How polarized is America? A couple of Vanderbilt political scientists decided to find out:
According to the prevailing national narrative, American unity is at or near an all-time low....Even so, we do not have good, systematic evidence about national unity — or, more important, about how it may have changed over time....To overcome this, we sought to develop something more objective. The Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy has launched the Vanderbilt Unity Index (VUI) to estimate the state of U.S. unity.
Ah. An index. Basically they took a bunch of different metrics, normalized each one on a scale of 0-100, and then mushed them all together. Here's the result:
According the the VUI, American unity has declined from 68 to 52 since the start of the Reagan era. However, it hasn't declined in a straight line:
I have no idea whether this index is a good measure of what it claims to measure. However, a point in its favor is that it confirms a mountain of other evidence telling us that the long-term decline in America's political psyche got its first push in the Gingrich era but didn't really take off until the Fox News era.
By now, it might be too late to undo the damage Rupert Murdoch has done. I hope not.
By now, it might be too late to undo the damage Rupert Murdoch has done.
It is. I would settle though for a divorce. Break up the union into a smaller United Sanetopia and as many Insane Republics/Kingdoms as the insane caucus wants. The civil war established that it’s illegal for states to break off unilaterally, but the Constitution says nothing about all the states voluntarily agreeing to separate.
And before I get the whole “there are decent people living in insane states that would suffer” argument: even the first person (Lot) who allegedly made that argument to God himself eventually had to flee the “bad” lands. The decent people stuck in the insane states should be allowed to reclaim citizenship if they can make it to the new US, similar to how Israel allows any Jew to claim citizenship there. But the choice is becoming one of national triage: either we stay unified and nobody gets to live under a sane government or we break up amicably and some get to live under smaller sane governments. There increasingly is no option to stay unified and save everybody from the insanity.
We don't need a divorce, since we have the ability to adopt Strong Federalism.
Let Red States do what they want, let Blue States do what they want.
Voters still get to vote.
https://www.politicalorphans.com/democrats-should-weaponize-federalism/
The Supreme Court and the filibuster make this impossible. Especially concerning guns and abortion rights.
Something went terribly wrong over at your place back in the 80s when Ronald Reagan, the holy father in the world of all right wing extremist , abolished the fairness doctrine. This act paved the way for your disastrous right wing media.
Talk show hosts only concerned about number of listeners the truth of no interest at all , hosts that had to go more and more extreme in order to keep the interest of their weird audience.
It paved the way for FOX and when FOX suddenly was considered almost “mainstream” it gave birth to even more extreme sites
One can find comparable media in Europe but only as one person projects of little importance.
Something like 40% of Americans are today living in a fantasy world , having no possibility at all to distinguish between facts and fiction...or more precisely are considering the real world to be a lie , they are unaware of how much they are lagging behind the rest of the world, they are panicking over losing nonexistent privileges
No wonder Putin’s disinformation campaign back in ‘16 was so successful in USA, your right wingers can be fooled into believing just about anything. Putin must have been laughing until he wet his pants.
Greetings from your Swedish friend
The Fairness Doctrine only applied to network (over the air) television. It never applied to cable channels before it was eliminated for network TV. So even if it survived Reagan, it wouldn’t have applied to Fox News at all. I’m not saying the FD elimination helped matters at all but it probably had little to no impact on the trajectory of Fox News.
The country basically took a hard-right turn on regulation. Elimination of the Fairness Doctrine was only part of it. Cable TV could have been regulated as a public monopoly, which it was. Republicans got the power to deregulate from their divisive racist strategy which still wins elections. This long predates Fox.
And the only reason FOX news exists is because of Reagan. In fact, Murdoch was granted citizenship specifically so he could legally launch that network on American soil.
P.S. -- I know that you know that everyone already knows that the Fairness Doctrine did not apply to cable and this has been pointed out to you many times, in fact, it's in my file on you. So fair notice that continuing to be obnoxious about pointing out this so-called 'error' will earn a responnse.
The fairness doctrine NEVER would have applied to Faux News or ONN or any of the nutter outlets. They appear on CABLE and the INTERNET, neither of which uses the "public airwaves". It does not apply.
Oh, Austin already said this.
Sigh. See my response to Austin. Also note that not applying to cable does not mean it did not apply to radio. In fact, it did, and Sinclair radio would probably not exist if it were still in effect. Which, to my mind, would sifnificanlly lessen the partisan divide.
In 2016, the American powers that be had a chance to stomp on racism & separatism in politics in a big way. They wanted tax cuts instead.
Poppycock. 2016 had little to do with either of things. The fact your so ignorant, you need your brain bashed in to liquidate your ignorance. Just a stupid dialectical post that represents nothing. 1st world nonsense
The powers that be clearly did not care about racism or separatism or the blatant sexism openly occurring. They did want tax cuts and assumed they wouldn't come with so much ugly baggage out in the open where it could not be hidden.
2016 was the triumph of the Lester Maddox Democrats. In the primary, anti-#idpol working class hero Bernie appealed to the tradition of George Wallace voting in Wisconsin, Michigan, West Virginia, Oklahoma, etc., to wound Shrillary Climpton, & in the general, the Southern Strategy of the GQP achieved its final form in El Jefe Maximo de Maralago.
This Lestermaddoxification of the national white Democrats & adoption of the (progressive) case for segregated lunch counters is also why supposed intellectuals like anti-abortion Trad Cath GQPer Elizabeth Bruenig could pose as a Bernie supporting fiend for Medicare4All & pro-abortion algore2000 supporter KKKlay Travis could pose as a Trump-humping antiwoke MAGA.
Fox News is irrelevant. It's more than 1st world liberal/conservative cultural nonsense, but the entire truth of materialism and the failure of the industrial revolution. Capitalism can't grow anymore. Not enough growth causing tech. All you have is debt. The ecological system is damaged from nonwhite overpopulation and fossil fuels use the Western Powers now regret, with the former also their fault.
Secondly, American pop culture has grown stale in the 2000's. Once a cultural unifying force, nothing original for years.
When those debt markets finally go and the dollar collapses.....things will get really ugly. Cuba won't look so bad.......
The trend actually started even before Reagan, as Goldwater and Nixon guided the Republican party into switching to be the representative of white supremacy. Again, the racist whites in the South and elsewhere did not suddenly adopt Voodoo Economics because they were reading Ludwig von Mises or Bill Buckley, they did it because Republicans supported their racism (Republicans were already the party of conservative Christianity). This strategy of Republicans, in use for over 50 years, is inherently divisive - it is based on increasing racial and religious hate.
The Reagan administration reversed the Fairness Doctrine, allowing the growth of right-wing talk radio and Fox News. As the majority of the country actually shifted left on cultural matters - even electing a (half) black man as President - Republicans' racist message got more explicit. Fox News is an important tool for the right, but it is certainly not the ultimate cause of polarization. Polarization of lower-income people is the basic working strategy of the Republican party. The current polarized state of the economy is not a result of either the greed or the ideology of Rupert Murdoch. Like Trump, Murdoch and others in the right-wing media complex have profited from this strategy of Republican politicians.
Once again, white supremacy????? Where???? It looks like Zionism. Most of their business was globalism for corporate profit. Goldwater, the half jew he was would not agree with you. It's lazy analysis.
Don't even start me on how China/Western Capitalism came together in "Rhodesia" so they could get the mythical " Deng" reforms. In return, they installed Mugabe to destroy its economy for a Chinese benefit. All approved by Nixon and Goldwater. The stupid property owners got taken for that ride.
I couldn't agree more. The beginnings of the Modern GOP began in the early 1960s.
In support of your argument, I give you the words of early 60’s era California Republican Senator Thomas Kuchel:
“ During the 1966 California gubernatorial primary, Kuchel was urged by moderates to run against conservative actor Ronald Reagan. Citing the hostilities of the growing conservative movement, Kuchel decided not to run. He instead issued a negative statement about the conservatives: "A fanatical neo-fascist political cult of right-wingers in the GOP, driven by a strange mixture of corrosive hatred and sickening fear that is recklessly determined to control our party or destroy it!"
Kuchel was primaried and retired from politics in the late 60’s. His words regarding the direction of the GOP resonate to this day.
He also is wrong. Did he understand what Reagan really was???? Again, history is a lie.
Growing conservative movement???? Nope. Zionism is Zionism. Learn about it. Reagan the homosexual loser he was.
Polarized state of the country, not the economy. Although lower-income people are polarized on the economy, when they pay attention to it rather than the culture war, because Republicans get the allegiance of some with racism and religion.
Lee Atwater won. And Bob Jones University.
Of course it's all Kennedy's and Johnson's fault for supporting Civil Rights. And Johnson thought the Democrats would lose the South for only a generation or two. Don't think he saw the Southernization of the Midwest.
The Midwest always had Copperheads - there was a substantial contingent of folks in the midwest who weren't supportive of battling to save the Union, instead they though Lincoln should have just let the Confederates have what they wanted.
They moved to the GOP once the GOP hated the same people they hated.
I think you're on to something there. But I'd go further and say that once they revealed themselves, the sheer number of the varmits surprised a lot of otherwise savvy people. Up to and including Johnson, Kennedy and other movers and shakers known for their canniness.
It's really hard to understand the context of this when the chart only goes back to 1981. People seem content to ignore the rise of the Moral Majority/Conservative Christian embrace of political power in the late 70s and its lasting effect, the Evangelical embrace of fucktard hypocrites.
Exactly.
Paul Weyrich did nothing wrong. Except driving too fast for the conditions.
I have been thinking our only recourse is a Constitutional Convention. People will inevitably say that doing that would inevitably go horribly wrong in almost every way, but, I would say, it's all going to go horribly wrong in almost every way in any event, so it's better to do chaos with at least a veneer of organization.
What would happen? I think it's less obvious than it might seem that a lot of red states would vote to separate and be on their own, or be on their own and realize they'll be stuck with being ruled by psychotics with no possible recourse.
Those that do leave will quickly devolve into Mexican style criminal cartels with heavy industrial pollution, and emitting floods of refugees who will mostly be the kind of people who simply happen to be on the outs with whatever cartel they're fleeing and who, if we admit them, will immediately start voting for exactly the crime they fled, as they are voting today, so we would need to construct massive border defenses to prevent them, which conservatives will claim proves they were right, but which would really only prove, as everything they do proves, that everything they say is to project their own character onto others.
But this is the only way we will ever be free of this filth.
I have grown to think the recipe is all a result of two political parties in a non-parlimentary system, with a generous helping of the Senate and disproportional voting districts at the state and fed level, and topped off with a system where many, sometimes the majority, don't even vote.
With those structures in place, it does not take much for one of the two parties to realize that a route to power exists if you can get something like 40% to vote for you. You don't need more than 51%, or even 60%.
The reason this only happened "since" 1981 is that you used to have, essentially, three parties not two. The Southern Democrats were not part of some omnipresent Dem voting bloc, and as a result you had Rockefeller Republicans as well.
Once Nixon roped the Dixiecrats into the Republican party, which happened in the 1970s, where we are today starts to look more like an inevitability.
The former southern racists haven't become any less racist.
The religious fundamentalists haven't become any less fundamentalist.
The anti-tax crew has not become pro-tax.
The gun nuts are no less gun nutty.
As you work through these groups, each of which is in a minority, all you need to do is get to 41%. And the Republicans do just that.
Albeit with help from Gingrich (adding, to the extent possible, the "Government is a joke" group), and Trump (saying out loud that Democrats are the enemy, accordingly rounding up the elements of the right wing which would otherwise have thought mainstream Republicanism too mainstream).
The key is these hardcore subgroups not only don't care about Dems, but they don't care about the other constituant subgroups of the R coalition either. No anti-abortionist pauses at the "R" lever because of another mass shooting.
Fox is awful, but they play to their audience, they don't really create it.
I don't know how the chart is going to evolve, but we are due to get even more polarized as far as I can see. Its only by voting in large numbers that these awful sub groups can be voted down. They are beyond any reason. No undecided voters exist, except for the parts of the dumb Dem coalition who fail to consider the disaster which occurs if a candidate from the R group wins and sits out waiting for Bernie.
Oh please. Dialectical mumble. The progun comment is lol. Most of those people loved banning guns in the old south. Your just taking modern issues and juxing them. You need a nostril rip. DIxiecrats that were populist stayed in the party to the very end fool.
A big part of the decline of the Dems in the South besides racial issues is neoliberalist globalism since 2000. A huge part. Think harder. Try harder.
This is all about right. The solution to our problems is mostly more democracy, though that will be hard to accomplish when you have so many anti-majoritarians in power who owe their power to an anti-majoritarian system. If the presidency, the Senate, and the House (not to mention all the state legislatures) accurately represented the majority of votes cast, many many things would be different.
Literally no one would build a system that operates like ours does today.
One party wants to force raped 14-year-olds to give birth.
One party is willing to let any and every child get shot to death rather than offend the NRA.
Yeah, we're polarized.
Had it out again with Faux watcher at work. Staked my view- it isn’t news it’s a bitch sessions. He actually flipped to CNN to make me see there is no difference. However, he seems surprised and has left it on.
Fox is basically local news nationalized and then bitching about it. Truly bozzarre station.
When Ezra Klein's book "Why We're Polarized" came out a year or two ago he (courageously, I think) had Jill Lepore host his podcast to interview him about his book. And right out of the gate she said, basically: this book was a huge mistake. The reason we look more polarized now versus the 1950s is that in the 1950s black people didn't vote and women had little freedom. If you had been able to poll those people honestly in the 1950s, we were as polarized then as we are now.
I often think of her point when this issue of "we don't get along" and "we're two Americas now" comes up.
Indeed. This is a version of the "well, the left has moved left" argument one hears alot.
Well, no. The "left's" position on, say, racial equality hasn't moved an inch. The fact that up until the 1960s most of the non-South basically looked the other way in the face of massive discrimination isn't an evidentiary data point that the left is somehow "more left" now. Its that more people have adopted the "lefts' position - so many that discrimination is nowhere near as easy to get away with as it was.
That's one reason we could be "more" polarized. Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring in 1962, environmentalists are no more radical now than she was then. Its just that now the anti-environmentalist crowd is (1) smaller, and (2) more backed into a corner now.
That is not the left. Between 1875-wwi, many leftist organizations were pro racist. Your mumbling. Classical Marxism was anti-gay and no fan of feminism.
What you mean is "progressive" . Get it straight.
The odd moment of truth from Shooter.
The Democrat populists of the William Jennings Bryan era of three lost General elections in four cycles (he was not nominated the third time) were extremely apartheidist.
Shootie don't talk. He rings.
That trend line is clearly a bad fit. Just look at the dots and see if your eyeballs don't tell you this: There were periods of decline in the unity index between 1990 and 1997, between 2002 and 2008 (a big drop), and between 2011 and 2013. In between there were intervals of rising or stable unity. Then there was a crater from 2016 through 2020, after which unity made a solid comeback in 2021.
You could blame Fox for some of that, but I blame the Iraq war and Trumpism for the biggest breakdowns.
The Arc of History.....
As the arc of history bends toward justice, the arc of unity bends toward disunity?
You're going to be best known for two ideas: lead poisoning, and Fox News poisoning.
Interesting ngative outiliers between 2017 and 2020 and a few positive outliers in 2021/2022. Trump is always more toxic than you would guess.
In other breaking news, water is wet, sky is blue, sun is warm
My theory is that this is related to the fall of the Soviet empire, communism and the end of the Cold War. Previous to 1989 the US was competing for hearts & minds across the world, vs. Soviet communism. There was the unifying factor of a common enemy, and the need to demonstrate to the world, not just Americans, that we were a superior form of government.
After communism fell, we reverted to divisions that were with us from the origin of the nation--divisions over race and immigration, rural vs. urban. We (the political leadership at least) no longer is driven by a need to demonstrate an adherence to democratic ideals, especially when those ideals diffuse power to historically disenfranchised groups, such as Blacks, Latinos, and other minorities, as well as women.
Also the Vietnam war and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have allowed for a increasing cynicism and realpolitik among the political classes and a sizeable number of middle & working class Americans. Despite Bush declaring Iraq was about "freedom", the word has been so debased in the last two decades that it has lost almost all meaning, other than as an excuse to make war (and allow for the weapons of war to be accessible to nearly all Americans).
+1 for the history lesson.