Our Culture of Contempt

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/02/opinion/sunday/political-polarization.html

by swibbler • 7 years ago

72 125 7 years ago

iron0013• 7 years ago

Just FYI: "Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute". Many people find the agenda that AEI pushes to be loathsome, and I'm not surprised that Mr. Brooks finds himself the object of contempt on a not-infrequent basis.

towaway11386• 7 years ago

As a lifelong liberal, I've sunk into despair at the firehose of hatred coming from the left these days. And I talk to far fewer of my old lefty friends anymore--if they've made themselves awful, I just don't want to know. I'd prefer to remember them as they were.

Maybe this is just a phase, but it feels like we're going to a place from which we won't return.

tenaciousDaniel• 7 years ago

I graduated with a degree in art, which means all my old college friends are more left-leaning than is usual.

I still keep in touch with many of them on Facebook, and the amount of absolute insanity coming from them is staggering and depressing.

vidar• 7 years ago

Can you give some specific examples? (Live in Europe, curious to hear)

_bxg16• 7 years ago

I support most of the liberal platform, but in recent years a large portion of the party's base has turned into a cesspool of hatred, cynicism, and thoughtless reactionism. We used to be the party of idealism and belief in people's basic goodness. What the hell happened?

unclebucknasty10• 7 years ago

This comment, the parent, and many others on this thread sound eerily alike and similar to those propagated by trolls and bots during the failed WalkAway campaign.

rlt4• 7 years ago

I’ve always been slightly left-leaning, but in recent years have found myself identifying more and more with the (libertarian) right.

rjf724• 7 years ago

I'm also in the same boat, I imagine with countless others. Trump didn't win in 2016, Clinton managed to receive 4.5 million votes fewer than Obama 2008 did. And she did that at the same time that the pool of voting age population grew by more than 20 million. [1] Quite a remarkable feat! The party has left its base far behind. Or perhaps it's the other way. Same result in either case.

In thinking about this though I realized something. Almost like clockwork there is a shifting of the zeitgeist of the nation on 20 year intervals:

- Roaring 20s

- Warring 40s

- Social movement 60s

- Huge growth 80s

- Identity politics 2000s

- ?? 2020s

You can't explain these shifts in era by a new generation alone, as would be implied by the 20 year intervals. It has to be in large part substantial chunks of the existing population also shifting their views. I'm not sure if this is a product of people changing, perhaps as they age, or maybe it's some organic factor of political competition that results in the parties changing. Again, going back to the top - I guess it doesn't really matter. It's the exact same effect and result in either case.

The point being is that I think this is 'normal', but we're the first generation to get to share and experience this sort of shift, and in such a public way, due to the internet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_St...

taneq• 7 years ago

Same here, I used to see myself as liberal but nowadays I can't stomach the identity politics, oppression olympics and witch hunts.

troyatlarge• 7 years ago

I agree with you on that point 100% - its really sick whats been going on in that way and i feel much like you do about it as i stand sickened by so much of the hate i see pouring so freely out of what had been my side.

claudiawerner3• 7 years ago

I'll give you a perspective from the other side of the fence: I used to be a liberal (and by this I do not mean as the "opposite" of conservative, I mean in the sense of "classical liberalism", the system of rights etc.) but now after reading critiques of its theory and practice and doing more investigation into the historical left movement (19th century figures who are unnameable on HN) I have turned much more to the left. I am a skeptic of the right to free speech (since I cannot find any logical basis for why it should be privileged over other rights or differentiated from other forms of action), for example, and I am against the private ownership of capital.

I've seen a significant number of posts like yours, all with the same gist, but they always make me smile; by describing yourself as a "liberal" as something akin to "left of center", i.e opposite of a "conservative", such people actually often really are liberals (in the political philosophy sense) themselves, the exact position that the left has been critiquing since the turn of the 19th century and what continued to be fashionable until about 1970.

The left has never been on the side of property rights, the system of rights in general (which they decry as bourgeois rights), the current form of the state, the existence of capital, income inequality, neoliberalism etc. and the appearance of the Left in the US as "liberal" as manifested in the Democratic Party for instance is in stark contrast to some leftist parties in Europe to whom "liberal" always meant center or center-right.

So you were always a liberal, and you still are, just not in the sense you thought.

DuskStar• 7 years ago

I am a skeptic of the right to free speech (since I cannot find any logical basis for why it should be privileged over other rights or differentiated from other forms of action)

I'm confused here - what rights do you view free speech as being privileged over?

urspx• 7 years ago

It's bizarre to see so many (allegedly former 'liberals' or 'lefties', itself a conflation) talking of / agreeing with a "firehose of hatred" supposedly coming from the left. What do these people think of the language and ideas coming from the right?

My suspicion is that they consider the right these days the calm voice of reason – not in spite of the racism, the misogyny, homophobia, or hatred of the poor, but because of these things, because maybe their sympathies simply lie with maintaining the comfortable order that they are used to, not with any of the ideals that they actually claim/ed to uphold.

TheOperator• 7 years ago

The author of this article is a conservative. Noticed how he went out of his way to appear politically neutral. Notice how one of the two comments to this post is attacking him on a reputational basis.

This is the problem I see and likely the problem the author sees even if he's veiling it. The left wing specifically keeps disregarding other peoples views wholesale on a reputational basis. When I make posts online left-wingers regularly dig into my post history to find a reason to discredit me while right wingers don't even bother looking. If I'm making a right-wing point just like the author I go to pains to obscufate the fact I'm making a conservative argument. Otherwise making the argument is pointless because your intended audience, those with left wing views, won't read it.

I don't mean to make a completely partisan shitting on the left post. I have voted left wing in every election I've been a part of. I blame the uptick in politically motivated violence on the right. I believe "scientific racism" is increasingly becoming mainstreamed on the right through "red pills" as an explanation for say why inequity in employment/crime stats exists and is fair.

However holy shit merely talking to the right these days can cause a whole bunch of people to hold you in contempt. It ultimately will and has backfired because it's entrenching intellectual blindness which is bad for the left and bad for society.

towaway11386• 7 years ago

the uptick in politically motivated violence on the right

I haven't looked closely, but it seems like the preponderance of such violence has been coming from the left these days (ignoring people with obvious mental health problems). Charlottesville is the obvious exception, but clearly overbalanced by the guy that attempted to assassinate a bunch of Congressmen at that ball game.

Are there lots of examples I'm missing?

myWindoonn• 7 years ago

Yes. To pick one particular group in one particular metro area, here's violence in Portland caused by right-wing violence-causers:

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/07/patriot_prayers_...

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/08/patriot_prayer_a...

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/10/patriot_prayer_f...

And here's police collaborating with the violence-causers:

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2019/02/text-messages-be...

https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/02/frustration-not-solu...

archgoon2• 7 years ago

Pittsburgh massacre.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/us/active-shooter-pittsbu...

Also, the bombs sent to a number of democrats, funders of democrats, and Trump critics:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/10/25/bomb-timeli...

That said, individual events aren't particularly helpful, the media might be omitting major events (or more likely, a lot of smaller ones). So you can refer to this study by the Cato Instititute:

https://www.cato.org/blog/terrorism-deaths-ideology-charlott...

After Islamic Terrorism (9/11 unsurprisingly had a pretty big impact), you have right wing nationalists being the biggest contributors to murders by an order of magnitude.

DanBC4• 7 years ago

Mental illness doesn't cause violence.

The examples you're missing are the mass murders of Jewish people in a synagogue, or people in a church, or people at a concert, or the shooting of a gun into a crowd of protestors, or the driving of a car into a crowd of protestors, or the disproportionate amounts of domestic violence perpetrated by people on the right.

Somehow none of these seem to count because reasons, but the right are fundamentally dishonest when they discount this violence.

maxpupmax3• 7 years ago

You know, you make an interesting point. I think you're referring to the same thing that the author is referring to.

On the left side of the political spectrum, It's not a single phenomena though, I think you can break it down into two camps on the left: 1. older-school globalist liberals. Probably older, supported the Clintons, ect. These people seem to have traditionally looked down on the right as backward, uneducated "basket of deplorables" or whatever. Plays into the ivory tower liberal stereotype. 2. New-school farther left. Probably younger, fans of AOC et al. They'd also be likely to look down their noses, but in more of a moral superiority perspective.

I think the condescension of #1 goes back decades and has already borne its fruit in (at least to a degree) the political situation we find ourselves in today. I worry that group # 2 hasn't learned those lessons and is proving that they'll just repeat the same mistakes. Unless they self-destruct arguing about Israel, which totally mystifies me.

That said... so much of what comes out of the right is complete and utter bullshit. From the massive propaganda machine that is fox, to infowars, to tiny hyper-racist subreddits — there's a lot of noise to separate from the signal that might be a valid, reasonable conservative argument.

With that in mind, sometimes I wonder if we don't need a bit more contempt.

Maybe if the type of outright hate speech the mainstream right seems to support was not acceptable, that would open the floor for some actual conversation.

To summarize: I wish that democrats and the left weren't been so quick to dismiss legitimate concerns from everyone outside of NYC and SF (hyperbolic, I know). But it's right wing (and especially religiously-motivated) politics that have completely skewered our politics and media.

Saying "fuck that and fuck you" to anyone who supports that system is a reasonable reaction, in my opinion.

But where does that leave us? I don't know.

logicchains• 7 years ago

New-school farther left. Probably younger, fans of AOC et al

The Axiom of Choice is a political thing now? I'd have thought it generally has strong support among both sides of the political spectrum; in spite of their vocal presence online, constructivists are still a relatively small minority of the mathematical community.

tailrecursion2• 7 years ago

Saying "fuck that and fuck you" to anyone who supports that system is a reasonable reaction, in my opinion.

Why is saying "men can't be women" considered hate speech, and "fuck you" is not. One conveys unreasoned aggression, while the other is a clumsy attempt to state objective truth.

unclebucknasty10• 7 years ago

Yes, "both sides" lie incessantly, embrace dictators, attack our norms and institutions, engage in voter suppression, and deploy bots and trolls to engage in earnest, non-contemptuous discussion (including right here on this thread).

int_19h7• 7 years ago

This is kind of an amusing list, because you clearly meant it sardonically, but it's literally true.

Embrace dictators - check; remember Obama rushing to Saudi Arabia?

Attack our norms and institutions - check; Dems are talking about killing the filibuster in the Senate for good right now, and of course they were the first to start the process of dismantling it back when they removed it for non-SC judicial appointments under Obama.

Engage in voter suppression - Maryland is one of the worst gerrymandered states in the Union, and it wasn't done by Republicans. Democrats controlling the state are fighting against the courts (which slapped their scheme down) right now, in a lawsuit filed by Republicans.

Bots and trolls - I dunno about bots, but there's no shortage of left-wing trolls.

The usual answer to all this is, "but it's all for a good cause!", or sometimes, "but we're doing less of it than they do!".

The first one can be valid, depending on one's perspective, but then it would be hypocritical to attack the other side for doing all the same things. If your problem is their goals rather than their methods, then just say so: "they're bad because they want to suppress the minority voters, and we want to suppress racists and bigots".

The second one is broadly true (i.e. left vs right as a whole, as opposed to comparing distinct subcultures in either), but it's not an excuse - it just sets up a lesser/greater evil dichotomy. If those things are valid reasons for contempt -- and I'm not saying they aren't, by the way - then both sides deserve it, just in different proportions.

speedplane• 7 years ago

Attack our norms and institutions... both sides deserve it, just in different proportions.

Okay true, different proportions. It's roughly 1000 to 1 that Trump is messing with institutional norms over liberals.

unclebucknasty10• 7 years ago

These what-aboutism arguments are so disingenuous that they are the product of either bad faith or a pathological measure of rationalization.

Whatever the reason, such facile rants are now the go-to technique--an entreaty to engage in a tit-for-tat, ignoring context and degree, thus normalizing awful behavior.

But I won't do it. I think you are well-aware of the difference in degree and of who is clearly and presently wielding power in a manner that runs roughshod over our norms, values and institutions.

elefanten• 7 years ago

All political mud-slinging aside, all weighing and apportioning of blame withheld, the main suggestions of the article are worthwhile.

1. Don't allow yourself to slide easily or prematurely into contempt. We do it too often these days.

2. Disagree better. You can disagree, but make your case and engage in the responses. Rhetoric has a place but it's being overused.

unclebucknasty10• 7 years ago

Your comment assumes good faith.

_bxg16• 7 years ago

Good faith breeds good faith, and bad faith breeds bad faith.

DyslexicAtheist3• 7 years ago

I think it assumes that it's a complex problem and to untangle the mess will require that this is done persistently over a longer stretch of time. we didn't get into this over a couple of weeks. If this was unfolding since years if not decades then what we have now is the end stages of boiling frogs (we're just waking up to the water being unbearable having been oblivious for so long). I'm personally convinced that facing the problems can only be done by following these steps (even if it's painful and we'd rather have a quick fix to all this). It will take a long time to recover from this I think (having enough patience to hear an opposing view without judgement isn't easy).

noobermin4• 7 years ago

To be honest, I've yet to meet people in real life who mean bad faith. May be online or on talk shows it's different.

The difference is people in real life are not the ones who make the decisions.

fallous• 7 years ago

That's kind of the point. Assuming good faith is akin to not ascribing to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence (or ignorance). Note that the incompetence or ignorance is not assigned so it may be either or both sides, which places a certain burden on you to try to evaluate and correct at least your part of that failure.

blueboo• 7 years ago

Unfortunately that leaves one vulnerable to the arsenal of concern trolling. The problem is that these strategies only work if your conversation partner is doing the same in good faith. (This is precisely what Arthur Brooks would have us do, someone who deserves all of our contempt, ironically.)

After all, it’s human nature to (often) entrench when faced with facts that challenge ones beliefs! And that dynamic is particularly acute when someone has chosen to believe the less-plausible-thing, the mark of conspiracy.

wisty• 7 years ago

IMO a lot of people mistake disagreement for "concern trolling".

"Oh my goodness, how can anyone be so stupid that they don't agree with my (somewhat statistically fringe) position, they must be a troll!"

mmsimanga• 7 years ago

I wonder how much of all these issues is due to Twitter. 140 characters isn't enough for nuanced conversation.

RugnirViking2• 7 years ago

Twitter is a weird site. It's got a core of extremely active users who are almost entirely people who are famous or journalists. I'm at university - probably the place where the concentration of twitter users is likely to be highest, and hardly anybody I know has an account or if they do, doesn't use it for anything except occasionally reading something they got linked to.

It's almost like a kind of echo chamber for the media and famous people imo - I don't know if thats nessacarily a bad thing entirely, so long as people are aware on some level of that. There just aren't the opinions of suburban moms on twitter. There aren't plumbers on twitter. Cleaners.

Opinions might not matter, but it does bother me quite a lot when you see companies not caring on their support phone lines, on their facebook. There's almost no way to usefully get through to these copanies, but then one journalist idly tweets that they're having a problem with something suddenly you seem to see a dev team drop what they're doing and fix the problem. It's concerning that such behaviour benefits those who need it least.

pjc503• 7 years ago

There's a real prisoner's dilemma phenomenon going on here. If the two options are "respect" and "contempt", and one side has ramped the contempt up to 11 and won the elections, what should the other side do?

I'm all for a winding-down of this process, because eventually it could escalate all the way up to violence, but like nuclear disarmament, you first. Or at least some plausible commitment to de-escalation that can be observed to actually happen over a period of time, as a signal of good faith for the next round of talks.

I think this is partially why people like AOC or Ilhan Omar have suddenly achieved success; they know that, regardless of what they do or say, they will never get anything less than total disrespect from Republicans and a large segment of the media; so they're free to ignore that contempt. This comes across in the other direction as contempt, when really it's just a refusal to be intimidated.

Contempt is also being manufactured by a variety of media sources from foreign intelligence agencies to all-American fraudsters like Alex Jones.

nilskidoo2• 7 years ago

Great points! And it is curious, in that I was always taught how respect must be earned, yet we give our contempt away so freely. If those are the only options, they are not equal.

Fellshard2• 7 years ago

The contempt spiral did not magically start with Trump.

repolfx2• 7 years ago

That's not a prisoner's dilemma. That's exactly what the article is talking about: saying there doesn't need to be a "you first" because both sides are equally guilty, so someone has to put down their contempt and it may as well be you (where "you" here means anyone at all). The act of one side being less contemptuous is not useless in isolation, as would be required for a prisoner's dilemma.

I would also caution against concluding that one side "ramped contempt up to 11". As a foreigner observing the US elections from afar, I saw a lot of contempt in both directions, but especially towards conservatives in the USA who were being routinely described as if they were mindless cattle, good for nothing at all beyond slowly dwindling industrial production. Compared coldly to the rest of the world, Trump's policies (some trade protectionism and enforcement of immigration laws) are nothing special or unusual, not in contemporary times nor historically. But somehow this position became held with utmost contempt and was routinely described as the most hateful forms of racism. You can see that as well with Brexit in which the majority of the voting population has been routinely described as racist.

There's no word for this kind of rhetoric other than contempt - it's literally what the article describes, in which the complexities and motives of millions of people are considered in trivial moralistic terms of "you hate, i love".

Fins• 7 years ago

It's not like there weren't anything like "basket of deplorables" from the losing side either, and saying that it's always "the other side" that "ramped to 11 seems to be a prime case of "they learned nothing and forgot nothing". It is a problem by itself.

Although I might agree that AOC's and Omar's success is predicated on Trump being in the White House -- in current climate Democrats pretty much have to circle wagons around even someone as vile as them.

By the way, doesn't, say, Al Sharpton predate Alex Jones?

nilskidoo2• 7 years ago

I agree with this in the same sense that I never agreed with the old adage of opinions being like @$$holes, with everyone having one. There is far too much reaction and repetition, particularly online, for me to believe that everyone actually has an opinion of their own. Political partisanship is brand loyalty is religious zealotry. I feel our culture dissuades too many people from earnestly thinking their beliefs objectively through, "all or nothing" ethos prevailing, which limits our access to healthy debate. Friction is natural. The blacksmith has to hammer a sword into shape before it can effectively do its slicy thing.

gotocake2• 7 years ago

The problem is that 2 opens you up to (using a phrase from some submissions on HN) “intellectual denial of service attacks.” You could spend a dozen lifetimes responding reasonably, with well researched and phrased rebuttals to anti-vaxxers, or young Earth creationists and all you’d do is (ironically) help them evolve new fantasies, new conspiracies, and more convincing verbiage.

It’s possible to assume goodwill and sincerity in the limited case of a site like this, but in the general case it’s literaly impossible. Brandolini’s Law ensures that this is effectively a form of asymmetric conflict, and the well-meaning person is doomed from the start. It’s like dealing with a forum troll, who dedicates the whole of their waking life to their “business” while the mods and other users actually have lives and limited energy to spare.

I don’t have a solution beyond using and refining heuristics, but at some point you have to accept that you can’t afford to treat everyone and every viewpoint fairly. At some point, dealing with dishonest, foolish, and potentially harmful ideologies breeds contempt, and when you can’t just log off to avoid it, that contempt will take root. Some people, some ideas are contemptible, and the rational response isn’t tolerance and acceptance.

I think my personal answer is to accept the world and life as it is, not just as I wish it could be. On some level life is a competition, and ideas are a competition. Choosing not to play the game is far from a winning move.

unclebucknasty10• 7 years ago

It’s possible to assume goodwill and sincerity in the limited case of a site like this

Even that's changing steadily, albeit slightly more slowly/subtly. The slower pace is likely due to the superior moderation here, combined with the astuteness of the HN crowd. But, that latter point also makes HN a prized target for propagandists and trolls.

And, if you look closely, you'll see them, including here on this thread.

But, the rest of your comment is spot-on: the sociopathic troll feasts on good-will and contemptible views should be met with contempt. In fact, however, this is their strategy: purposely earn contempt then claim to be the victim when that contempt is paid. For instance, they trigger vulnerable people, then attack them further when they try to defend themsleves. The trolls justify these attacks by claiming they are the actual victims.

vore• 7 years ago

This is an argument you can make regardless of what is actually going on on the ground. "The problem isn't policy, it's actually polarization" -- but the article completely fails to examine the causes of said polarization: What are people feeling angry about? Which people feel angry about what? Are those people justified in feeling angry? Are those angry people just doing it for show or are their lives being actively ruined?

You end up having to view the conflict through an ideological lens, but claiming there is some enlightened non-ideological view and the "real problem" is contemptuousness is mega disingenuous.

discard00002• 7 years ago

Created a throwaway account for this. As a foreigner who has spent significant time living the US, indeed this seems like the kind of mealy-mouthed, somewhat vapid meta-commentary about "unity" that offers nothing more than some soundbyte call for some abstract value (in this case "better disagreement").

It doesn't address, for example, the fact that the two political factions in America now accept different versions of reality. You cannot square that circle with "better disagreement". You cannot paper over a disagreement on the nature of fundamental facts with simplistic calls for a better discourse.

To offer the most salient example: the question of whether or not the President of the country, with the help of his party and a major media outlet, is conspiring with a foreign dictatorship to undermine the democratic integrity of the country.

One demographic believes the above to be true. The other either does not believe it to be true, or alternatively does not believe it to matter even if true.

This is not some issue that can be simply bridged with "better disagreement". I'm sorry, that's just something you don't get to do.

To offer another example: whether the former President of the united states was indeed an illegitimate candidate due to not being a natural born citizen.

One side believes this to be true, the other does not.

This disconnect on reality exists across the spectrum, and the lines are harshly drawn.

If Americans cannot acknowledge that this schism in their country is arising out of a fundamental and deep disconnect on facts and reality that is widening on a day by day basis, not some mere "communication issue", they will never truly be able to understand and address it.

paulsutter• 7 years ago

None of my conservative friends believe that nonsense about Obama, and none of my democrat friends believe that Trump is a Russian spy. Both sides agree Trump is a swindly buffoon, and everyone agrees the Russians have higher standards when recruiting spies.

The difference is that some of my conservative friends think it’s ok - or even funny - to have a swindly buffoon as president, and my democrat friends find this appalling.

The New York Times on the other hand is making mad bank promoting a big culture war, so make of that what you will.

roenxi• 7 years ago

It doesn't address, for example, the fact that the two political factions in America now accept different versions of reality.

This isn't an unusual state of affairs. Historically, western civilization has faced similar problems with, eg, Catholics vs Protestants (which was substantially worse than anything we have now). The US specifically isn't yet even as bad as it was in the Civil War. The C v. P issue deserves special consideration - religious freedom isn't a principle in the west because it is warm and fuzzy. There were a lot of deaths.

The threat is always that one side gets so delusional they do away with the institutions and systems that moderate the disagreement. Things like equal voting and standing before the law, judicial precedent, free speech, personal freedom, etc, etc. That risk is not concentrated in either wing of politics.

dropofwill• 7 years ago

I think part of what you’re getting at is what Wittgenstein called deep disagreements, conflicts that can’t rationally be resolved because they actually are just a proxy for differences in foundational beliefs (‘hinge commitments’).

There’s a lot of interesting work that sprung out of these ideas, for example can hinge commitments be true/false or just ‘are’, if they can be true/false is it possible to give evidence to prove that?

High level (hopeful) overview i read a while back on the topic https://chris-ranalli.weebly.com/uploads/7/4/6/4/7464753/wit...

Theodores• 7 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy

It is a trick. People are being deliberately played. Power depends on myths. And people believing them.

fulafel2• 7 years ago

Is there really a qualitative difference? Public discourse is a vehicle to arrive at a shared understanding of (= beliefs about) facts.

timthorn• 7 years ago

It doesn't address, for example, the fact that the two political factions in America now accept different versions of reality. You cannot square that circle with "better disagreement".

You can't square the circle, but you can have a better discourse that recognises the fact. Abortion has been an issue like this for years - one side believes it is murder, the other believes it is fundamental to women's rights. But in the main, debate has been civil and about the issue rather than the people. That might be changing, of course - but it demonstrates that you can have a better discourse.

specialist2• 7 years ago

One of my brothers studied to become a marine biologist. He then found Jesus. Now he's a creationist. Amongst a dozen other proclaimed beliefs.

Does my brother really, truly believe that the earth is 6,000 years old? Really?

One of my besties just revealed that she's an anti-vaxxor. Um, okay. Honestly, I can't even look at her the same way.

I now favor the theory of belief as attire. Every day is Halloween and people dress up aspirationally. Because reasons.

Whatever my brother (and others) now claim to believe, I've no idea how to relate, so I've given up trying to have meaningful, sincere conversations about anything substantial.

To keep things civil and pleasant, it's all just chitchat. With familiar strangers.

DyslexicAtheist3• 7 years ago

for somebody who as a non resident and oblivious to what is happening to US society (other than what toxic media feeds me), I wish the below thread (now dead) had at least 1 or 2 comments explaining why his/her position is flawed (or even outrageous). Judging only from what many Australians, Brits and Europeans are saying it seems the opinion on Americans is that they have been divorced from reality long before Trump. One of my mates living in NYC who I caught up with in January has pretty much reverberated what that (dead) sibling comment said. Not only do I fail to see why people find that comment outrageous but I don't even understand what people believe is the real reason for the divide.

Hopefully no one finds this offensive. Also the problem is far from being an isolated US phenomenon. I see it everywhere across the EU (Brexit being just the tip of the iceberg here).

edit: suddenly @discard0000's comment is no longer dead.

malandrew2• 7 years ago

Yeah, I had to vouch for it to undead it. I was honestly surprised that it was killed. It made a great point and wasn't inflammatory.

whack• 7 years ago

You haven't addressed the author's main point at all. You can disagree all you want with someone, without feeling contempt towards that person.

"but the article completely fails to examine the causes of said polarization"

Actually the article does exactly that:

The sources of motive attribution asymmetry are easy to identify: divisive politicians, screaming heads on television, hateful columnists, angry campus activists and seemingly everything on the contempt machines of social media. This “outrage industrial complex” works by catering to just one ideological side, creating a species of addiction by feeding our desire to believe that we are completely right and that the other side is made up of knaves and fools. It strokes our own biases while affirming our worst assumptions about those who disagree with us.

I would add to the above the tech-fueled echo chambers, fake news, and clickbait journalism. As far as actual substantive differences between the 2 political parties, I don't think anything has changed dramatically in the past century.

Feel free to be as ideological and radical as you want. I believe in Medicare for all and UBI. But there is such a thing as healthy disagreements and healthy debates, and never does that include contempt. If you think that anyone who voted for the other party is worthy of contempt, you're part of the problem.

int_19h7• 7 years ago

I know a literal neo-Nazi who voted for the other party. Are they worthy of contempt?

noobermin4• 7 years ago

This is an ideological view here. The author is the head of a large think tank, the kinds whose current position is threatened by the "extremes" on either side of the divide. Take out the AEI and place in CAP and you get a similar antagonism and a loathing of these types at the people rejecting business as usual.

philwelch• 7 years ago

Polarization is a tactic used to gain power, on both sides. It’s obvious who benefits from polarization: the moral defectives who end up in positions of power and influence by stoking it.

zzzeek• 7 years ago

I wonder if the president of the American Enterprise Institute felt it so important to stress how both sides have "contempt" for one another back when a plurality of his politcal party of choice thought the president was secretly a Muslim born in Kenya.

tptacek2• 7 years ago

This is a superficial and unhelpful piece from someone who, despite appearances to the contrary, is in fact a US political partisan. That doesn't make his opinion worthless! But it does make his high-horse stance a bit much to take, to say nothing of the ahistoricism of his thesis (ask someone who appeared before HUAC if partisanism is boiling over in 2019).

That said, I come not to bury Arthur Cooke but to praise him, for while his arguments clearly have not survived condensation into an NYT op-ed, they're at least thought-provoking in longer-form media, and I can recommend as an alternative to this dumb article his lengthy podcast interview with Ezra Klein on many of the same topics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRJuZlTtXVU

repolfx2• 7 years ago

He starts his article by saying he's a political conservative who works for a think tank in DC. What 'appearances to the contrary' do you mean? I've never heard of him but having read his article knew immediately he was a political partisan, because he told me so!

I'm also unsure why his arguments have not survived. The op-ed appeared cogent and internally consistent to me. If you wish to argue his writing is superficial, unhelpful, ahistoric etc, why not do so directly instead of just asserting that these things are so.

tptacek2• 7 years ago

I disagree that he made his background clear. The first graf is written flippantly, in a "you say potato, I say potəto" sort of way (also, "I'm not a politics junkie"). The second graf buries the lede --- he's a professor, a former symphony musician, heads a think-tank... and, oh, by the way, that think tank happens to be AEI, one of the two most prominent centers of Republican conservative thought.

I also made a direct argument as to the ahistoricity of the piece.

I don't think this is especially important --- my original comment stands on its own --- but I'm a nerd and can't resist clarifying and defending my arguments.

tailrecursion2• 7 years ago

Ben Shapiro acts respectfully when answering students and debating BLM or other persons. I've seen so many instances of bad behavior on the part of his conversation partner, yet Ben remains cool and professional. The worst I remember is that instance where he refused to use a pronoun on Television. If I recall the trans person in that situation behaved very badly.

Jordan Peterson remains cool, even with interviewers that treat him badly.

Dave Rubin says repeatedly he's willing to talk to people, and that people refuse him and don't invite him.

Tim Pool keeps his cool in the midst of online and real-world dust-ups.

Tarl Warwick is also calm cool and collected. He'll talk to anyone.

Any leftist who wants to engage others productively can look to Pool as a good example.

Jimmy Dore is on the left (according to himself at least), and he's civil.

My impression is that most anyone on the spectrum will talk to anyone else, except for Resisters, who seem to have a visceral dislike for Trump that clouds their reason; and the far left, who object more or less to the entire western way of life, or capitalism, or something that would require a large amount of dismantling. It takes a lot of dissatisfaction to want to start from scratch, and these persons seem to be the most badly behaved. So my guess is they feel most of the contempt and also are the ones who receive the most contempt -- because of their abusive behavior. In fact, if the far left has any lasting principle at all it would appear to be that contempt is a wonderful club to use against anyone who isn't responding properly to their dogma.

DyslexicAtheist3• 7 years ago

Jordan Peterson remains cool, even with interviewers that treat him badly.

I had no idea about Jordan Peterson until his name popped up in the pronoun controversy. Being sick of all the bickering in this space I never watched it until I stumbled over some old lectures of him on addiction last week. Some of the best content I've ever come across to understand human psychology. His dissection of Pinocchio¹ is absolutely top. I can't say that I agree on everything he says (e.g. his view on abortion gets me riled up like nothing else), but nor do I have to. Whatever his views outside his work in psychology have little bearing on his work and should be judged independently. If society nails everyone to the cross that we disagree in 1/20 topics then there won't be any people left. Peterson actively reaches out to right wingers in order to help them and include them in the conversation. I think this is the way to go - the alternative can only lead to violent outcomes.

¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN2lyN7rM4E

noobermin4• 7 years ago

You're being a little selective here.

rlt4• 7 years ago

Sam Harris is a good one on the left.

Joe Rogan is fairly neutral but has a lot of interesting guests from both sides on.

rlt4• 7 years ago

Can someone explain the downvotes?

_bxg16• 7 years ago

Hillary's "deplorables" comment was the embodiment of this problem. And I wouldn't be surprised if it was what tipped the election for Trump in the end.

justin665• 7 years ago

Hillary's "deplorables" comment was the embodiment of this problem.

I'm always fascinated by the fact that some people believe this.

I remember a decade ago, in a heated time during an actual war, Sarah Palin would go on and on about "real Americans," a group which she made clear does not include me. Just one memorable example of the rhetoric she used toward those outside her tribe. She was a huge hit and hugely influential in her party.

Clinton let fly once with a comment exhibiting the same level of contempt that prominent Republicans use all the time and she suddenly became exactly half the problem.

_bxg16• 7 years ago

I would say "deplorable" is far more contemptuous than "not a 'real' 'American'". It suggests that one isn't even a valid person, just something to be hated. And even if it were the same, the entire point is that saying "but look what they did" is a race to the bottom.

unclebucknasty10• 7 years ago

Here's what HRC actually said:

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic – Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.

But the "other" basket – the other basket – and I know because I look at this crowd I see friends from all over America here: I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas and — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that "other" basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they're just desperate for change."

So, what you have is people self-identifying into the abhorrent, contemptible "basket" she explicitly describes (versus the one that is "honorable" and even sympathetic), then crying foul. It really is a remarkable thing.

Now, she was overly broad with her statement "half" and --though she likely used that word to convey "two groups" vs literally 50% -- she admitted as much herself. But, the core of what she was saying is objectively true and observable: a substantial share of Trump's support was made up, in significant portions, of each of these groups.

So, to the question of "contempt", is it acceptable to have contempt for contemptible views? Because what she described in that first basket was certainly contemptible.

And that sums up the modern Right: troll, own the libs, and generally act in ways that are purposely and overtly provocative and comtemptible. Then, cry foul and victimization when you are called on it.

From Trump, to his sons, to the basket of deplorables that just spoke at CPAC, these people are first and foremost, purposeful trolls who seek contempt as a motivating force. Then, people like Brooks from AEI come along with facile, disingenuous articles and lament the contempt coming from "both sides".

malandrew2• 7 years ago

I chalk a lot of this up to the fact that journalism is no longer such a great career and increasingly a precarious career choice due to layoffs. This leads those in our society with the largest megaphones to increasingly spout discontent because they feel discontent.

I bet you that if journalism suddenly provided a comfortable and safe living, that within 5 years the entire attitude of the country would change just because the attitude of the cultural influencers would turn to contentness and they would spread that contentness.

rjf724• 7 years ago

I don't think it's the journalists in and of themselves. Journalists do not have much power. An individual on here posted about being contacted by the NYT to write an "opinion" piece based on a comment he wrote related to cryptocurrencies. [1] He followed up and eventually did publish the piece. I'm going to avoid commenting on that other than to say that the NYT forced him to endorse opinions he did not hold in an article that was supposed to have been written by him. It's best to read the exact examples than my probably biased tl/dr. And that sort of stuff is what they do to one-off writers. Imagine what they do to (and whom they recruit) for their regular staff! The journalists are just mouthpieces for the executive team.

I think the problem is that the media is dying, but they've found that in the mean time provoking and agitating for a 'culture war' is sending profits skyrocketing. So you don't need to change the media, but you need to change people that eat this nonsense up. Unfortunately, that's probably impossible.

[1] https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/nyt_opini...

athenot• 7 years ago

The article is about how motive attribution asymmetry leads to contempt, first for the "other political side" then eventually to individuals within that other side.

But I think it could go further and question why things get polarized into 2 sides. Our modern society is way more complicated and contains way more nuance than what a binary system can offer.

I don't know what the answer is but I feel that political parties as a shortcut for evaluating individual policy goals is tremendously reductionist, and increasingly harmful to society.

fulafel2• 7 years ago

Oftentimes first policy decision about a problem is whether to address it, so that's naturally a 1-bit kind of decision. Take the biggest problem, global warming, for example. Yes, it's an entire field of policy, science, etc by itself. But the voters mainly need to make the value judgement of whether to fix it even if it costs something.

excalibur• 7 years ago

But I think it could go further and question why things get polarized into 2 sides. Our modern society is way more complicated and contains way more nuance than what a binary system can offer.

It's not that great for the masses, but it's wonderful for the elite. If you can persuade the vast majority to pick a side, then you don't have to worry about engineering public opinion to your own benefit on each and every issue. All you need to do is control both the red and blue teams. Then you can regularly shit on the proles and retain their support, simply by blaming the "other side" for their misfortune.

rjf724• 7 years ago

I think this is probably the main point. By dividing people into two camps you help solidify your own grasp on power. Again the 2016 election is full of just so many interesting lessons. How many people voted for Clinton thinking 'Yes, this person genuinely stands for what I believe in and will make a great president!' How many people voted for her because the alternative was simply unacceptable meaning they feared 'wasting' their vote? And the exact same is true of people that voted for Trump.

Think about how 'great' an achievement that is in terms of population control. You, as a player in the entrenched powers, have managed to get people to not only participate in 'your' democracy, but to actively vote for people they don't even want in office, and to actively attack people that vote for third parties. For instance already see the (rather orchestrated) massively negative reaction against Starbucks' Howard Schultz announcing his intentions of running for the presidency as an independent. How dare you run for president unless you declare yourself one of these two parties that fewer people than ever actually identify as, and that are ever more out of touch with the population! How dare you!

usermane• 7 years ago

Notice that it all got really serious when the fight fired up between ethnonationalists and xenophiles. It seems to hit people at a more basic level than merely arguing about health policy or gay marriage.

Plus, you get the extra magic of this same schism happening in the West generally.

I'd say there's a lot more to this than US domestic politics.

throw2016• 7 years ago

This is rich coming from the head of AEI, an organization which is part of a network of think tanks funded by the likes of Koch that have been bootstrapped to promote corporate interests and a worldview where there is no society only 'wealth creators' and workers. [1]

Wendy Brown, Philip Mirowski and Nancy Maclean [2][3][4] have gone into immense detail on how these organizations are created and operated behind the scenes to fund and spread self serving ideology and propaganda.

They have huge problem with collectives of workers but see no problems with organizing themselves into 'groups' to not only lobby Congress, but sponsor university economics departments and hire thousands of people to push these self serving views in the press for decades on end. This itself compromises this project for untenable self serving hypocrisy. Its for individuals who buy into these narratives to question if organizing to promote and further their interests for decades is good for the wealthiest why is is not good for workers?

There are thousands of people whose job it is to come up with decontextualized words like 'wealth creators', 'job creators' to create a halo narratives for corporate interests and undermine society, citizenship, the social good, the environment that make 'wealth creation' even possible. So all those take a backseat to 'wealth creator' interests. Since you can't create wealth without society these two cannot be separated but since there are no civil, citizen or worker groups and structures to counter these anti-social narratives you don't get balance but a one sided self interested perspective.

In the AEI world the only thing that matters is people like Kochs business and personal interests and making sure government is not 'impinging on their freedom'. And to achieve this they propagate a fundamental anti-human narrative and create an environment where ordinary people and workers are held in contempt for even expecting living wages and conditions and their access to basic achievements of western democracy like education, health care and living conditions is consistently hollowed out to promote privatization and become 'entitlements'. And we are left with a decontextualized unstable individualized view of the world that exists in a collective but is forcefully detached into a context less existence.

[1] https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Enterprise_In...

[2] https://www.ineteconomics.org/uploads/papers/WP23-Mirowski.p...

[3] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/undoing-demos

[4] https://www.theoryculturesociety.org/review-wendy-browns-und...

[5] https://history.duke.edu/book/democracy-chains

[6] Wendy Brown - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eowEmcS75JM

[7] Nancy Maclean - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqQ_dIjr3uU

specialist2• 7 years ago

The appeal to civility is the last step before starting the cycle of rhetoric anew. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Our Culture of Contempt

Related Stories