UNCIVIL AGREEMENT: HOW POLITICS BECAME OUR IDENTITY (audiobook) by Lilliana Mason
Published by Tantor Audio in 2019.
Read by Rebecca Gibel.
Duration: 5 hours, 57 minutes.
Unabridged.
Lilliana Mason is an associate research professor at Johns Hopkins University. She collects, analyzes and breaks down the raw data that tells us what we already know about American politics right now - we are polarized.
For me, the most interesting part in when she looks at what that means and who is actually being polarized here. If you are a true political junkie - the type of person that reads a lot of news, watches the Sunday morning talking head shows and the has clearly identifiable ideological positions you can be very partisan, but are unlikely to be truly polarized.
The true insight in this book came from a deep look at the most polarized people - the people that truly believe that the other party is a clear and present danger to the country and that all Republicans are clearly Nazis or all Democrats are clearly communists. You run across the people in the comment sections on social media all of the time.
It turns out those people don't really have ideological positions. Instead, they simply identify with their "team" and will support it no matter what happens or even if they flip-flop ideologically. They are literally the most ignorant of the ideological positions their party takes, they just support the party - very similarly to sports fans that support their team no matter how badly it is managed or how badly it plays. However, it is not dangerous to the country if a fan continues to support the NFL's Detroit Lions (statistically the 2nd worst team over the last 20 years) despite their obvious incompetence. It can be dangerous to the entire country if "fans" always show up to support their party's nominee for any office if they are clearly incompetent and have no business being in office.
One sees this easily with those "man on the street" interviews at political rallies with people who are remarkably enthusiastic and also remarkably ill-informed (links to people on both sides of this polarized political landscape). The problem with these types of political partisans is that they literally cannot be talked out of their positions because they have no positions outside of "My side is right and your side is evil and possibly demonic" (thank you Franklin Graham for that one).
Your party can literally flip-flop on major policy issues like international trade and people just roll with it like it's no big deal because they had no idea that their party stood for that policy to begin with. You can't argue them out of a policy position because they don't know any policy positions in the first place. Tell them their party is for a position and they are all in. Tell them that the position changed the next week and they are still all in because it is not about the position because there are no standards and no ideals - just supporting the brand no matter what the brand does.
I recently had an encounter online with an old friend who went to school to be an ordained youth minister and has served as one for a long time (25+ years.) We have lost track with one another and only came back into contact because of an online political discussion over the post of a mutual friend. He was totally for a political stunt that I was against on a religious basis (not abortion - another policy). When I brought up the religious perspective on what had happened, he admitted he hadn't considered that perspective at all (!), conceded that it was problematic on a religious basis and then went right back to defending it. I took a peek at his other posts and, thanks to this book, I knew that there was no point to continuing on with the conversation. He was going to root for his "team" no matter what - even though it went against the religious beliefs he literally taught for years.
The downside to this book is that it was mostly written in a more formal academic style that was just not very listener-friendly. Plus, there were a lot of references to charts that are available as pdf downloads - good luck looking at those charts if you are listening to this audiobook and driving!
This book can be found on Amazon.com here: UNCIVIL AGREEMENT: HOW POLITICS BECAME OUR IDENTITY (audiobook) by Lilliana Mason.
Read by Rebecca Gibel.
Duration: 5 hours, 57 minutes.
Unabridged.
Lilliana Mason is an associate research professor at Johns Hopkins University. She collects, analyzes and breaks down the raw data that tells us what we already know about American politics right now - we are polarized.
For me, the most interesting part in when she looks at what that means and who is actually being polarized here. If you are a true political junkie - the type of person that reads a lot of news, watches the Sunday morning talking head shows and the has clearly identifiable ideological positions you can be very partisan, but are unlikely to be truly polarized.
The true insight in this book came from a deep look at the most polarized people - the people that truly believe that the other party is a clear and present danger to the country and that all Republicans are clearly Nazis or all Democrats are clearly communists. You run across the people in the comment sections on social media all of the time.
It turns out those people don't really have ideological positions. Instead, they simply identify with their "team" and will support it no matter what happens or even if they flip-flop ideologically. They are literally the most ignorant of the ideological positions their party takes, they just support the party - very similarly to sports fans that support their team no matter how badly it is managed or how badly it plays. However, it is not dangerous to the country if a fan continues to support the NFL's Detroit Lions (statistically the 2nd worst team over the last 20 years) despite their obvious incompetence. It can be dangerous to the entire country if "fans" always show up to support their party's nominee for any office if they are clearly incompetent and have no business being in office.
One sees this easily with those "man on the street" interviews at political rallies with people who are remarkably enthusiastic and also remarkably ill-informed (links to people on both sides of this polarized political landscape). The problem with these types of political partisans is that they literally cannot be talked out of their positions because they have no positions outside of "My side is right and your side is evil and possibly demonic" (thank you Franklin Graham for that one).
I recently had an encounter online with an old friend who went to school to be an ordained youth minister and has served as one for a long time (25+ years.) We have lost track with one another and only came back into contact because of an online political discussion over the post of a mutual friend. He was totally for a political stunt that I was against on a religious basis (not abortion - another policy). When I brought up the religious perspective on what had happened, he admitted he hadn't considered that perspective at all (!), conceded that it was problematic on a religious basis and then went right back to defending it. I took a peek at his other posts and, thanks to this book, I knew that there was no point to continuing on with the conversation. He was going to root for his "team" no matter what - even though it went against the religious beliefs he literally taught for years.
The downside to this book is that it was mostly written in a more formal academic style that was just not very listener-friendly. Plus, there were a lot of references to charts that are available as pdf downloads - good luck looking at those charts if you are listening to this audiobook and driving!
This book can be found on Amazon.com here: UNCIVIL AGREEMENT: HOW POLITICS BECAME OUR IDENTITY (audiobook) by Lilliana Mason.
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