17 thoughts on “Revisiting the Hidden Tribes poll”

1. Quick typo: “a lot of people not consisting aligning with any one axis.” << consistently aligning.

2. There is a large group of folks who are very tired of those who disagree with them having so much power/ influence/ control.

   On both sides.

   This poll is not a good way to find out about the Moderates (like me??). Many US citizens don’t vote, and haven’t voted. I’m pretty sure they don’t care so much about partisanship nor hyper-partisanship.

   I don’t think the More in Common folk are willing to look at one of the key problems (perhaps the most key problem) — Secret discrimination against Reps in getting hired at Universities. Until that issue is more honestly discussed, I’m unlikely to believe any who claim to want to get more united.

3. Handle alluded to this in another thread, but what exactly would a moderate even look like? When push came to shove, how would they actualize their moderation when two competing and irreconcilable visions come to a head. Most moderates I know would like life to be the equivalent of Buzzfeed (I’m for things that make me feel good, against things that make me feel bad, and don’t want to think through tough tradeoffs too much). It’s nice and all, good people, but not necessarily an actionable answer to hard questions. Moderation seems to involve lots of cognitive dissonance.

   I do think there is a large contingent of people who just want to be left alone, but is it possible for them to be left alone simply because they don’t want to be involved in politics? Won’t politics just decide on things and enforce them on others whether they participated or not.

   And I would say this goes beyond politics. If all large corporations, service providers, and institutions all vigorously belief, support, and enforce a particular set of beliefs on everyone, does it matter to someone trying to live their life without being bothered whether the government specifically was formally involved? Bottom line, they can’t get through the day without being imposed upon.

   It seems obvious to me that the “leave me alone party” is the right, but leaving aside current politics these ideas are more general.

   • “When push came to shove, how would they actualize their moderation when two competing and irreconcilable visions come to a head.”

     Some moderates might just be people who don’t want to be put in uncomfortable positions, but the moderate label now is also hung on pragmatic, cooperative political actors that work the process for their point of view but respect the results, and don’t constantly work to undermine anything that they don’t agree with.

     So a moderate is someone who accepts that competing and irreconcilable visions exist, and doesn’t choose to ruin the government when they don’t get their way. Unfortunately, that is a difficult message to sell in an election.

4. “Tired of hyper-partisanship” feels like it makes sense, but it has not been well-defined. I think if you try to define it, you’ll see it quickly gets into some unavoidably thorny matters of value judgments of ideological priorities and what ought and ought not to be “morally compelling”.

   People are always tired of the aggressive sanctimoniousness and antagonism of people who disagree, so, in a sense, everyone is ‘tired’ (and angry, and threatened, and alarmed, etc.)

   Many people want some relief from the prevailing tension and seek physical and conversational refuge in ‘safe spaces’ and contexts they hope will remain free of “moral policing” and passionate disagreements about current major controversies.
   But there’s no getting around the question of whether the subject matter is genuinely important enough to warrant crossing the boundary of that sanctuary.

   The broader social question is whether that is possible at all anymore, that is, whether any truly ‘public’ settings can be mostly politically tension-free without segregating into more ideologically homogeneous echo chambers and bubbles. ( https://www.economics.ox.ac.uk/materials/jm_papers/921/echochambers.pdf )

   I think what a lot of people are really ‘tired’ of is the fact that it is becoming increasingly obvious that the answer is “no”, and this is incredibly distressing. It would require consensus on a number of ‘sacred’ notions and cultural symbols of very widespread appeal, and which must remain immune from insult or debate. We don’t have those anymore.

   So, consider two typical examples: Family gatherings (like Thanksgiving), or professional sporting events. The old social rule was that one avoided discussing “politics or religion” on such occasions, precisely because of a consensus that maintaining relationships, durable loyalties, and harmony and comity has priority over those other concerns.

   But what if the controversy is so compelling to one’s moral commitments that those relationships, or preserving the apolitical character of those occasions, don’t have priority?

   So, one could imagine someone in 1945 protesting the color line in some conspicuous way at a baseball game. There was indeed a longstanding, intense, and popular campaign at the time in favor of desegregation in the sport. From an article in The Atlantic:

   Progressive unions and civil rights groups picketed outside Yankee Stadium the Polo Grounds, and Ebbets Field in New York City, and Comiskey Park and Wrigley Field in Chicago. They gathered more than a million signatures on petitions, demanding that baseball tear down the color barrier erected by team owners and Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis. In July 1940, the Trade Union Athletic Association held an “End Jim Crow in Baseball” demonstration at the New York World’s Fair. The next year, liberal unions sent a delegation to meet with Landis to demand that major league baseball recruit black players. In December 1943, Paul Robeson, the prominent black actor, singer, and activist, addressed baseball’s owners at their annual winter meeting in New York, urging them to integrate their teams.

   But someone else – even one with integrationist sympathies – rolling ones eyes with “current controversy tension fatigue syndrome” saying, “This isn’t the time of place man, leave it outside. You’re just abusing the audience; leveraging the popularity of this event for publicity for your cause. We can work on social improvements somewhere else at another time, but right now, I’m weary of all this ‘hyper-partisan’ argument and just trying to enjoy the game, and this place should be an escape from all that.”

   “Hyper-partisan? What are you talking about? These are human beings and fellow Americans, fully meritorious, facing unjust discrimination and oppression, out of nothing but hatred and bigotry. There is right and there is wrong, and it’s wrong to just passively go along with this travesty as if everything is ok, as if it’s no big deal.”

   Well, who’s right?

   Or what about the poor families who have to argue with their college-age daughter about whether to put an orange (or an oyster: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/opinion/19greenberg.html) on the seder plate as Passover?

   The point is that even ‘common weariness’ does not actually reflect actual consensus or lots of people sharing political middle ground in the center of a normal distribution. To reduce that argument to its absurd implication, if we all hate each other, we aren’t able to share that “hate” as a thing we all agree on and have in common as a basis for friendship. As Brooks just said, “The Venn diagram is dead. There’s no overlapping area.”

   https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/opinion/2018-midterms-realignment-partisanship.html

   • https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/us/politics/apps-public-voting-record.html

     You know a great idea, a Y Combinator startup that uses an App to tell you what party your friends (or anyone you want to search for) are registered to and which elections they have voted in. Set to automatically encourage registered Democrats only, though it will out your Republican co-workers and neighbors. As well as Democrats not ”

     From the Article:

     Political science research has shown that people turn out to vote in higher numbers when they think their family and neighbors are observing their civic behavior. The VoteWithMe and OutVote apps simply automate that surveillance and social pressure.

     “The message is going to be coming from someone that not only knows who you are but knows that you didn’t vote last time,” said Mikey Dickerson, the executive director of the New Data Project, who served as chief of the United States Digital Service under President Barack Obama. “We are trying to engineer a situation where there is a social expectation that they do vote.”

     Lily Jampol, a diversity and inclusion consultant in San Francisco, downloaded the VoteWithMe app last Monday. By Tuesday afternoon, she said, she had sent dozens of text messages to people in her contacts.

     The apps also distinguish engaged voters from wayward ones.

     If someone in your contacts list has a perfect voting record, OutVote identifies him or her as a “super voter” and displays an emoji of a smiley face with red hearts for eyes next to the name. For those “woke friends who vote,” it suggests sending a message saying: “I know you’re gonna vote on November 6 DUH, but make sure to remind your friends too!”

     Both apps display election years that people have skipped with a big red slash next to their names. OutVote marks voters who missed elections with a sad-faced emoji dripping a tear.

5. “Terrible survey instrument” is right.

   I have never seen more false dichotomies jammed into one survey.

6. The quiz is like just about every survey I have ever taken in that I don’t like any of the answers for a lot of the questions.

7. The poll’s categories didn’t include libertarian, so I got labeled a “moderate.”

8. One is not very likely to have a significant group of people sick of hyper partisanship reveal itself in any significant way in a two-party, winner take all, political system. A voter is stuck having to choose. The incidence of ticket-splitting is probably the best indicator.

   In Maryland, for example, Republican Governor Ben Hogan will likely win re-election on Tuesday by a wide margin campaigning against the partisan excesses of both President Trump and his opponent. He will have little or no coat-tails because a good chunk of his voters will be Democrats who will vote for Democrats for all the national and local offices. Such voters sensibly value Hogan’s competence in addressing issues that directly concern them more than they do any tribal allegiances.

   I suspect we will see a vanishingly small percentage of ticket-splitters for national offices though. The bottom line here is that the US has a crap federal constitution and electoral system. In its day it was a remarkable achievement and helped to greatly advance humankind. Other nations have learned from the US constitution and improved their constitutions and electoral systems. Loyalty to the extant constitution is a stubbornly misplaced attachment. It really does need to be improved upon. The fever of hyper partisanship is healthy in that it demands the underlying illness be addressed.

   So what would a better constitution and elector system look like?

   If we could call an Article V constitutional convention of the states, I’d advocate for replacing the current US constitution and electoral system with that of the Netherlands (minus the King part in sections 1 and 2 and with codification of many of the unwritten customs and practice).

   The benefits of adopting a Dutch style system of governance would be:

   • Allowing decentralized local autonomy for many governmental functions. The Dutch Constitution could be improved upon in this regard with provisions specifying functions that the national government would be prohibited from meddling in. But in general, the Dutch system, far better than federalism, incorporates the principle of subsidiarity and gives local populations greater self-determination and voice.

   • List system of proportional representation. Getting 0.7 percent of the vote can be enough to allow a party to enter the Lower House. This results in a multitude of parties representing a very wide range of views. It also requires parties to form alliances. This need to become part of an alliance greatly reduces the incidence of hyper partisanship. It also allows voters to vote for policies in which they believe rather than to pick the lesser of two weevils. And no need to guess the people’s actual political preferences: elections themselves reveal preferences quite clearly and without the need for a numbskull commentariat to ceaselessly and sanctimoniously opine on how the election reflects either good or evil depending on whose side won.

   • No partisan judicial meddling as in the US where our constitutional system of gerrymandering congressional district is subject to arbitrary, capricious, and partisan judicial review.

   • Replacing anarchic and partisan common law with codified civil law.

   But perhaps the great advantage of a constitutional convention would be to allow the US to break up into smaller entities. The US is far too large for any form of efficient governance. Trial and error at the local level is substantially better than top down fiat from afar.

   • One old Dutch (also Belgian) institution to consider in the context of people with irreconcilable differences who nevertheless agree to tolerate each other’s communities would be pillarisation.

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillarisation

     This is a non-individualistic ‘millet’-like approach has naturally and gradually given way to centralization under progressive principles. Still, a defusing mechanism worth thinking about. “Pillarisation or Polarization” might have some truth to it.

     • It seems to be coming back into fashion (so far more in Europe than the US) with respect to Muslims.

     • Thanks. I was not familiar with the concept. Yes, definitely something to consider. A pluralist and tolerant approach which seem to be the values most sorely needed in the US today.

   • ” This results in a multitude of parties representing a very wide range of views. It also requires parties to form alliances. ”
     While this seems to be a strength, thru greater democratic participation, it’s got a huge weakness on the issue of forming alliances.

     The usual way politicians in a democracy form an alliance is very clear — higher gov’t subsidies to supporters of the alliance target. More social spending to one group or another. Very often future pensions.

     Excess gov’t spending is one of the main ways rich countries, or states or cities, stop being rich. Another main way is corruption, and proportional representation seems a bit worse on corruption.

     Before trying this at the US national level, CA or New York or Texas should try it at the state level, for state politicians. I’m sure there will be more problems than today.

     Social media based pillarisation seems much more likely to allow Reps to set up their own parallel groups; it seems from reading the wiki that there is a lot of non-state social support within the pillars. I’d guess Mormons already have a good amount of pillarisation. One important aspect is the pillar’s control of the schools. The US gov’t school systems are lousy.

     The secret discrimination against Reps when being hired as professors is terrible, and one the biggest drivers of polarization — along with the demonization of those Republicans and conservatives by the elite Dems who speak from “on high” from their tenured positions.

9. Actually, I’m glad to see the partisanship. For most of my 65 years Republicans were socialist-lite. Whatever Democrats proposed, Republicans wanted just a tiny bit less. Republicans are only slightly more free market today, and the cranked up rhetoric doesn’t match the small degree of change, but at my age I’m grateful for small things.

   For those for whom the clash of ideas is too much, I recommend Arthur Ekirch’s “The Decline of American Liberalism.” Ekirch shows that politics was highly contentious from our founding until the 20th century when both parties went socialist. They stayed socialist until the revival of free market thought when Hayek won the Nobel. But the Republican establishment refuses to give up its socialist-lite addiction.

   The ramped up rhetoric is due to the fact that socialists have lost their monopoly and they would rather burn the country to the ground than lose. It’s only going to get worse so I recommend some calisthenics for those who find the current environment too rough for them. I also recommend reading about 1968, not just in the US, but Western Europe where socialists tried to take over by force.

10. Copped from Washington Monthly:

    “A shooting by a racist misogynist at a yoga studio. A massacre at a synagogue by a man who believed in right-wing conspiracy theories about wealthy jews funding immigrants. A far-right bigot who tried to break into a black church to kill congregants, then settled for murdering two people of color at a supermarket before lowering his gun, saying “whites don’t kill whites.” Fifteen pipe bombs sent to the president’s favorite liberal attack targets by a Trump-obsessed middle aged man dubbed the MAGABomber. A gang of white supremacists assaulting peaceful protestors on the public streets of New York.”

    ##############

    So the “right” is the party that just wants to be left alone?

    It’s hard to be a “centrist” in these circumstances. Beautiful, beautiful razor wire and all that.

    I’m usually derided for being a centrist. I actually thought the ACA was a good start to bringing more citizens into the tent. But I guess its worse than communism. Who knew? Do you think I will vote against “single payer” in the future if my choice is no insurance and insane prices? Not on your life.

    The Republicans in 2016 got fewer votes across the board, but have governed like the had a 90% mandate. Their policy prescriptions are unpopular so they run on white rage. Can democrats afford to allow even one compromise if they ever get all 3 branches of government? They would be fools.

    The President* and Mitch McConnell could choose to de-escalate. But they wont. So I think this craziness continues.

    • Moo Cow, I’m disappointed in you. A number of crazy Muslims have shot up places yelling “Allah ‘akbar” but we know better than to think that is representative of Muslims. Antifa beats up people and prevents debate but we know better than to think that is representative of “the left.” Assuming that the people in your first paragraph are representative of “the right” is factually wrong and, yes, h8.

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