Which Is The Party Of Godless Heathens?
It was almost jarring the other day when America’s political arch-opportunist, Elise Stefanik, referred to Trump as “a uniter.” That’s one thing he’s never been credibly accused of being. Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas who endorsed Nikki Haley on Saturday, was more in line with objective reality: “Anyone who believes Donald Trump will unite this country has been asleep over the last 8 years.” Those who have been awake or woke since Trump came down that Trump Tower escalator on June 16, 2015, experienced a degree of affective polarization not seen since Andrew Jackson’s presidency (1829-1837).
Ah, a new phrase… affective polarization. It was coined by Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford political psychologist in a 2018 paper to help explain why people typically identify with a group. “While previously polarization was primarily seen only in issue-based terms, a new type of division has emerged in the mass public in recent years: Ordinary Americans increasingly dislike and distrust those from the other party. Democrats and Republicans both say that the other party's members are hypocritical, selfish, and closed-minded, and they are unwilling to socialize across party lines. This phenomenon of animosity between the parties is known as affective polarization. We trace its origins to the power of partisanship as a social identity, and explain the factors that intensify partisan animus.”
A 2020 study in Science, Political Sectarianism in America, asserts that “polarization, a concern in many countries, is especially acrimonious in the United States. For decades, scholars have studied polarization as an ideological matter— how strongly Democrats and Republicans diverge vis-à-vis political ideals and policy goals. Such competition among groups in the marketplace of ideas is a hallmark of a healthy democracy. But more recently, researchers have identified a second type of polarization, one focusing less on triumphs of ideas than on dominating the abhorrent supporters of the opposing party… [with] three core ingredients: othering, aversion, and moralization.” If this sounds like a discussion of Trumpism, it should. Last week, Joel Achenbach tackled affective polarization from that perspective for the Washington Post. “This country, though politically fractious since its founding,” he wrote, “is more polarized than ever, the rhetoric more inflammatory, the rage more likely to curdle into hate. It’s ugly out there… a steady rise in tribalism. One theme emerges in much of the research: Our politics tend be more emotional now. Policy preferences are increasingly likely to be entangled with a visceral dislike of the opposition. The newly embraced academic term for this is ‘affective polarization.’”
And it’s based on feelings more than policy preferences. If you took Anthropology 101 you might recall the “tendency to form tightly knit groups has roots in evolution, according to experts in political psychology. Humans evolved in a challenging world of limited resources in which survival required cooperation— and identifying the rivals, the competitors for those resources. “This is just as true on today’s political stage. There are two major parties, and their contests are viewed as zero-sum outcomes. Win or lose. The presidency is the ultimate example: There are no consolation prizes for the loser… [S]avvy political operatives can exploit, leverage and encourage it. And those operatives are learning from their triumphs in divide-and-conquer politics.” Sound like Trump? It should. But if Trump has exacerbated the problem, it was around for him to latch onto his whole life. “Partisan clustering has increased even within households,” wrote Achenbach. “In 1965, only about 60 percent of married couples had the same party registration. Today, the figure is greater than 85 percent. Research shows that affective polarization is intensifying across the political spectrum. Recent survey data revealed that more than half of Republicans and Democrats view the other party as ‘a threat,’ and nearly as many agree with the description of the other party as ‘evil.’ Asked in the summer of 2022 if they agree or disagree that members of the other party ‘lack the traits to be considered fully human— they behave like animals,’ about 30 percent in both parties agreed.”
Though partisan vitriol is intensifying across the spectrum, Trump looms large among researchers on polarization and group identity. He has cultivated an extraordinarily devoted base of supporters who see his long list of felony indictments not as evidence of potential wrongdoing, but as proof that the elites are out to get him.
… [Trump] activates emotional responses in his followers by telling them that they are threatened… [I]in 2015 when the country was already divided he leveraged those divisions. He used inflammatory and racist language that violated political norms, called the media the “enemy of the people,” and promoted a vision of America besieged.
A New Hampshire campaign flier touting Trump shows him pumping his fist and looking combative, and quotes him: “They’re not after me, they’re after you. … And I’m just standing in the way!”
…Trump “is not just saying be afraid. He’s saying, ‘Be angry,’” said Dannagal Young, a professor of communication and political science at the University of Delaware. “Anger is a mobilization emotion because it makes people do things. When you’re angry, you’re angry at someone.”
The media do their part to keep things inflamed. Conflict grabs attention.
“We’re evolutionarily predisposed to pay attention to conflict, because we might be in danger. We don’t turn our head really quickly to look at a beautiful flower. We turn our heads quickly to look at something that may be dangerous,” Mason said.
That’s a part of human nature anyone can exploit.
“There are politicians who are good at this,” Mason said. “Trump is the best.”
Now, let’s get back to that study in Science on Political Sectarianism, which looks at “the tendency to adopt a moralized identification with one political group and against another. Whereas the foundational metaphor for tribalism is kinship, the foundational metaphor for political sectarianism is religion, which evokes analogies focusing less on genetic relatedness than on strong faith in the moral correctness and superiority of one’s sect. Political identity is secondary to religion in traditional forms of sectarianism, but it is primary in political sectarianism. In the United States today, even though Democrats and Republicans differ on average in terms of religious affiliation, their schism is fundamentally political rather than religious.”
The paper notes that “Political sectarianism consists of three core ingredients: othering— the tendency to view opposing partisans as essentially different or alien to oneself; aversion— the tendency to dislike and distrust opposing partisans; and moralization— the tendency to view opposing partisans as iniquitous. It is the confluence of these ingredients that makes sectarianism so corrosive in the political sphere. Viewing opposing partisans as different, or even as dislikable or immoral, may not be problematic in isolation. But when all three converge, political losses can feel like existential threats
that must be averted— whatever the cost.”
They attribute the surge in sectarianism to 3 causes:
The nation’s major political parties have sorted in terms of ideological identity and demography.
As Americans have grown more receptive to consuming information slanted through a partisan lens, the media ecosystem has inflamed political sectarianism.
In contrast to the equivocal ideological-polarization trends among the public, politicians and other political elites have unambiguously polarized recently on ideological grounds, with Republican politicians moving further to the right than Democratic politicians have moved to the left.
These three trends— identity alignment, the rise of partisan media, and elite ideological polarization— have contributed to radically different sectarian narratives about American society and politics. Although the content of these narratives is entirely different across the political divide, their structure is similar: The other side cheats, so our side would be foolish to adhere to long-standing democratic norms. These naratives, which partisans experience less as stories than as truth, increase their willingness to sacrifice those norms in pursuit of partisan ends.
Rising political sectarianism has, not surprisingly, increased the social distance between Democrats and Republicans. Compared to a few decades ago, Americans today are much more opposed to dating or marrying an opposing partisan; they are also wary of living near or working for one. They tend
to discriminate, as when paying an opposing partisan less than a copartisan for identical job performance or recommending that an opposing partisan be denied a scholarship despite being the more qualified applicant. They are also susceptible to motivated partisan cognition— seeking out, believing, and approving of information more readily when it reflects positively on copartisans or negatively on opposing partisans— although scholars debate whether such tendencies are equally strong among Democrats and Republicans).
…Perhaps most troubling of all, the political sectarianism of the public incentivizes politicians to adopt antidemocratic tactics when pursuing electoral or political victories. A recent experiment shows that, today, a majority-party candidate in most U.S. House districts— Democrat or Republican— could get elected despite openly violating democratic principles like electoral fairness, checks and balances, or civil liberties. Voters’ decisions to support such a candidate may seem sensible if they believe the harm to democracy from any such decision is small while the consequences of having the vile opposition win the election are catastrophic. However, the accumulation of such choices undermines representative democracy. And a society that pretends to adhere to democratic principles but actually does not is one in which people who possess resources and influence can leverage democratic gray zones to impose their will on those who do not.
Sectarianism stimulates activism, but also a willingness to inflict collateral damage in pursuit of political goals and to view copartisans who compromise as apostates. As political sectarianism has surged in recent years, so too has support for violent tactics). In addition, highly sectarian partisans are vulnerable to exploitation. In 2016, Russia sought to stoke partisan outrage during America’s election by creating fake social-media avatars with names like “Blacktivist” and “army_of_jesus.” These efforts succeeded in duping sectarian extremists— especially those who were older and more conservative than average— into amplifying the avatars’ memes about the depravity of opposing partisans. In doing so, these partisans served as pawns in Russia’s efforts to weaken America.
Political sectarianism also undermines the core government function of competence— of providing for and protecting the people. Members of Congress increasingly prioritize partisan purity over the sorts of compromises that appeal to a large proportion of the population, a tendency that creates legislative gridlock. Issues that are not inherently partisan become politicized, impeding the ability to make progress on goals like mitimitigating climate change, reducing the federal debt, and safeguarding democratic rights.
America’s response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic highlights the perils of political sectarianism. An October 2019 report from Johns Hopkins University suggested that America was better prepared for a pandemic than any other nation, but that report failed to account for the sort of political sectarianism that would, months later, make mask-wearing a partisan symbol, one favored more by Democrats than by Republicans. Democrats were also more likely to prioritize stay-at-home orders despite their massive, immediate economic cost— a pattern that was especially prominent among highly sectarian partisans. This schism, fomented in part by President Trump, pushed toward a disequilibrium in which too few people engaged sufficiently in commerce to stimulate economic growth while too few social-distanced sufficiently to contain the pandemic. The result has been lethal and expensive for Americans across the political spectrum.
Political sectarianism is neither inevitable nor irreversible. When considering promising avenues for intervention, the goal is not to restore America to some halcyon republic of yore. As exemplified by the 1870s transition from the relatively antiracist Reconstruction era to the deeply racist Redemption era, many historic episodes of partisan comity
rested upon bipartisan support for (or at least acquiescence to) antidemocratic institutions and behaviors, including the marginalization and disenfranchisement of women and racial minorities. The current divide is so potent in part because battles surrounding sexism and racism have grown strongly partisan.
Rather, the goal of these interventions is to move toward a system in which the public forcefully debates political ideals and policies while resisting tendencies that undermine democracy and human rights. Given that substantial swaths of American society (including many who identify as Democrat or Republican) are fed up with surging sectarianism, dedicated efforts to mitigate it may well land in fertile soil. Such efforts must circumvent the sect arian true believers, profiteers, and chaos-seekers who benefit from stoking sectarianism. These actors contribute directly to political sectarianism, and they leverage the government sclerosis caused by political sectarianism to derail efforts to address structural sources of that sectarianism, such as economic inequities and biased electoral procedures.
Nonetheless, scholars have begun to identify procedures that can potentially mitigate political sectarianism. These include efforts to help Americans comprehend opposing partisans regardless of their level of agreement, such as by focusing on commonalities rather than differences (e.g., “we’re all Americans;” or communicating in the moral language of the other side (e.g., when liberals frame the consequences of climate change in terms of sanctity violations).
Here, we consider three avenues for intervention that hold particular promise for ameliorating political sectarianism. The first addresses people’s faulty perceptions or intuitions. For example, correcting misperceptions of opposing partisans, such as their level of hostility toward one’s copartisans, reduces sectarianism. Such correction efforts can encourage people to engage in cross-party interactions or to consider
their own positive experiences with opposing partisans, especially a friend, family member, or neighbor. Doing so can reduce the role of motivated partisan reasoning in the formation of policy opinions.
A related idea is to instill intellectual humility, such as by asking people to explain policy preferences at a mechanistic level— for example, why do they favor their position on a national flat tax or on carbon emissions. According to a recent study, relative to people assigned to the more lawyerly approach of justifying their preexisting policy preferences, those asked to provide mechanistic explanations gain appreciation for the complexities involved. Leaders of civic, religious, and media organizations committed to bridging divides can look to such strategies to reduce intellectual self-righteousness that can contribute to political sectarianism.
A second avenue involves altering social media platforms, although some popular ideas along these lines may be counterproductive. Echo chambers are widely blamed for surging sectarianism, but simply tweaking algorithms to show partisans more content from the opposition may aggravate
sectarianism rather than reducing it. More promising are interventions that encourage people to deliberate about the accuracy of claims on social media, which causes them to evaluate the substance of arguments and reduces their likelihood of sharing false or hyperpartisan content. Another
option is to use crowdsourcing to identify such content and the outlets that emit it, relying on users’ ratings of trustworthiness to augment the efforts of professional fact checkers. Such information can be incorporated into algorithmic rankings to reduce the presence of false or hyperpartisan content in people’s news feeds.
A third avenue involves creating incentives for politicians and other elites to reduce their sectarianizing behaviors. People become less divided after observing politicians treating opposing partisans warmly, and nonpartisan statements from leaders can reduce violence. Campaign finance reform may help, especially by eliminating huge contributions from ideological extremists. Reducing partisan gerrymandering likely would make representation fairer, generate more robust competition in the marketplace of political ideas, and send fewer extremists to the House of Representatives.
…Political sectarianism cripples a nation’s ability to confront challenges. Bolstering the emphasis on political ideas rather than political adversaries is not a sufficient solution, but it is likely to be a major step in the right direction. The interventions proposed above offer some promising leads, but any serious effort will require multifaceted efforts to change leadership, media, and democratic systems in ways that are sensitive to human psychology. There are no silver bullets.
I know that was some long, heavy reading. So let me end with a cute little story about Colorado state Rep. Richard Holtorf, a Republican candidate for Congress in the district Lauren Boebert has moved into. On Friday, Holtoff— an anti-Choice fanatic— admitted that he “financed an abortion for one of two girlfriends he impregnated, saying it helped her ‘live her best life.’… [He had been] a sponsor of a failed 2020 measure to ban abortion in Colorado after 22 weeks. In 2022, Holtorf made headlines when he dropped his handgun in the state Capitol while rushing to the floor to cast a vote against abortion rights. Holtorf did not appear to recognize the disconnect between his statement lauding the benefits of abortion access for his pregnant girlfriend and his staunch opposition to abortion rights, which led him to call abortion rights supporters ‘godless heathens’ last year.”