The biggest fight in American politics might not be red versus blue. Rather, it’s partisans and independents, the people who want everyone else to stay on message against others willing to engage and question. The former are those who are upset if you say something that’s true but doesn’t look good. They’re not here to learn or understand; they want everyone to agree with them, especially in spaces where someone else may be undecided.
It took me a while to realize how this works. I thought the way to make your case is to show integrity and to be honest, to admit things that are true even if these are also inconvenient, and to reject certainty when a situation is ambiguous. From that perspective, it’s a bad thing to be confident and wrong. This is probably how most people say they act, but it’s not the way many of them actually do. It’s a way people arguing politics can end up talking past one another, and a difference in framework separate from whether someone’s a Republican or a Democrat.
I generally try to write so that I’m correct on the specifics, so that somebody can take a paragraph and use it as a proxy for whether I understand the world. Is what I say informed and reasonable? For others, it’s more about signaling what side they’re on. It may even be better to be wrong, since it’s more authentic and shows you’re a true believer.
Partisans and Independents Advance Polarization
So many people are blind partisans rather than independent thinkers. They want to insist that others do the same as they do. It seems logical to me that if you want to be a blind partisan, participating online, where people can check what you say, and people on your side may be pressured to call you out when you’re wrong and obnoxious, is a bad place for it, but obviously plenty make do.
Honest mistakes happen, especially if people are primed to go for the worst interpretation of anything ambiguous said by someone they see as a member of the opposition. In Psych 101, I remember learning about the fundamental attribution error, the human tendency to downplay situational and environmental factors for the behavior of someone else, and overstate things like character or personality. It’s very easy to excuse mistakes that you make; and to think mistakes by others are revealing. This extends readily to partisanship, where most people have an easier time understanding where someone on their side is coming from. They’ll have shared frames of reference, shorthand, and frustrations.
Then there are the problems of groupthink, how without ideological diversity, people in a group can end up more extreme than any one member was at the beginning. Group Polarization can be quite bad. It’s also shortsighted because when members of the extreme group go out into the larger world, they’re going to face voters or customers who think they’re nuts.
The Big Picture on Partisans and Independents
My takeaway is that rather than treating people who disagree with us the same as we treat people on our side, we as human beings should be more generous in interpreting statements and actions by people on the other side, because we should recognize that we may very well be missing important context.
We can discern when our own views are caricatured by political opponents based on an incomplete picture, and should take care not to do the same thing to others. But that’s not how most people act; it’s one thing to be evenhanded, but they’ll favor their side more. And if they say something dumb, the problem isn’t with them, it’s with whoever noticed. It’s like a drunk driver who starts yelling at the cops.
It’s damaging in an election if the other candidate points out in common-sense ways how someone on your side is wrong, but it’s also destructive if someone gets into office making unchallenged and unrealistic promises.
The issues that fall within the traditional left/ right spectrum are important, but it’s also crucial to consider other questions. In their book Solidarity, Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor suggest liberals should not call out the left. Obviously, there are plenty of Republicans who will make similar arguments on their side (as well as socialists and libertarians, etc.) That approach is damaging if widespread.
If someone seems mistaken on an important topic, it’s fair to point out any errors, since that can otherwise have consequences later. It’s damaging in an election if the other candidate points out in common-sense ways how someone on your side is wrong, but it’s also destructive if someone gets into office making unchallenged and unrealistic promises.
There is something to be said for the idea that a lot of political discussion is a distraction because it’s not about the things that matter to individuals. It’s people who are committed to one candidate/ party trying to talk about reasons someone else may have for voting for a candidate.
Most people complaining about a candidate being a carpetbagger or having facial hair or whatever don’t really care about that, but it’s a useful partisan message for imagined undecided voters. This helps us to understand partisans and independents. It reminds me of an article about the pollster Hal Molchow, and his final message that there’s too much focus on candidates rather than parties. In that case, you wouldn’t have to worry about crossover votes since you’ll have convinced the other guy to join your side on all votes.
While I can appreciate that view, and I think there’s a place for it, I’m one of the people for whom candidate quality matters. I’ll typically vote for Republicans, but I’ll support a decent Democrat over a terrible Republican. This attitude may be increasingly rare in American culture with decreased split ticket voting and policies based on the idea that members of a party are interchangeable, like gerrymandering decisions based on the idea that a vote for a candidate in one legislative district is equivalent to a vote for the party in the state, or the way Democrats sidestepped any primary to replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris in the current presidential election.
This difference in attitudes can be counterproductive. You have more credibility with independents than partisans if you acknowledge when some people on your side have bad ideas or other serious flaws. But by doing anything outside your bubble, you alienate your allies. Partisans and Independents each have different beliefs when it comes to defining credibility.
There’s a scene in Chernobyl where local politicians are debating about what to do, until an elder statesman explains that it is obvious that they must lie, to keep the people from undermining the fruits of their own labor.
This represents their moment to shine. Of course it doesn’t work out that way.
Do you split your ticket when voting? Or do you vote strictly one way? How do you feel about the state of polarization in the US? Are Partisans and Independents the future of the state of politics? Let us know below.
Check out our post “here” on Progressivism is a mental disorder which is a good example of a partisan way of thinking.
