Episode 112: How "Polarization" Discourse Flattens Power Dynamics and Says Nothing
Added 2020-06-24 15:16:21 +0000 UTC"Polarization Is Dividing American Society, Not Just Politics,” laments The New York Times. “The Constitution Is Threatened by Tribalism,” frets The Atlantic. “American politics has reached peak polarization,” declares Vox. After the past few election cycles, and as uprisings occur throughout the country, we’ve seen endless concern about our alleged zenith of “polarization” and “tribalism.”
The Right and the Left, we are told, have grown too radical and today lack the ability to “get things done” and “come together” with a “shared reality.” It’s a superficially appealing narrative — one nostalgic for a non-specified past time of ideal consensus building and Reasonable Centrism.
But it’s also a narrative driven by a fantasy that ignores material forces that have shifted the U.S. political establishment further to the right, as the ruling political and economic class has helped sow distrust and paranoia with decades of deadly wars, runaway and rampant inequality, lethal racism and the failed promises of endless economic growth.
On this episode, we explore the origins of “polarization” and “partisan tribalism” discourse, profile its biggest pushers, detail who it serves––and who it gets off the hook––and lay out why reductionist and vague “polarization” laments are so beloved by our media and political elite.
Our guest is journalist and writer Osita Nwanevu.
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Guest
Osita Nwanevu is a staff writer at The New Republic. Previously, he has served on staff of The New Yorker, Slate and elsewhere.
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Show Notes
Osita Nwanevu | May 19, 2020 | The New Republic
American Politics Is Broken. Liberalism Can’t Fix It.
Sohale Andrus Mortazavi | April 6, 2020 | Jacobin
The Troubling Obsession With Political “Tribalism”
John Patrick Leary | February 21, 2020 | The New Republic
Susan J. Douglas | December 15, 2014 | In These Times
“Polarization” Is a Fact — Get Used to It
Luke Savage | September 20, 2019 | Jacobin
The Daily Show’s Rally to Restore Sanity Predicted a Decade of Liberal Futility
Alex Shepard | December 27, 2019 | The New Republic
Stop worrying about 'tribalism' – politics is supposed to be passionate
Alan Finlayson | December 12, 2019 | The Guardian
The False Balance Between Fascists and Antifascists
Gregory Shupak | October 13, 2019 | FAIR
Joe Biden and the Disastrous History of Bipartisanship
Branko Marcetic | August 22, 2019 | In These Times
American Politics Could Use More Conflict
Luke Savage | November 19, 2018 | Jacobin
'Tribalism’ doesn’t explain our political conflicts
Adam Rothman | November 14, 2018 | The Washington Post
Caroline Kitchener | October 17, 2018 | The Atlantic
Democrats Can Abandon the Center — Because the Center Doesn’t Exist
Eric Levitz | July 30, 2017 | New York Magazine
Ezra Klein | June 1, 2020 | Vox
A New Report Offers Insights Into Tribalism in the Age of Trump
George Packer | October 13, 2018 | The New Yorker
Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape
Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Míriam Juan-Torres, Tim Dixon | More In Common
Why Democrats Still Have to Appeal to the Center, but Republicans Don’t
Ezra Klein | January 24, 2020 | The New York Times
Why the media is so polarized — and how it polarizes us
Ezra Klein | January 28, 2020 | Vox
Ben Sasse's Unconvincing Diagnosis of American Partisanship
Osita Nwanevu | October 6, 2018 | The New Yorker
Is America Hopelessly Polarized, or Just Allergic to Politics?
Samara Klar, Yanna Krupnikov and John Barry Ryan | April 12, 2019 | The New York Times
What's the Answer to Political Polarization in the U.S.?
Russell Berman | March 8, 2016 | The Atlantic
Americans hate all the partisanship, but they’re also more partisan than they were
Dan Balz | October 26, 2019 | The Washington Post
The Impact of Increased Political Polarization
Frank Newport | December 5, 2019 | Gallup
Political Polarization in the American Public
June 12, 2014 | Pew Research Center
Political Polarization, 1994-2017
October 20, 2017 | Pew Research Center
Status of Justice in Chile Worries Many Backers of Junta
April 18, 1974 | The New York Times
U.S. Fears Unrest In Central America
Graham Hovey | July 22, 1979 | The New York Times
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Transcript
For a full transcript of this episode, go here.
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Comments
I think this also dovetails pretty perfectly with the previous episode on “common sense” solutions. The whole rhetoric of “The problem is people aren’t interested in finding the common sense solution that lies in the middle!” is almost always trotted out as a way to strike down whatever change or vision is being advocated for, as a broad defense of the status quo, and is rarely (if ever) used as a tool to advance a positive vision of the way things should work. Also Osita is dope, love when you have him on!
John Walker
2020-06-25 18:04:31 +0000 UTCWhenever a pundit writes something along the lines of how people shouldn't be viewed through a left-right prism, be assured they are not imploring the reader/viewer to avoid donning blinkers simply along traditional party lines. Rather, they are telling you simply to shut up, and absorb the wisdom of lobby journalists and the powerful people on behalf of whom they write/broadcast. If 'polarisation' really did cause the kind of apathy among the 'exhausted centre' alleged by Ezra Klein and fellow pundits, then nobody would get passionate about professional sport (would there even be professional sport without polarisation?)! The pundit class is deeply interested in maintaining attention on horse-race politics, rather than actually informing their audience.
Ciaran Colley
2020-06-25 17:41:00 +0000 UTCI've had this headcanon of Adam wanting to drag Ezra Klein into the bathroom and give him a wedgie-and-swirlie combo like a high-school bully for a while now. (I don't know how it started). I guess that's why his angry dismissal of Klein at the end gave me a smile.
Tom Kelly
2020-06-25 08:37:51 +0000 UTCI do really appreciate the reiteration that questions of 'polarization' can amount to little more than concern-trolling.
matt
2020-06-24 22:10:46 +0000 UTCOh hey! I'm working on a piece on this for myself. Here's something that caught my attention when I was looking into it. Obviously Ezra Klein, Editor-at-Large for Vox, published a book called "Why We're Polarized" that’s all about this. But his biggest fan: “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom” author, and Yale law professor, Amy Chua just wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs singing its praises, and she's been a big bullhorn for these ideas in intelligentsia circles, having written her own book "Political Tribes" in 2018 - when she wasn’t too busy clerking her daughter with Kavanaugh, who she was grooming female applicants for. That's worth pointing out, because it's her parenting advice that's gotten her foot in the door in a lot of major circles, and her parenting book is- well it's a step-by-step guide for child abuse, in the context of succeeding through your children. It's the same people buying both books. That her audience finds both of those positions appealing is *really* worth looking into. Pure ideology. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2020-06-01/divided-we-fall https://twitter.com/erinscafe/status/1138114332183502848 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/20/brett-kavanaugh-supreme-court-yale-amy-chua https://www.thecut.com/2016/10/i-survived-a-tiger-mom.html
Ross James
2020-06-24 15:46:46 +0000 UTC
