their place and function in society.
That being said, while we can surely agree at this point social mechanisms for political compromise need refurbishing, we again need to turn our eyes in our not so distant past to shed some light on our current political mood.
The good news is that history can teach us a lesson in this regards. The sense of crisis we’re currently in is not a new phenomenon. We’ve experienced this before.
If we go back between 1870 and the beginning of the twentieth century, North America was going through a rapid transformation of society. Following the American Civil War and the consolidation of Canada during roughly the same years (1860’s), the continent saw rapid transformations including the same outcomes we suffer today (though at varying degrees).
Growing inequality
Polarization
Violent upheaval
Massive immigration
Rapid technological change
Of this era, Putnam writes:
“ It was, in short, a time very like our own, brimming with promise of technological advance and unparalleled prosperity, but nostalgic for a more integrated sense of connectedness. Then, as now, new modes of communication seemed to promise new forms of community…
Then, as now, new concentrations of wealth and corporate power raised questions about the real meaning of democracy. Then, as now, massive urban concentrations of impoverished ethnic minorities posed basic questions of social justice and social stability…
Then, as now, materialism, political cynicism, and a penchant for spectatorship rather than action seemed to thwart idealistic reformism.”
I deliberately cut Putnam’s quote above as it goes on and on demonstrating the parallels between the two eras.
While this diagnosis is all real and disheartening, the current crisis of apparent social disintegration is not new.
Although tempting it might be, we are not living through a unique moment in history.
Understandingly, we humans have a tendency to see the world in a prism that tend to forget that some prior generations have gone through similar patterns. We are not that special and learning from past experiences would help us mitigate the current downward spiral we’re in.
Do I really need to repeat the old saying that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it ?
Although our modern paradigm (since the Enlightenment era) sees the world moving in linear progress, history has a tendency to repeat itself (or more accurately replays the same patterns).
Let’s just think about wars, religious awakenings, important migrations, etc.
Our crazy, hectic and digital lives are fogging our ability to ponder the horizon, keep our calm and give perspective to the days ahead of us.
History unfolds in waves, it has a cyclical pattern. We tend to forget that individuals, generations and nations have an organic way to evolve and change like seasons.
History teaches us the following: we have experienced this fragmentation before and we have social mechanisms to get out of this mess even when stuck in a crisis phase.
We will eventually overcome it but this might get uglier before it gets better.
Social capital, as coined by Putnam, will soon be rebuilt by a new generation and it will benefit everyone.
As demographer Neil Howe claimed:
“ History creates generations, generations create history”
Looking forward to your comments !