We talk like we’re divided in two. But if there were two internets, it wouldn’t be split left/right. It’s more like right vs. everyone else.
The way we talk about American culture is a lie based on truth. How we come to this lie, and why we stretch the truth to justify it, is vitally important.
Perhaps we are divided. And there may be some element of universal truth to the division. Like we’ve always been and will always be divided along specific lines.
It’s just not true that it’s liberal/conservative. Not in the way that we use those terms. Terms which completely distorts what is true.
Divided
Many people have studied the human brain, from cognition to linguistics, searching for an explanation for why liberals are one way and conservatives are another. Researchers like Jonathan Haidt and George Lakoff show that our brain and worldview reflect a dualistic nature. So humanity is in one sense fundamentally divided. And perhaps in significant ways.
But that isn’t the same as Republicans and Democrats. Nor does it line up 50/50, left and right, two hemispheres, always balanced, and totally equal. The yin to the yang.
We don’t line up as opposites.
We want them to line up that way. And we work hard to make it work that way. But it doesn’t.
And it is a huge leap from the cognitive differences in people to the political platforms of our two major parties.
But leap we do. And then just fudge the numbers.
Tight vs. Loose
The cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand argues that the more interesting split isn’t left/right, but between “tight and loose”.
She argues that our cultures are formed and behave based on our governing origin story. Most importantly, whether or not our story generates from an existential threat.
Countries formed in war or famine have a tighter culture while those born in peacetime are looser. And within countries, one region may be born of economic prosperity which produces a looser culture and the economic hardships of another may lead to a tighter culture.
Doesn’t that feel closer to true?
Pre-Scripted Leaps of Logic
These days it feels like every conversation about politics is pre-scripted. Like my words are pre-planned and so are yours. We’re doing this dance of talking, but the conclusion is never in doubt.
While there are real reasons for this, such as our predictable use of a mythical left/right sorting machine, most of them, like the machine itself, are imaginary. Somehow both predictable and utter fiction.
And just as predictably, I get self-reflective. I look at my words, check them for bias. Is anyone else? I hear a lot of people expressing this same sentiment. From all across the political spectrum. Not just left/right but either/or and both/and.
Splitting Over Kavanaugh
Every political hot potato is another chance to divide ourselves. But Gelfand’s research would lead us in a different direction, wouldn’t it?
Shouldn’t we show more skepticism toward our left/right sort than we do? The answer is certainly yes. But how? Or more importantly, when?
Well, certainly now. And with everything. Getting a grip on the left/right sort is more important than ever.
A zeitgeist piece in Wired tried to capture today’s political moment. It describes the political split in the media in how we respond to the Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh testimonies. It was the kind of moodsplaining piece that embeds tweets for political arguments.
But the piece didn’t just fall for the myth of the left/right split. It fully embodied the danger of it. This makes it the perfect example.
The Two Internets Hypothesis
Emma Grey Ellis, writing in the Culture section, opens her piece by describing how we consume the hearings and its aftermath —
“Whether you followed along with a news outlet’s livestream or liveblog, watched the event on cable news, or relied on Twitter to curate a highlight reel, your experience was mediated and shaped by the filter bubbles that dictate whose opinions you see when you read things on the web.”
Yes, there is great variety in the media. And this variety is quite popularly understood as producing bubbles and silos and other descriptors of isolation.
The difference between these bubbles is revealed in what we see:
“Where some see sober, science-backed credibility, other see a circus. It’s a story that’s all too typical in this period of political polarization.”
Of course! These are the different things we’re seeing and receiving.
But then it immediately shifts.
Because Ms. Ellis is about to shove this whole thing into the left/right sorting machine. And when it doesn’t fit, she’s going to use a mallet, or maybe a pickaxe, to make it fit.
“If you are liberal—and in this political climate, we’re calling readers of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and CNN liberals—you went on the internet this morning and saw a flood of #BelieveWomen tweets and women talking about how Blasey Ford’s testimony moved them to tears.”
She continues to describe the experience of liberals waking up and experiencing the world through one lens, ostensibly a liberal lens. Then the conservatives:
“But if you are conservative, you went on the internet today and saw a deluge of #BackBrett tweets, a great deal about flying, and a lot of lamenting.”
While focusing on the varied experiences of consuming media of this single event, she whittles it down to two views. But there’s more to it than that.
Whether she intended to or not, she names three legacy media sources, two of which have a long history of setting journalistic standards for the whole world, and one which used those standards to launch an entirely new era of constantly evolving news, and tosses them carelessly into the liberal bin.
Just as notable is how she doesn’t name conservative sources.
So by the third paragraph, Ellis has adopted a frame that legacy media viewers are liberal and (by implication) the conservative media viewers get their news somewhere else. But she doesn’t name where.
So why is this wrong?
I have so many problems with this, but I’ll limit myself to just three.
- Legacy news sources are founded on journalistic principles, not ideological ones. The New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN are not founded in any partisan bias. They represent professional, expert journalism.
- Expressing an assumption of liberal bias in the media is a conservative political strategy. When a journalist adopts this framing of the media — that these are flip sides of a coin so the Times is liberal and Fox is conservative — the journalist is being conservative. This isn’t an objective or even a subjective opinion, it is a conservative argument.
- The foundation of the conservative media world is an intentionally conservative ideology. It is based on providing an alternative worldview from the mainstream.
The hasty sorting of media into left and right does us a disservice. Because these aren’t poles on a continuum. Legacy media is just media. This is why Ellis can in one paragraph call The Washington Post a “liberal” source and in the next quote a column in the same paper as a source for conservatives; all without the hint of irony.
In other words, a newspaper can be a neutral source and a biased source based entirely on the terms of the conservative argument but not in any objective sense.
The Conservative Media is an alternative media
But conservative media is intentionally conservative. And more importantly, it bills itself as oppositional to both the mainstream sources and liberalism as an ideology.
If it truly thought the legacy media had a liberal bias, and wanted to make a better news source, it would strive to be less biased than the Times or the Post rather than more. The only corrective to charges of bias is less bias.
And this fundamental disagreement is at the heart of our problem.
We want to believe that the world is split in half and the left is The Left and the right is The Right. But that’s like saying there are only two flavors of ice cream: chocolate and pistachio.
This is ridiculous on its face, but the frame Ellis adopts for this piece is even more absurd. With this frame, the right is The Right and everyone else is “The Left.”
The alternative is elevated to half of us and the diverse masses are reduced and disempowered.
This left/right sorted view of our political reality isn’t just skewed, it is completely distorted. Rather than recognize that the conservative movement has spent decades building an alternative worldview, it shoves the variety of worldviews millions of us have into a single bucket, slaps a label on it, and declares it oppositional.
If not left/right, then what?
This specific form of dualism is really attractive. It makes some sense. And it certainly makes things way easier. But it’s also terribly destructive.
Research in 2017 shows that liberals are more likely to read The New York Times than conservatives are. But not because liberals are flocking to a liberal paper but because conservatives are consuming less diverse content.
But this holds true only for conservatives. Conservatives are increasingly consuming conservative media to the exclusion of more traditional and journalistically sound sources while everyone else has more diverse reading habits.
So the left/right sorting machine puts the cart before the horse. The New York Times isn’t more liberal; conservatives are increasingly defining journalism itself as liberal.
They’re not polarized. They’re opting out
Ellis’s line from the opening paragraph took a very different tone after reading her piece:
“Where some see sober, science-backed credibility, others see a circus.”
Where some seek objective journalism, others seek partisanship.
While Ellis undercuts her thesis by demonstrating how she sees partisanship in everything (everyone’s responsible for the circus!), we shouldn’t overlook a more logical conclusion.
That we aren’t divided left vs. right. We’re dividing into multiple streams by our willingness to adapt and include.
And much of the self-labeled conservative response to this diversity is to define everything as partisan and transform dialogues into oppositional conflicts.
We aren’t two opposites, we’re multiple and different.
The Left/Right Sort is an oppositional conflict.
If we want to get ourselves out of this mess, we need to first recognize that the way we’ve framed our division is necessarily increasing division. And an intentionally conservative view of division.
So if we look at division from the same subjective lens of left/right in the same way conservatives argue Fox News is a “balance” to The New York Times, we shouldn’t be surprised when we keep seeing the problem as stemming from “both sides” and all manner of oppositional division. That result is predetermined by the framing.
Ultimately, we’re bound to find the dead end. That’s where the only alternative to our division is acquiescing to the conservative desire. Because we’ve seen it before. This is the argument conservatives in the Anglican Communion and Roman Catholic Church still use to defend acts of defiance and aggression: “You are making us threaten you.” Or perhaps Lindsey Graham’s rant.
But without that frame, we should be able to see the truth more clearly.
It isn’t inherently partisan to oppose a judicial nominee because of accusations of abuse, a history of political acts, or lying under oath. These things aren’t objectively partisan or necessarily stemming from partisanship.
It is also not partisan to oppose a judicial nominee over a judicial philosophy which isn’t “mainstream”. Because imposing partisanship on every objection is part of the oppositional frame.
And you know what? We really are allowed to oppose a nominee with both nonpartisan and partisan reasons at the same time! This doesn’t entirely compromise one’s credibility or define The Left as a whole, specific thing.
Just because conservatives define the frame as “there’s Right and everything else is Left” it is not necessarily true that opposing a conservative frame is de facto liberal. It requires the beliefs inherent to the conservative frame to make that true.
In other words, to believe all opposition to Kavanaugh comes from a liberal bias requires one have a conservative bias.
And the same would not be true in reverse because liberals (and progressives, libertarians, moderates, centrists, etc.) don’t have the same/opposite worldview. We are simply different.
It comes down to the common table.
The table is where we come to negotiate. And eat. It’s where we work and where we play games. It’s the dinner table in our home and it’s the center of our worship.
The table is at the center of our everything.
But the Left/Right sort obscures the table and its nature. And yet the table itself doesn’t change. It remains a table.
What changes is how we see the table. And the goggles so many of us are wearing make it hard to even see it.
But it’s there. Where it always was, in the middle.
And the lenses we’re using, the ones which came with the current version of the left/right sorting machine help us see the conflict, but not the connection.
We were at the table.
Many of us were sitting here, at the table, when our self-sorted conservative neighbors got up from the table, yelled at us and blamed us for our division. Some threw chairs and others tried to steal them, claiming ownership.
We watched as they walked away in front of news cameras (who called the press?). They walked outside and held a press conference, claiming oppression. They sought political sugar daddies to bankroll their efforts. Then built a new table, just for them.
It’s hard to parse the arguments because many often use kettle logic. But even these can make a certain sense. But not when put all together.
They tell us they wanted their own table and they wanted to stay at the common table and they want to own the common table for themselves and they want to leave us to the table but replace the common table with this new table they’re at but really they didn’t leave the table, it left them but this shiny new table is really the old table…
But we came to sit at the common table. To negotiate and share and be together. And we’re still trying to make this a common table.
And the people who left it now call it the liberal table. So everyone sitting there must be liberal.
Don’t accept the frame
How strange it is to adopt that framing on purpose. Especially among the non-conservative majority. Like willingly and intentionally accepting the gaslighting.
This isn’t a case of “both.” We don’t gaslight each other. One “side” is doing that, whether we want to admit it or not. This frame isn’t a two-way street. It’s more like the right lane on a multi-lane freeway.
I know it’s hard to face, but nothing about the left/right sorting is equal. We aren’t the same, mirrors, or opposites. We’re different, with often competing, rather than opposing values.
Just collect all those different expressions Ellis claims are trapped and siloed in these bubbles. Look past that ridiculous dualistic frame of a simplistic division. What might we actually see?
Probably something closer to the truth. Something the bubble blowers don’t really want us to see. They’re too busy trying to convince us to distort our own world for them.