Why Partyism Is Wrong
PluggyRug @ Tue Nov 04, 2014 11:01 am
Interesting article....
$1:
A college student came to me recently with a quandary. He’d spent the summer interning at a conservative think tank. Now he was applying to schools and companies where most people were liberal. Should he remove the internship from his résumé?
I advised him not to. Even if people disagreed with his politics, I argued, they’d still appreciate his public spiritedness. But now I’m thinking that advice was wrong. There’s a lot more political discrimination than I thought. In fact, the best recent research suggests that there’s more political discrimination than there is racial discrimination.
For example, political scientists Shanto Iyengar and Sean Westwood gave 1,000 people student résumés and asked them which students should get scholarships. The résumés had some racial cues (membership in African-American Students Association) and some political cues (member of Young Republicans).
Race influenced decisions. Blacks favored black students 73 percent to 27 percent, and whites favored black students slightly. But political cues were more powerful. Both Democrats and Republicans favored students who agreed with them 80 percent of the time. They favored students from their party even when other students had better credentials.
Iyengar and Westwood conducted other experiments to measure what Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School calls “partyism.” They gave subjects implicit association tests, which measure whether people associate different qualities with positive or negative emotions. They had people play the trust game, which measures how much people are willing to trust different kinds of people.
In those situations, they found pervasive prejudice. And political biases were stronger than their racial biases.
In a Bloomberg View column last month, Sunstein pointed to polling data that captured the same phenomenon. In 1960, roughly 5 percent of Republicans and Democrats said they’d be “displeased” if their child married someone from the other party. By 2010, 49 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats said they would mind.
Politics is obviously a passionate activity, in which moral values clash. Debates over Obamacare, charter schools or whether the United States should intervene in Syria stir serious disagreement. But these studies are measuring something different. People’s essential worth is being measured by a political label: whether they should be hired, married, trusted or discriminated against.
The broad social phenomenon is that as personal life is being de-moralized, political life is being hyper-moralized. People are less judgmental about different lifestyles, but they are more judgmental about policy labels.
The features of the hyper-moralized mind-set are all around. More people are building their communal and social identities around political labels. Your political label becomes the prerequisite for membership in your social set.
Politics becomes a marker for basic decency. Those who are not members of the right party are deemed to lack basic compassion, or basic loyalty to country.
Finally, political issues are no longer just about themselves; they are symbols of worth and dignity. When many rural people defend gun rights, they’re defending the dignity and respect of rural values against urban snobbery.
Second, highly educated people are more likely to define themselves by what they believe than by their family religion, ethnic identity or region.
Third, political campaigns and media provocateurs build loyalty by spreading the message that electoral disputes are not about whether the top tax rate will be 36 percent or 39 percent, but are about the existential fabric of life itself.
The problem is that hyper-moralization destroys politics. Most of the time, politics is a battle between competing interests or an attempt to balance partial truths. But in this fervent state, it turns into a Manichaean struggle of light and darkness. To compromise is to betray your very identity. When schools, community groups and workplaces get defined by political membership, when speakers get disinvited from campus because they are beyond the pale, then every community gets dumber because they can’t reap the benefits of diverging viewpoints and competing thought.
This mentality also ruins human interaction. There is a tremendous variety of human beings within each political party. To judge human beings on political labels is to deny and ignore what is most important about them. It is to profoundly devalue them. That is the core sin of prejudice, whether it is racism or partyism.
The personal is not political. If you’re judging a potential daughter-in-law on political grounds, your values are out of whack.
I advised him not to. Even if people disagreed with his politics, I argued, they’d still appreciate his public spiritedness. But now I’m thinking that advice was wrong. There’s a lot more political discrimination than I thought. In fact, the best recent research suggests that there’s more political discrimination than there is racial discrimination.
For example, political scientists Shanto Iyengar and Sean Westwood gave 1,000 people student résumés and asked them which students should get scholarships. The résumés had some racial cues (membership in African-American Students Association) and some political cues (member of Young Republicans).
Race influenced decisions. Blacks favored black students 73 percent to 27 percent, and whites favored black students slightly. But political cues were more powerful. Both Democrats and Republicans favored students who agreed with them 80 percent of the time. They favored students from their party even when other students had better credentials.
Iyengar and Westwood conducted other experiments to measure what Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School calls “partyism.” They gave subjects implicit association tests, which measure whether people associate different qualities with positive or negative emotions. They had people play the trust game, which measures how much people are willing to trust different kinds of people.
In those situations, they found pervasive prejudice. And political biases were stronger than their racial biases.
In a Bloomberg View column last month, Sunstein pointed to polling data that captured the same phenomenon. In 1960, roughly 5 percent of Republicans and Democrats said they’d be “displeased” if their child married someone from the other party. By 2010, 49 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats said they would mind.
Politics is obviously a passionate activity, in which moral values clash. Debates over Obamacare, charter schools or whether the United States should intervene in Syria stir serious disagreement. But these studies are measuring something different. People’s essential worth is being measured by a political label: whether they should be hired, married, trusted or discriminated against.
The broad social phenomenon is that as personal life is being de-moralized, political life is being hyper-moralized. People are less judgmental about different lifestyles, but they are more judgmental about policy labels.
The features of the hyper-moralized mind-set are all around. More people are building their communal and social identities around political labels. Your political label becomes the prerequisite for membership in your social set.
Politics becomes a marker for basic decency. Those who are not members of the right party are deemed to lack basic compassion, or basic loyalty to country.
Finally, political issues are no longer just about themselves; they are symbols of worth and dignity. When many rural people defend gun rights, they’re defending the dignity and respect of rural values against urban snobbery.
Second, highly educated people are more likely to define themselves by what they believe than by their family religion, ethnic identity or region.
Third, political campaigns and media provocateurs build loyalty by spreading the message that electoral disputes are not about whether the top tax rate will be 36 percent or 39 percent, but are about the existential fabric of life itself.
The problem is that hyper-moralization destroys politics. Most of the time, politics is a battle between competing interests or an attempt to balance partial truths. But in this fervent state, it turns into a Manichaean struggle of light and darkness. To compromise is to betray your very identity. When schools, community groups and workplaces get defined by political membership, when speakers get disinvited from campus because they are beyond the pale, then every community gets dumber because they can’t reap the benefits of diverging viewpoints and competing thought.
This mentality also ruins human interaction. There is a tremendous variety of human beings within each political party. To judge human beings on political labels is to deny and ignore what is most important about them. It is to profoundly devalue them. That is the core sin of prejudice, whether it is racism or partyism.
The personal is not political. If you’re judging a potential daughter-in-law on political grounds, your values are out of whack.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/opini ... .html?_r=0
DrCaleb @ Tue Nov 04, 2014 11:47 am
PluggyRug PluggyRug:
Interesting article....
$1:
This mentality also ruins human interaction. There is a tremendous variety of human beings within each political party. To judge human beings on political labels is to deny and ignore what is most important about them. It is to profoundly devalue them. That is the core sin of prejudice, whether it is racism or partyism.
The personal is not political. If you’re judging a potential daughter-in-law on political grounds, your values are out of whack.
The personal is not political. If you’re judging a potential daughter-in-law on political grounds, your values are out of whack.
Good article!
I think people even when discussing politics forget that politics isn't left/right, but a desire to make society better. All that differs is the path to get there.
bootlegga @ Tue Nov 04, 2014 11:53 am
Interesting read.
Politics in the US haven't been the same since Bill got a blowjob. Until then, despite partisanship on issues, things generally got resolved as both sides made compromises. Now nothing the other side says can have any merit and heave n forbid working with those on the opposite side to come up with a middle-of-the-road solution.
PluggyRug @ Tue Nov 04, 2014 12:17 pm
DrCaleb DrCaleb:
PluggyRug PluggyRug:
Interesting article....
$1:
This mentality also ruins human interaction. There is a tremendous variety of human beings within each political party. To judge human beings on political labels is to deny and ignore what is most important about them. It is to profoundly devalue them. That is the core sin of prejudice, whether it is racism or partyism.
The personal is not political. If you’re judging a potential daughter-in-law on political grounds, your values are out of whack.
The personal is not political. If you’re judging a potential daughter-in-law on political grounds, your values are out of whack.
Good article!
I think people even when discussing politics forget that politics isn't left/right, but a desire to make society better. All that differs is the path to get there.
That's true, unfortunately a large amount don't see it that way and will go to great lengths to quell any opposition to their views.
PluggyRug @ Tue Nov 04, 2014 12:21 pm
bootlegga bootlegga:
Interesting read.
Politics in the US haven't been the same since Bill got a blowjob. Until then, despite partisanship on issues, things generally got resolved as both sides made compromises. Now nothing the other side says can have any merit and heave n forbid working with those on the opposite side to come up with a middle-of-the-road solution.
Politics in the US haven't been the same since Bill got a blowjob. Until then, despite partisanship on issues, things generally got resolved as both sides made compromises. Now nothing the other side says can have any merit and heave n forbid working with those on the opposite side to come up with a middle-of-the-road solution.
Meaningful discussion seems to have been tossed out the widow in favour of full battle mode.
DrCaleb @ Tue Nov 04, 2014 12:32 pm
PluggyRug PluggyRug:
bootlegga bootlegga:
Interesting read.
Politics in the US haven't been the same since Bill got a blowjob. Until then, despite partisanship on issues, things generally got resolved as both sides made compromises. Now nothing the other side says can have any merit and heave n forbid working with those on the opposite side to come up with a middle-of-the-road solution.
Politics in the US haven't been the same since Bill got a blowjob. Until then, despite partisanship on issues, things generally got resolved as both sides made compromises. Now nothing the other side says can have any merit and heave n forbid working with those on the opposite side to come up with a middle-of-the-road solution.
Meaningful discussion seems to have been tossed out the widow in favour of full battle mode.
Just as an observation, Canadian Parliament was designed for conflict. The Government and the Opposition sit 'two sword lengths' across from each other, and are divided into opposing camps.
Take the Icelanders. Their Parliament is going on 1100 years old, and they sit in a semi-circle, facing the speaker. Members alternate party between seats, and the order is re-arranged often so you get to know different members of different political views.
Designed for collaboration, not conflict.
PluggyRug @ Tue Nov 04, 2014 12:43 pm
DrCaleb DrCaleb:
Take the Icelanders. Their Parliament is going on 1100 years old, and they sit in a semi-circle, facing the speaker. Members alternate party between seats, and the order is re-arranged often so you get to know different members of different political views.
Designed for collaboration, not conflict.
King Arthur and all that....Today Lancelot uses his lance a lot.
DrCaleb @ Tue Nov 04, 2014 12:57 pm
PluggyRug PluggyRug:
DrCaleb DrCaleb:
Take the Icelanders. Their Parliament is going on 1100 years old, and they sit in a semi-circle, facing the speaker. Members alternate party between seats, and the order is re-arranged often so you get to know different members of different political views.
Designed for collaboration, not conflict.
King Arthur and all that....Today Lancelot uses his lance a lot.
We are modern men though, we don't judge.
Thanos @ Tue Nov 04, 2014 12:59 pm
The American system of compromise worked spectacularly well until recent times when it got hijacked by the extremists of the far right. It's now a zero-sum game where any result that doesn't have the complete defeat of the "enemy" as the primary goal is unacceptable to the ideologues and hyper-partisans. It's probably not co-incidental in the least that the extremism got steadily worse and worse as FOX "News" and the elements of the right-wing part of the internet grew in size and influence over the Republican Party.
Factionalism/partyism is a natural human phenomenon. Most of the time it can be healthy. But extremism to the point where all compromise is destroyed, and obstructionism over the basics of governing just for the sole point of being obstructive, is incredibly dangerous. The worst part of it is that there's no end in sight for any of it and the smart bets should be placed on the assumption that it's going to get much worse.
DanSC @ Tue Nov 04, 2014 2:26 pm
bootlegga bootlegga:
Interesting read.
Politics in the US haven't been the same since Bill got a blowjob the internet. Until then, despite partisanship on issues, things generally got resolved as both sides made compromises. Now nothing the other side says can have any merit and heave n forbid working with those on the opposite side to come up with a middle-of-the-road solution.
Politics in the US haven't been the same since Bill got a blowjob the internet. Until then, despite partisanship on issues, things generally got resolved as both sides made compromises. Now nothing the other side says can have any merit and heave n forbid working with those on the opposite side to come up with a middle-of-the-road solution.
Fixed that for you.
MeganC @ Tue Nov 04, 2014 5:36 pm
Thanos Thanos:
The American system of compromise worked spectacularly well until recent times when it got hijacked by the extremists of the far right.
I'm 24 and I don't remember a time when politicians were nice to each other. Bush caught all sorts of shit from the Democrats and then Obama caught the same shit from the Republicans. They all seem pretty rude to me.
JaredMilne @ Wed Nov 05, 2014 8:57 pm
MeganC MeganC:
I'm 24 and I don't remember a time when politicians were nice to each other. Bush caught all sorts of shit from the Democrats and then Obama caught the same shit from the Republicans. They all seem pretty rude to me.
Like Thanos said, factionalism is part of human nature. Politics is a competitive game, especially when you have to outdo your opponents at the ballot box to gain power. That said, if you look at Canadian history you'll find several examples of politicians who loathed one another but were able to put aside their mutual dislike to get the job done:
-Pierre Trudeau hated the "notwithstanding clause" that the provincial premiers demanded in exchange for getting the Constitution patriated with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. By all accounts, he didn't get along too well with a lot of the premiers, such as Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed. And yet, he bit the bullet and accepted the notwithstanding clause, and the Charter is arguably a stronger document because of it. The clause ensures that Parliament has the last word on most issues, but the popularity of the Charter means that it's only used in the most critical situations.
-In the 1960s, Lester Pearson and John Diefenbaker despised one another. Mel Hurtig once wrote about how bitter and nasty disputes in the House of Commons were. And yet, even though he only had two minority governments in five years, Lester Pearson brought in everything from the national flag to Medicare to the Canada Pension Plan to a points-based immigration system, and a whole host of other successes. I have an extremely hard time believing that the Conservatives under Diefenbaker did not support any Liberal initiatives the NDP refused to back.
-John A. Macdonald and George Brown were political arch-enemies in the 1860s. And yet, they and their political allies called a truce to try and hash out a solution to a lot of the problems they were dealing with at the time. The end result of their cooperation was a little thing called Confederation, which you may have heard of.
On the other hand, just look at what my Member of Parliament and good personal friend Brent Rathgeber has to say about what Canadian debate is like these days...
$1:
For much too long, Responsible Government, the constitutional convention that the executive cabinet is accountable and responsible to the elected Parliament, has been replaced by a House of Commons used by all sides as part of its communication strategy. Ministers duck most questions except puffballs lobbed by their own members. Opposition Members criticize for the sole purpose of embarrassing the government and gaining some partisan political advantage.
And again...
$1:
Accordingly, Wednesday has a reputation for being the most partisan and aggressive Question Period of the week; as the leaders have spent the morning pounding their chests to the fawning approval of their sycophantic caucuses.
Last Wednesday started typically enough with Tom Mulcair referring to the Honourable Pierre Poilievre as a “lightweight”, while chastising the Prime Minister for deferring to his Minister for Democratic Reform regarding questions of deliberate attempts at voter suppression.
From there it only degenerated. About 30 minutes in, NDP Northern Critic, Niki Ashton challenged Northern Minister Leona Aglukkaq as to when she entered Nunavut politics and when the territory amended its photo identification requirements. Although it appeared that the Government House Leader was pointing to someone in the second row to answer, the Environment Minister rose herself and in a rare moment, abandoned her talking points and provided a reasonable explanation to the discrepancy in the timelines.
Ms. Aglukkaq’s seatmate allegedly rose and made a pistol shooting gesture in Ms. Ashton’s direction. I didn’t see it at the time, as I was in too much shock that the Environment Minister actually answered a question, albeit not one about the environment. However, it did catch the attention of NDP Member Dan Harris, who stood after Question Period, raising a Point of Order on what he regarded as an offensive gesture.
Ed Fast rose and denied the whole incident and demanded an apology. The House video footage clearly indicates the Trade Minister gesturing with his hand but whether or not he was imitating a gun and who he was pointing at remains unclear. Regardless, Tory Backbencher Ron Cannan went around the House and confronted Dan Harris at his seat. Harris says Cannan threatened to beat him up. Cannan says he simply challenged Harris to take his allegations outside the House, where Parliamentary Privilege would be inapplicable if they proved defamatory.
Cannan had to be physically encouraged to leave the NDP area by two dippers (NDP). Meanwhile, Ed Fast came directly across the floor and literally had his finger in Harris’s face demanding an apology. The Minister too had to be encouraged to return to his seat by NDP House Leader, Peter Julian who physically put himself in between the two pugilists.
The problem, as PluggyRug cited in his original article, is that too many politicos these days see their opponents not as fellow citizens to be debated with, but enemies to be hated and politically destroyed. They attack anyone and everyone who might be associated with the other side, even as they can attack people in their own camp who they don't deem loyal enough as traitors and sellouts. They try and portray everyone who's not with them as being somehow against them, and by extension against Canada, Alberta, Quebec or what have you.
The worst Conservative partisans use the worst Liberal and NDP partisans to smear everyone who could be affiliated with the Liberals or the NDP. The same applies in reverse with the worst Liberal and NDP partisans using the worst Conservative partisans to tar everyone who could be associated with the CPC with the same brush. If you're not part of the "tribe", then you're not worth considering or even liking. This extends to their even justifying a lot of the unethical shit they do-when I asked him about this at an event when he was promoting his new book, Brent talked about how a lot of these partisans see themselves as being on the "right side" of things, and that the other guys would be a hell of a lot worse if they were the ones in power.
When your average Johnny and Janey Canuck see this, a lot of them are going to get disgusted and turned off, particularly when most of them are a lot more moderate and centrist than the hardcore bloggers and tweeters who often end up just preaching to their own choirs. You risk ending up with an ugly cycle where people turn off politics in disgust, leaving it for the hardcore partisans to perform their best monkey impressions with all the crap they fling at each other.
Here's Samara Canada weighing in:
$1:
Parties are often accused of being closed-door organizations, made up of unelected party insiders who make decisions about the party, Parliament and the future of our country. Even Members of Parliament interviewed for Samara’s earlier research described the decisions made by parties as unclear, unaccountable and often contradictory.
Canadians instinctively know there’s a party going on and they’re not invited, leading them to logically conclude that if parties are not interested in them, then these organizations and the people within them must be interested only in themselves. This reinforces the branding problem that too often characterizes politicians and turns Canadians away from politics.
Canadians are choosing not to vote in record numbers. They’re not becoming members of parties and their reported levels of trust in political leaders continue to decline. Indeed, Samara’s 2013 survey revealed that only 35% agree that “political parties offer citizens a way to get involved in politics.”
Makes you wonder how much effort the "kids in short pants" in the PMO, and their counterparts in the Opposition parties, actually put into trying to extend their party's appeal to the undecided swing voters.
The really sad irony is that most of us are, like I said, a lot more moderate and centrist, and have a lot more common ground than we realize...but we're so disgusted by the rancor of the partisans that we turn off from politics altogether, which makes it that much easier for the partisans to keep control of the parties and justify only governing to their bases when they're in office.
Jonny_C @ Thu Nov 06, 2014 10:30 pm
$1:
Canadians instinctively know there’s a party going on and they’re not invited, leading them to logically conclude that if parties are not interested in them, then these organizations and the people within them must be interested only in themselves. This reinforces the branding problem that too often characterizes politicians and turns Canadians away from politics.
The parties are, however, interested in votes and in forming a government. That is really the only thing that keeps them moderate. Parties try hard to figure out what's popular and what's not, which of their goals are achieveable in whole or in part, and how much patience voters will have for mistakes in judgement or pushing agendas too far.
I wish Canadians would more instinctively know that they can't leave one party in power for too long a period of time. It seems to me the worst governments we get are ones that are formed by a party that has been in power too long. To be cynical, to some extent justifiably, there's some virtue in throwing out one set of "crooks" and replacing them with another set of crooks.
They get too comfortable and too sloppy, and feel too entitled, if they're in power too long.
In the main, I prefer the Conservatives to the Liberals, but it seems to me that the Conservatives may have held the reins long enough this time.
Justin Trudeau as PM appeals to me hardly at all, but four more years of Stephen Harper and the Conservatives doesn't interest me all that much either.
Jonny_C @ Thu Nov 06, 2014 10:45 pm
Politics has been changed enormously by the mass media. Not a day goes by but that we aren't reminded of our political differences.
Whether Canadian Conservative or Liberal, whether American Democrat or Republican, we hear every day about the 'heinous' things that those of the other political persuasion think or do.
Our political lives are now like one long, uninterrupted election campaign, with all its confrontational rhetoric smeared across the weeks and months of every calendar.
The American system exacerbates this problem because it's so complex that there's almost always somebody running for something. Besides that, I see a great amount of frustration in the American system. It's vaunted "checks and balances" have become a recipe for constant conflict, and also inertia.
That's a short take on how I see it, anyway.
martin14 @ Fri Nov 07, 2014 12:44 am
Jonny_C Jonny_C:
Politics has been changed enormously by the mass media. Not a day goes by but that we aren't reminded of our political differences.
Whether Canadian Conservative or Liberal, whether American Democrat or Republican, we hear every day about the 'heinous' things that those of the other political persuasion think or do.
Whether Canadian Conservative or Liberal, whether American Democrat or Republican, we hear every day about the 'heinous' things that those of the other political persuasion think or do.
True, it probably was easier when 'mass media' was listening to CBC radio,
and that's it.
Or, the horror, having both CBC and CTV television at the same time.
As we lose our sort of cohesive society, it will only get worse.