The politicization of society is damaging liberal democracy

https://thomasprosser.substack.com/p/the-extension-of-political-conflict

27 51 4 years ago

thomasprosser.substack.com

tharne5• 4 years ago

The sad part of all of this is that the folks pushing the polarization in the U.S., the Trumpy right, and the progressive left, represent an extreme minority of the population. If either of these two groups had an any level of self awareness, they'd realize that no one wants them around.

082349872349872• 4 years ago

If the US had an equivalent of lib dems and/or proportional representation and/or ranked choice, would it still be so polarised? Sure, a 2-party state is preferable to a 1-party state, but that's a pretty low bar.

Lagniappe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Warren#Election

tharne5• 4 years ago

If the US had an equivalent of lib dems and/or proportional representation and/or ranked choice, would it still be so polarised

I don't think this would be a panacea, but it would definitely help things quite a bit. The largest voting block in the U.S. isn't Democrats or Republicans, but voters that have chosen not to be affiliated with either party.

nathanaldensr• 4 years ago

You can't really say "no one" when Trump won the 2016 election and nearly won the 2020 election. You should probably check your assertions.

bediger4000• 4 years ago

In neither case did he get even a simple majority of the votes. He won/almost won due to a quirky US presidential system that overrepresents small population states.

That fact supports the "no one" generalization.

tharne5• 4 years ago

When you have two choices in a polarized country, one of them is going to win and the other is going to "almost win". That's what makes this situation so ugly.

convolvatron• 4 years ago

since every issue apparently has two quite defined and non-overlapping 'sides', what is a moderate? someone who chooses Ala-carte?

tharne5• 4 years ago

A moderate has more to do with a mindset and epistemological stance than it does with specific views. A moderate, regardless of where they stand on a particular issue, will ask themselves "What if I'm wrong?", or "Wow this issue is very complicated, I'm not 100% certain on the answer".

Extremists, by contrast, tend to be absolutely certain of whatever opinion they happen to hold at the moment and nothing can shake them of that. There has been a lot written about the alleged differences between the conservative mind and the liberal mind, but I think that completely misses it. Extremists, even those on opposite ends of the political spectrum, have a lot more in common with one another than they do with moderates and other normal people.

benlivengood• 4 years ago

I don't think it's normal people pushing the polarization, at least not in the root cause analysis. The political parties are playing the meta-political game of continuing to exist and the game theory there is to slice and dice the electorate along advantageous lines in every voting district/region. The more divisive an issue, the more predictable and reliable as a tool for staying in power.

Political parties have no external goals; they are self-interested and use the people within them to achieve that goal by offering carrots (which result in fulfilling the external values of normal people) or sticks (which punish defection or opposing party members).

Progressivism and conservativism are not opposed on a single axis. Political parties lay claim to and label particular issues which benefits both major U.S. parties in the long run by giving them each a grab bag of issues for a particular set of voters. This is why, for example, guns and wombs have opposite signs in the personal-freedom axis for both parties. As long as the shared belief exists that an issue "belongs" to "one side" it remains useful as a political tool but nearly worthless as a policy tool for normal people.

Finally, it is not the extremes leading this charge. The core DNC and RNC execute this strategy because they are locked in a struggle for survival. The DNC and RNC have successfully used the threat of the least-aligned party to trap moderate and progressive voters within the party structures. Non-partisan primaries and ranked-choice/runoff voting are starting to show moderate success (AK and NH) at changing the game theory to favor politicians who compromise on multivariate issues versus enforcing party platforms.

kodyo5• 4 years ago

Beyond that, a growing number of us have realized that democracy is incompatible with freedom.

Once you accept that, the absurdity of politicians claiming to speak for large swaths of your country is just comical.

Downvoters are free to explain why unimpressive people have any say over how you think or how you should behave.

AnimalMuppet3• 4 years ago

Beyond that, a growing number of us have realized that democracy is incompatible with freedom.

That's an interesting mindset, in theory, but not very grounded in reality. Being a democracy is no guarantee of freedom, but it has let more people live in more freedom than any other system. (The great danger is that tyrants convert democracies into pseudo-democracies, keeping the trappings while removing the freedom, and that makes democracies look bad to those who are unaware.)

Seriously, if you've got a system that leads to more freedom, put in into practice somewhere, and show us how it works in the real world. If you can consistently deliver for several decades, we might start to listen.

Once you accept that, the absurdity of politicians claiming to speak for large swaths of your country is just comical.

Politicians speak, not for the population, not even for everyone who voted for them, but for everyone who agrees with the politician on that particular point.

Downvoters are free to explain why unimpressive people have any say over how you think or how you should behave.

I'm having a hard time understanding what you're trying to say here. But it sounds like you're saying that, in a democracy, "unimpressive people" have a say because they get to vote. Well, I don't know anybody who lets voters decide how they think. How they behave? Well, votes lead to laws, so, yeah. But in a non-democracy, someone was still going to be making the laws, and almost certainly that would be someone who is not you. So it seems to me that you're always going to have other people having a say over how you should behave. (And, in a non-democracy, they can be a lot more serious having say over how you think, too.)

The phrase "unimpressive people" I find a bit disturbing. It sounds like you're looking down on them, that there's some contempt there. Frankly, that does not make your position more persuasive.

1attice• 4 years ago

As a member of one of the minorities whose rights campaigns Prosser cites as ruining his footie, I'll say, apropos nothing, that it's much easier to talk about these issues with detached neutrality when you & your friends are not subject to monotonically increasing levels of stochastic domestic terrorism.

Guthur2• 4 years ago

Sounds like you need to get new friends.

We are all dealing with crap, we are all at the bottom of the pile getting the dregs from trickle down economic theory.

It's not about one tiny fringe group, when we fight only for ever more specific fringe groups we ignore the injustice we are all subjected to.

giraffe_lady2• 4 years ago

We're all subject to injustice and can and absolutely find solidarity within that.

It's also true that injustice and danger is not evenly distributed, and it's shitty and dismissive to pretend that it is. Far right extremist violence against queer people is absolutely a thing and it has been increasing for several years now, for example. How many of your friends have been killed violently by extremists in the last two years? If it's zero you maybe should just stfu about the injustice we're all subject to, in this context.

mcphage5• 4 years ago

Sounds like you need to get new friends.

I don't think I understand—which friends are you suggesting that 1attice get rid of?

rayiner4• 4 years ago

As a member of one of those minorities as well, I think that’s a lazy cop out and also in the long run bad for us.

It drove me nuts during the Trump era when non-Muslims acted like banning refugees from Muslim countries with high levels of terrorist activity was the same as discussing how to round up brown people into internment camps. You can’t piss on people’s leg and tell them it’s raining. Those were conversations that people in Muslim countries had also. Shouting down that debate won’t make the concerns go away, and will only lead to problems down the road.

TheCoelacanth• 4 years ago

Banning refugees from those countries by itself wasn't perceived that way.

Publicly promising that you're going to ban all Muslims from the US and then immediately afterwards banning travel from some predominately Muslim countries and telling your supporters that you fulfilled your promise was.

rayiner4• 4 years ago

A lot of well meaning people are seriously damaging the country by injecting politics into spheres that the public broadly needs to perceive as “neutral” such as law and medicine. This is usually accompanied by efforts to reframe contentious policy debates as “non-political.” Which of course makes no sense because lots of things that aren’t political in the abstract quickly become political when it comes to people advancing specific remedies or ways of restructuring society.

yucky• 4 years ago

In case anybody misses your point, I'd like to add on to it by pointing to some scary changes at the American Bar Association - https://pacificlegal.org/american-bar-associations-equity-st... and American Medial Association - https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-rel... among many others.

It doesn't appear that this is a fixable problem now.

rayiner4• 4 years ago

That’s a good example of how neutral institutions reframe contentious policy proposals as if they are universal values that are beyond debate.

“Equity” and “diversity” sound like something “non-political” that everyone can get onboard with. But in practice those terms are used to champion expressly race conscious hiring and promotion. That’s not only political and debatable, it’s unpopular among the very minorities on whose behalf it is invoked: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2019/05/08/america...

prohobo2• 4 years ago

This happened with an open-source video game I wanted to contribute to, of all things...

I thought I'd found a welcoming community that was interested in building something cool, and I could learn some C# while contributing to something really unique and creative.

That turned out to be sort of right, but the senior maintainers decided that it's also cool to shove their politics down everyone else's throats and ban anyone who so much as sniffs at it.

They intentionally flag-wave their political stances in Discord to bait people into mentioning it, and if they don't like someone's thoughts they ban them and pat themselves on the back for ostensibly removing "toxicity" and "intolerance". When I asked them to stop doing that they tried to bait me into saying something they didn't like, and stated that their political views aren't political at all - more like natural law.

From my perspective, these people (regardless of political affiliation) act pathologically and crave the camaraderie and support of being part of an in-group, and enforce that in-group, because they probably feel generally insecure. They don't really understand the implications of their behavior, nor do they actually care about their supposed cause, they just want to feel in control and validated, and they found a venue for it.

To stop this pathological politicization you have to create an environment of security. That isn't going to happen any time soon, so I'm not sure what the point of any of this is - just avoid them and find/create communities that don't allow politics.

beyond_based• 4 years ago

Which game? This sounds awfully familiar.

AnimalMuppet3• 4 years ago

To stop this pathological politicization you have to create an environment of security.

But in your example, the problem was the person in charge. If it's your community, then by all means, create the right environment. But if it's a situation like your example, then what? You, the random newcomer, can't really alter the environment very much. You can stay and accept it, or you can leave, but the environment is already problematic. Now what? How can you un-politicize such a community, when you aren't the leader?

sobkas2• 4 years ago

A lot of well meaning people are seriously damaging the country by injecting politics into spheres that the public broadly needs to perceive as “neutral” such as law and medicine. This is usually accompanied by efforts to reframe contentious policy debates as “non-political.” Which of course makes no sense because lots of things that aren’t political in the abstract quickly become political when it comes to people advancing specific remedies or ways of restructuring society.

And there are people who pretend that progressive changes to society are inherently political, and also imply/openly advocate that conservative keeping of status quo isn't. Just because status quo benefits them doesn't mean that keeping it, is rational non-political option.

rayiner4• 4 years ago

Humans have an inherent status quo bias and will perceive changing the status quo differently than maintaining the status quo. “Infrastructure” institutions, such as law and medicine, which depend on broad public support and the perception of neutrality, thus cannot be seen as actively seeking to change the status quo. Of course, they must also not be seen as resisting changes to the status quo from non-infrastructure sectors of society. Put differently, stable democracy calls for a well policed distinction between sectors of society that lobby for change, and sectors of society that are expected to neutrally referee, or provide expert guidance, without being agents of change themselves.

kodyo5• 4 years ago

Why do you think they’re well-meaning?

mcphage5• 4 years ago

When public firework displays take positions on controversial issues, they provoke partisan reactions, poisoning debate further and turning aggrieved groups away from public spaces.

Is support for Ukraine a controversial issue in the UK? In the US, support for Ukraine is pretty widespread.

Neil44• 4 years ago

Ukraine is widely supported vs Russia but I guess he’s saying that just because it’s popular doesn’t make the point morally correct in the context of what he’s saying. The LGBTQ+ is currently controversial in the context of the erosion of women only spaces and rights in the face of certain pressure groups.

VerifiedJoseph• 4 years ago

According to Ipsos (Oct '22), "6 in 10 support Britain’s response to the conflict" and "7 in 10 continue to support economic sanctions against Russia - but some evidence support could wane if there are further energy price rises"

https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/public-continues-support-britain...

Personally I wouldn't say support for Ukraine is controversial here in the UK.

mcphage5• 4 years ago

Personally I wouldn't say support for Ukraine is controversial here in the UK.

I wonder why the author singled it out an example of a controversial issue, then.

kodyo5• 4 years ago

Support of the Ukraine is synonymous with supporting NATO’s war. There should never have been a war, and there should have been a cease fire by now.

Does that opinion make me anti-Ukraine?

_kbh_• 4 years ago

Support of the Ukraine is synonymous with supporting NATO’s war. There should never have been a war, and there should have been a cease fire by now.

Russia should have never invaded I agree, but it's up to Russia to leave now.

No one can stop Russias war but Russia.

Ceasefires also just help Russia so what you should really want is a quick decisive defeat of Russia by Ukraine.

mcphage5• 4 years ago

There should never have been a war, and there should have been a cease fire by now.
Does that opinion make me anti-Ukraine?

Neither of those facts make you anti-Ukrainian. However, if you think the road to accomplishing that is to have Ukraine surrender, rather than Russian stop invading—that would make you anti-Ukrainian. I do note that you deliberately left out under whose terms a cease-fire should be signed, however.

hausen• 4 years ago

The original title is "The extension of political conflict is corroding liberal democracy," which better reflects the opinion in the article.

The editorialized title ("the politicization of society is damaging liberal democracy") frankly doesn't do the article any justice.

PicassoCTs• 4 years ago

One could develop mechanisms, that make the ability to compromise and negotiate outcomes, a requisite to holding offices, even after elections. This could for example happen, by the small minority parties (who are usually filtered out in most democracies) negotiating the voices they represent to another party that will enter representation, in return for representing a certain view-point.

This would prevent votes from being lost and would make the ability to compromise and "secure" these votes more important then populist behavior.

fallingfrog• 4 years ago

Sorry, but this article is 90% word salad and the other 10% seems to be saying things that most people would disagree with but in the most indirect language possible.

I'm not against using precise words when they are helpful. But sometimes I see people using complex language to obfuscate the message instead of clarifying it, and as far as I can tell that's what is happening here.

When the meaning of an essay is confused and unclear, either a) I'm just not smart enough to understand it or b) the author is a poor communicator. B is much, much more common.

mcphage5• 4 years ago

Some retort that everything is political, but I do not see how activities such as birdwatching, sex and optometry are political in a meaningful sense. If one insists on the contrary, we return to similarities with totalitarianism.

But the author isn't talking about incidents in birdwatching or optometry—they're talking about large, expensive national celebrations. It may be hard to find the politics in birdwatching, but it's not hard to find the politics in holiday firework displays.

(And if the author can't see how sex can be political, I'm not sure they read their list of controversial incidents, or have paid attention to modern politics)

TMWNN• 4 years ago

This first got really bad during the Trump presidency. One could be reading the least "political" article imaginable, and suddenly see something condemnatory about Trump that smugly assumes that everyone reading surely agrees. Nowhere was safe: Film reviews, book reviews, articles about cooking, travelogues, minor human-interest stories, you name it.

During the aforementioned Trump years I thought at times about creating /r/ihatetrumpbut, a subreddit for collecting articles/posts/comments in which the author felt the need to declaim "I hate Trump, but [something Trump/US government did may not necessarily be 100% fascist/evil/a bad idea]". Basically, a Lord's Prayer to preemptively avoid the devil's accusation of maybe possibly being a (shudder) Trump sympathizer in some small way. Hey, maybe I'll get more motivation to pull the trigger in November 2024!

The politicization of society is damaging liberal democracy

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