The New York Times finds alarming evidence that political identity is seen as an important indication of character.
The New York Times‘ Thomas Edsall (1/28/15) has some bad news: Republicans and Democrats aren’t getting along.
“Political hostility in the United States is more and more becoming personal hostility,” he reports:
New findings suggest that the sources of dispute in contemporary life go far beyond ideological differences or mere polarization. They have become elemental, almost tribal, tapping into in-group loyalty and out-group enmity.
Back in 1960, about 5 percent of Democrats and Republicans alike would be displeased if their child married a member of the other major party; in 2010, 33 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of Republicans said they’d be unhappy. According to Pew Research Center, “the level of antipathy that members of each party feel toward the opposing party has surged over the past two decades”—as evidenced by polling that found 36 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of Democrats saying that the other party’s policies “are so misguided that they threaten the nation’s well-being,” Pew found.
Aren’t those numbers about the other party’s policies rather low, though? Almost two out of three Republicans and almost three out of four Democrats can sleep easy, knowing that no matter which major party is in charge, the nation’s well-being is in no danger.
But Edsall finds it alarming that people are objecting to the platforms of political parties, and using identification with a party’s agenda as a gauge of character. “This is not an easy problem for politicians to solve,” he concludes:
Republican and Democratic leaders are struggling to moderate their parties’ most extreme ideological positioning. But if polarization reflects primal aspects of the human condition, particularly when we are under stress, it isn’t going anywhere. However much they might want to pitch themselves toward the center, politicians will feel the need to tap into the energy, not to mention the primary votes, that ideological purity provides. It is this contradiction between purity and pragmatism that will shape the political landscape for the foreseeable future.
It’s passages like this that make me hope that my child never falls in love with a centrist. “Purity” is bad, “pragmatism” is good—the latter defined as inherently in the center. Is the centrist position that acknowledges the catastrophic effects of global warming while expanding the extraction of fossil fuels really pragmatic? Or decrying the concentration of wealth while proposing policies that will do almost nothing to counteract it?
Centrism only works as an ideology if you think things are working pretty well as is, with minor changes needed at most; if you don’t believe that—if you believe that serious, substantive changes are imperative—then far from being “pragmatic,” centrism appears designed to fail.
The New York Times identified historian Richard Hofstadter, who died in 1970, as a critic of Occupy Wall Street. (photo: Sam Falk/NYT)
But centrist anxiety that people might feel a need for actual change seems to be a more prominent theme than usual in the New York Times. The Times Book Review (1/23/15) had a piece by Roger Lowenstein on Richard Hofstadter, a mid–20th century historian best remembered for his Harper’s Magazine essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” (11/64), which traced a “sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy” through US history. Lowenstein praised the historian’s “migration toward the political center and his belief that class conflicts could also engender paranoid energies”—what Lowenstein later approvingly described as a “fear of the mob.”
The piece notes that today “‘paranoid style’ is an established part of the political lexicon, employed often by those who want to suggest that the other side is fringe or paranoid or just plain daft”—but that doesn’t stop Lowenstein from using it to declare certain left-wing tendencies beyond the pale: Hofstadter “was careful to stipulate that the left could just as easily be infected,” had a “growing unease with mass movements” and would “shudder at Occupy Wall Street,” Lowenstein predicted.
Lowenstein offers his own explanation for what attracts people to the paranoid style: “Democracy imbued us with an expectation of fairness; when disappointed, we look for villains.” Whereas the corporate media style reassures us that no one is to blame for unfairness.
The New York Times takes at face value conservative claims that Elizabeth Warren “could present many challenges to Hillary Rodham Clinton.” (photo: AP/Susan Walsh)
That she not only identifies villains but calls for them to be held accountable is a big reason Sen. Elizabeth Warren makes that media so nervous. That nervousness came up again in the form of a New York Times news story (1/28/15) that claims that, as the headline put it:
Hillary Clinton vs. Elizabeth Warren Could Delight Republicans
The piece, by Amy Chozick, reports that “conservatives…eager to drum up a contentious Democratic primary” think Warren is “best positioned to weaken, and potentially defeat, Mrs. Clinton” because Warren’s “anti-Wall Street economic message resonates with the liberal base of the Democratic Party.” Chozick observes that “Ms. Warren’s presence in the primary season could push Mrs. Clinton to adopt liberal positions that might turn off independents in a general election”—as if most independents would be offended by criticism of Wall Street.
Chozick quotes Republican hopeful Mike Huckabee: “Please give us Elizabeth Warren. Please, God, let us have Elizabeth Warren.” You don’t have to be the master of campaign strategy most political correspondents fancy themselves to be to realize that if Huckabee really wanted Warren to run, he would, like Br’er Rabbit and the briar patch, be loudly insisting how afraid he is of Warren running.
As it is, one can only assume that a candidate like Warren makes Huckabee as nervous as she makes the New York Times.
“Centrism only works as an ideology” — I don’t think centrism should even be considered or described as an ideology. It is more or less a tactic – as you suggested – to maintain the status quo. Ideologically, centrist is these days more often than not just a label for conservatives that do not want to be called conservatives or linked with the reactionaries in the current conservative party.
I’m hearing some paranoia from the “center” here
And I hope to hell it’s well founded.
But it shouldn’t be directed at the likes of Warren and Sanders, or any other “progressive” politician, who may be better than your typical Democratic Janus, but who, like their icon FDR, are dedicated to saving capitalism from itself.
As for saving anything else
Ask the folks in Gaza about their voting record.
Lowenstein’s view that the corporate media style sees “no one is to blame for unfairness” is because the corporate style is based in hierarchy and unfairness, i.e., the belief that some are special and therefore more deserving, or above the laws.
It seems to me that “Centrism” is often a cop-out employed by people who lack the courage to take action. Journalists don’t want to appear biased so they cast equal blame on both sides, even when it is not warranted. Individuals who don’t want to pick a side and have to defend it often portray themselves as “reasonable” or “pragmatic” centrists. This gains them approval for being “above” the pettiness of politics. In reality, all they are really doing is contributing to the existing problems by ensuring that nothing changes.
If one were to put the American “center” on a political spectrum it would fall far to the right of actual center. The Tea Party/Libertarian/Hard-core-Conservative line has been used to hammer us over the head to the point that Warren is often thought of as a molotov-tossing Bolshevik, and the mainstream media is complicit. American “Centrism” is really Rightism.
Warren is sooo progressive, and so is Sanders, that they supported the genocidal attack on Gaza.
Warren
Warren is a Democrat. A “centrist” is a fraud, but so is any other Democrat demagogue however populist they try to sound. WQarreen is just as much a tool of the Zionists as any other Democrat.
Just another fake “centrism” story whining about the Democrat “left” and Republicans not getting along. Boo hoo hoo .”Bipartisanship” in American bourgeois politics means reactionary ideology getting along with itself. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have anything else to offer
@ Ralph J Kramden
As well as the lunatic run-up to (probably nuclear) war with Russia.
I will NEVER again vote for a Democratic or Republican presidential candidate. Unfortunately, it is very evident that both parties have now become the party of MONEY and neither care whether we live or die. I would much prefer to see a person label themselves as ‘Independent’ where there is still some small possibility of an open mind.
When I go to vote, if Elizabeth Warren’s name does not appear on your ballot, I will write in her name as my choice for the next President of the United States.
Remember that the Lesser of Evils is STILL EVIL.
OK, “fosforus”, you make a good point by correcting something I had obviously forgotten. Jill Stein of the Green Party would be my second choice; however since the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) hijacked the presidential debate process from the League of Women Voters, few people will ever get to hear her views and views of other alternative / third party candidates. The ‘debate’ process has been given over to overly coached and polished hucksters telling people what they want to hear and reducing our electoral process to entertainment status with little more value than a reality TV show; complete with scripted questions and rehearsed answers designed to distract the voting public from real issues. Third party candidates who could offer a new and possibly better direction, have no exposure and are now completely shut out. Since presidential debates have been effectively locked up by the CPD, we need to push our PBS TV stations to broadcast alternative party debates next time around.
If third party debates are broadcast, it may force the Party of Money to discuss real problems that the people of this country face rather than the usual distractions.
The debate that counts has nothing to do with the propaganda-medium that is National Media. The debate is among the people, among our neighbors, face to face. If everyone who recognizes the fraudulent Dem/Rep duopoly for what it is will join in the Green campaign we will reach many more people door-to-door than will be influenced by anything said in those phony debates. (and, by the way, the NY Gubernatorial election four months ago shows that our candidate, Howie Hawkins, is the best political debater in the country).
The reason I think conspiracy backed politics are so popular are two-fold.
One — media suppression of real corruption. The closest one can get to the financial industry is through the issues of the TPP, Saudi backed dictators, standardized testing. Most people have the right idea about this, even Republicans. When it comes to understanding the banks overall, bailouts, stock bubbles, pension funds, inflation, interest rates, etc. people are reasonably confused, and often turn to glamorous sensationalism to fill in the gaps.
Two — often times real positive change is a kind of conspiracy. Workers strikes organized in secret are conspiracies. Whistleblowing is a conspiracy. Anonymous flyers are conspiracies. Churches, synogogues and mosques are conspiracies. There’s an interest in keeping this power in line with state capitalism, so we are endlessly propagandized about Satanic cults and the Illuminati. Every group must be put on trial whether it’s ACORN, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Women, Latinos, Iranians, Martians, Zombies…