tzimmer_history

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

It’s indicative of how this society treats the homeless, the mentally ill - of how the question of whether or not a person’s humanity is acknowledged very much depends on the color of their skin. A society in which the “comfort” of some is worth more than the lives of others.

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

It ties into the broader political conflict because it’s also indicative of a vision for society that has actually been the norm throughout U.S. history: A society in which some people - white men, in particular - have the absolute right to defend their place, status, and “comfort.”

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

America is built on a social order that gives some people – white men, specifically – the power to use whatever form of violence they deem necessary to “defend” themselves against all threats from “others,” real and perceived. The Right wants to preserve that order.

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

This order is predicated on an extremely expansive idea of what constitutes a “threat”: Black people, for instance, are seen as inherently threatening; and there is not much of a line separating what makes white people “uncomfortable” from what is defined as an acute threat.

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

In key ways, much of the political conflict that defines the country revolves around the question of who gets to be comfortable in America - and who gets to make whom uncomfortable? How much discomfort do those who have traditionally dominated have to accept?

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

The Right’s answer to these questions is what it’s always been: Conservative white Christians - by virtue of supposedly being the sole proponents of “real America” - should not ever have to deal with the kind of discomfort a compassionate, egalitarian, pluralistic society entails.

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

We start by outlining the central arguments and claims of the polarization narrative, looking both at how it’s been conceptualized in the political and social sciences as well as at how the idea of “polarization” has shaped the broader public and political discourse. 3/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

Our point is not that there aren’t specific aspects or dimensions of American politics, society, and culture that are adequately described as “polarized.” But once the “polarization” concept is adopted as an overarching diagnosis, it becomes really problematic. 4/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

We then offer an empirical, normative, and historical critique of the polarization narrative. On the empirical level, the pervasive polarization narrative completely obscures the fact that we find relatively broad consensus on some key political, social, and cultural questions. 5/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

It is true that in many areas, the gap between “Left” and “Right” is very wide, and has been widening. But where that’s the case, it has often been almost entirely a function of conservatives moving sharply to the Right, and the Right being extreme by international standards. 6/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

Most importantly, the “polarization” narrative completely obscures the fact that on the central issue that is at the core of the political conflict, the two parties, and Left and Right more generally, are very much not the same – that issue is democracy. 7/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

Republicans are willing to abandon and overthrow democracy because they consider it a threat to traditional hierarchies and their vision of what “real” (read: white Christian patriarchal) America should be. Many of them are embracing authoritarianism. Democrats… are not. 8/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

One party is dominated by a white reactionary minority that is rapidly radicalizing against democracy and will no longer accept the principle of majoritarian rule; the other thinks democracy and constitutional government should be upheld. That’s not “polarization.” 9/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

On the normative level, the “polarization” paradigm privileges unity, stability, and social cohesion over social justice and equal participation. It doesn’t adequately grapple with the fact that the former stifles the latter. 10/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

“Polarization” ignores the fact that calls for racial and social justice are inherently de-stabilizing to a system that is built on traditional hierarchies of race, gender, and religion – they are indeed polarizing but as such, from a (small-d) democratic perspective, are necessary and good. 11/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

As a historical paradigm, “polarization” tends to mythologize past eras of “consensus” and supposed unity. But in U.S. history, political and social “consensus” was usually based on a cross-partisan agreement to leave a discriminatory social order intact. 12/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

The era of “polarization” began when the white male elite consensus that had dominated both parties and society started to fracture. In many ways, “polarization” is the price U.S. society has had to pay for real progress towards multiracial pluralistic democracy. 13/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

Why do scholars, politicians, journalists, pundits cling to the idea of “polarization”? The answer lies in the fact that the narrative’s inadequacy is not a bug, but a feature – it is precisely the fact that it obscures rather than illuminates the actual problem that makes it attractive. 14/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

The “polarization” concept is useful if you want to lament major problems in American politics, but simply can’t bring yourself to address the fact that the major threat to American democracy is a radicalizing Right, is the threat of rightwing authoritarian minority rule. 15/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

In this way, the concept even provides a rhetoric of rapprochement since it does not require agreement as to what is actually ailing America, only that “polarization” is to the detriment of all. “Polarization” never breeds contention, it engenders unanimity. 16/

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

That’s the genius of the polarization narrative: It provides the language for a lament that blames nobody and everybody, and satisfies the longing for unity – which it constantly fuels in turn! – by offering a consensual interpretation; consensus re-established through the back door.

More here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/23-polarization-is-not-the-problem-it-obscures/id1652741954?i=1000611437144

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

As all three of us study this episode’s topic, I’ll add some reading recommendations on #polarization. In “Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity” @LilyMasonPhD provides a fantastic analysis of political identities and social sorting: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo27527354.html

tzimmer_history, 1 year ago

In “A review and provocation: On polarization and platforms” (just published and available online!) Shannon McGregor and Daniel Kreiss review the political science literature and formulate a fundamental critique of the polarization narrative and the normative assumptions on which it is built:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14614448231161880