Mark's "Bush" post brought up a very interesting phenomenon in contemporary America: people willingly blind themselves to the facts out of allegiance to a certain political ideology. In The Economist this week, there is another article that points to our ever-increasing political balkanization.
I remember first noticing this phenomenon during the 2004 election. Despite reading polls that Bush and Kerry were neck and neck, I didn't know a single Bush supporter. Not one. When Bush won, this fact led to the awful feeling that once again our government had been hijacked against the will of the people. Although I rationally understood that he genuinely carried the popular vote, I didn't see one shred of evidence that real Americans liked the guy. None of my friends and family did.
The "Red State, Blue State" situation that Barack Obama countered in his 2004 convention speech is all too real still. Political leanings have become an important criterion for where people live, according to the article. While just 30 years ago, only 27% of Americans lived in "landslide counties," today almost 50% of us do. This means that almost half of all Americans live in communities where the overwhelming majority of their neighbors share the same political convictions.
Perhaps this should come as no surprise. In our highly mobile society, families scope out the suburbs around where they work, naturally gravitating to areas with tell-tale signs of their political party of choice ("W" bumper stickers, yoga classes, etc.). What is disturbing about this trend - just as Bush-bashing out of unchecked vitriol can be blinding - is that it closes people's minds off from new ideas that challenge their own. With increasingly ideologically divided cable news coverage and an even more extreme blogosphere, people are able to form cocoons around themselves and their ideas. And the more segregated we are along political lines, according to the authors of recent books on the topic, the more likely we are to lean towards the extremes. In that sense, the right-ward drift of American politics might be the inevitable consequence of Dallas and Birmingham suburbs outnumbering those of Seattle and Boston by a few.
One interesting (and somewhat surprising) observation: the more educated you are, the more insulated you become from outside opinions. The best educated among us live in the biggest "landslide counties" of all. One might think that a good education encourages critical thinking, taking all the facts into consideration before making judgments; but, as Mark's post pointed out, when your ideas are set in stone from the beginning, it's hard to get them to budge. Add to that an army of like-minded friends, family, and neighbors, and your opinions are the Truth.
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2 comments:
I don't know if it's so much willing blindness as much as it's a natural compulsion to be self-assured in your correctness. I think we're all the protagonists in our own novels, and as such we give our ideas the same epic merits. That's the individual aspect at least. Inject the groupthink mentality into the equation and things really go awry.
Your post brings up some great points as well as some colliding and conflicting ideas.
First, the convergence of people into politically like-minded communities. One thing I noticed about the 2004 election was how all of the blue states were concentrated into a few specific areas: the Pacific coastline, the Great Lakes, and New England. All of these places had a massive flux of commerce and trade due to their locations along navigable waterways, and as such you can imagine a massive flux of ideas. I really hate to make this claim because I absolutely despise the Red and Blue dichotomy, but frankly the blue states were in areas significantly more fortified intellectually. I think a degree of intelligence is required in abandoning ridiculous religious ideologies and devotion to power politics. While neither of those traits necessarily define the admirable values of the Republican party, both have been the banners under which a large population of this country's ignorant have flocked.
That's easy enough to claim, even if it riles a few people up, but consider this: Oregon vs. California. Both were populated around the early to mid 19th century. Westward expansion came for one of two reasons: people pursuing something or people running from something. The people who moved to California were in search of gold and wealth, a paradigm that still holds true today given the entertainment industry. The people who came to Oregon were refugees: the people running from oppressive banks, a lack of religious and social freedoms, and the scarcity of land. The Oregon paradigm holds true today as well. People who flock to Oregon, like my wife for example, are running away from something. And that attitude permeates our social structure in very interesting ways, which I'm sure you can attest to having grown up in our little conservative capital city. Regardless of why people headed west, there is still a pioneering mentality present in anyone willing to venture into the unknown. That forward-thinking ideology is something that can be attributed as a trait of the Democratic party. So, yes, people typically flock together and amass together, but notice that the cause can be traced back 200 years in the case of us on the west coast.
Another point I want to bring up is your remark on how the 2004 elections felt off. On one hand you bring up a very compelling argument in support of Mark's original assertion, which I have to say is brilliant. On the other hand I don't think you'd be wrong to be skeptical. Often things don't feel right because they aren't. Like I said in earlier June posts (or maybe it was just a conversation with you), I've never felt right buying gasoline. When I started driving it was $.99 per gallon, and I felt guilty because the price did not reflect the opportunity costs associated with petroleum products (an aside, what the hell are you going to do, EARTH, when you run out of crude oil and can no longer manufacture PLASTIC??!!). Now we're feeling what it's like to purchase gas in Europe (4 years ago it was 5+ euro per gallon in Italy). The thing is you could logically debate whether the popular majority really did vote for Bush. There has been enough scandal regarding elections in the last eight years that, after watching some George Carlin commentary last night, I'm convinced that elections aren't so much elections as they are opinion polls. I'm not trying to get all conspiracy theory on you (even though it would be wise for everyone reading this to open themselves up to ideas that are less mainstream), I am just saying that you are an intellectual organic creature with millions of years of evolved instincts. If your intuition says something is wrong you might very well be right.
You bring up a very good point, Ruxton. We must always be sure to distinguish between facts (which are sometimes overlooked by political ideology) and opinion. In recent years, there has been a creeping culture of relativism on this issue: media reportage, always anxious about perceived bias, presents information that many people view as tilted in one way or the other. Opinion, therefore, is written into the structure of how we receive information. But underlying the spin is, in fact, a truth that is unfettered by ideology. The problem is that in recent years this factual bedrock of the political dialog has started to be interpreted more and more as just more opinions. As a Bush adviser arrogantly said a few years back, there are the "reality community" and then there are those who create that reality, bend it to their will.
Too much relativism can cause a person to see the whole dialog of political ideas as just so many opinions being tossed around. It is important to remember the fact that underlying any policy dispute or political question is a set of objective truths about the situation. As you say, some things don't feel right because they aren't. Period. There is no matter of opinion that can change that.
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