Polarization: the buzzword defining the mass perception of the current state of civil discourse. In the United States, the rift between primary political parties, red and blue, Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative, has become an obsessive fixation of the media, political candidates, and citizens at large. Tribalism, populism, and debates over tolerance seem to be the defining trends of our political communication culture. Even within one side of the divide, in-fighting has reached an apex, where Democrats accuse each other of not being “real Democrats” or “liberal enough,” and Republicans split between that social extremism and moderate conservatism. However, in the midst of it all, it’s hard to see how things could be any other way. Despite our best intentions, working toward our respective visions of the future of the nation, so much seems to have spiraled out of our control, from the traditions of slander and scandal between politicians, and the editorialist and exploitative nature of the media, to the increasingly traditional separation of those of opposing parties in everything from dinner conversation and friendships to marriage. Individuals and even those in power, often don’t know where to start in undoing the seemingly endless cycle creating the mess. However, there currently seems to be a growing feeling of an obligation to try. Consequently, a wave of nonprofits dedicated to improving civility and bipartisan collaboration, as well as academic research around the subject and institutional changes have sprung up, particularly since the outcome of the infamous election of 2016.
The question is, with all of these varied efforts, which is the right approach, either ethically or prudentially? From the individual or local standpoint, sometimes changing one-on-one conversational habits seems to be the only thing within reach. However, if one is moved by a moral obligation to facilitate change in civil discourse, aren’t they also, in some way, morally obligated to doing so in the most effective and far-reaching way? What, exactly, is the point in bailing water in a sinking ship when the hole hasn’t been plugged? There are root problems, or structural influences behind the current state of communication we are observing. However, is it politically possible to launch a structural or institutional approach? Further, what other ethical dilemmas might result? To make a proper evaluation requires the examination of the structural roots of these symptoms. While a vast number exist, two major ones will be examined here: the electoral structures creating a tendency for polarization, and the exacerbation of this tendency by the technological changes in media, or mass communication practices.
The Electoral Contribution
One of the most important mechanisms behind the function of the American Representative government is elections. Within our political system, to achieve election, a candidate must accrue an incredibly high level of public attention and support, particularly monetary support. This creates two failures in communication; one related to maintaining incumbency, and one to elections at large. For candidates in office, to compete with the capitalist marketing of other competitors, they must spend more time trying to get re-elected than anything else. This causes them to favor monetary interests over constituent concerns- one of the origins of the “Big Money” corruption in politics. Even if a candidate’s intentions are good, the path to power is inherently structured to erode the power of the people. As a result, civil discourse becomes more difficult and less incentivized, as citizens feel that their political voices are useless.
For candidates not yet in office, each must find a way to stand out by demonstrating what makes them unique. This is accomplished by leveraging constituent interests and fears to create a campaign narrative. When voting, constituents balance their private and public interests based on what visions they have for themselves and the state. They also consider what will be prudent to support politically based on how overlapping public and private interests are. Philosophers, from the ancient period on, have been struggling to understand this psychology behind political engagement and voting behavior. In Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian thesis determines that the psychological elements behind political engagement are fear, honor, and profit. This relates closely to the anatomy of the soul outlined later in Plato’s Republic, which describes the three human motivators as desire (profit), thumos (honor), and reason (works to control and interpret fear). In modern theory, Machiavelli and Nietzsche focus their view of political psychology further on strength and power, or resentment towards the strong. Regardless of their nuances, the takeaway is that the majority of political theorists, by attempting to map these common influences, agree that there are psychological patterns to making electoral choices. The traditions of political campaigning in the United States are crafted around this assumption- the most logical way to determine what will garner attention as a candidate is to think about what commonly motivates voters and to try to play into that.
In the earliest days of the nation, constituents were most concerned about the dissolution of the state, and what its future should look like. Thus, the priorities of a voter in choosing a candidate were things like moral integrity, history of leadership and demonstration of loyalty, as well as a vision for the future of the country. No history of elections or rhetoric beyond that maintained from Europe existed. Collaborative mores were habituated due to colonial survival and revolution, as described by Tocqueville. Thus, scandal and slander didn’t need to be as heavily involved in campaign narratives. Rather, uniqueness was still achievable by ideology alone. As a result, this generation has the ability to engage in serious political debate and proceed to an outcome or compromise without being distracted by simply attacking the humanity or character of the other side.
By the 1950s, however, several generations of political activity and rhetorical traditions had unfolded to where uniqueness in policy approaches and values was difficult to establish, and not enough for a candidate to stand out. Instead, candidates had to engineer a reason to stand out. Recognizing fear as a primary motivator of voters, a tradition of engineering emergencies to leverage votes was born. WWII, broadcasted to the masses from TV and radio, shaped the American public’s greatest fear into that of totalitarianism. The Republican Party, which was trying to reinstate a political majority following the era of Democratic control and influx of incredibly progressive policy, including FDR’s New Deal, exploited this fear by painting Communism as the new totalitarian threat and engineering the McCarthy era of campaigning as the savior mechanism to this artificial emergency. McCarthy himself was never consistently Republican or Democrat but had the demagogic personality to uphold the campaign. We saw similar patterns with the War on Drugs, and Regan’s original Make America Great Again campaign, as well as in how the United States marketed the anti-terror movement following 9/11.
In each of these examples, however, the same general causal mechanism is at work. The fear motivating the public is identified and used to establish an artificial emergency in which the candidate is painted as the only conceivable hero. This heightens the tendency not just for the selection of the candidate, but for the expansion of the power of their institutional position. This is because there is now a decline in the public’s confidence in knowing how to solve their problem, as they had not previously been aware of the emergency, so it’s more reasonable to trust in the hero figure who did to take care of the situation. This is the very pattern warned against by Tocqueville. It’s especially dangerous in American politics as a Lockean prerogative, established in the founding American documents, justifies an executive to toss out the rule of law in the event of an “emergency.” However, the term “emergency” is not well defined, so the only thing that prevents the rule being abused to result in complete authoritarianism is the involvement of the democratic voice of constituents calling out such exploitation, which requires a healthy level of participation and investment.
For this campaign strategy to be successful, it has to be paired with a validation mechanism, in which anyone who opposes the demagogue in power must be identified as disloyal, and therefore, a contributor to the emergency. Citizens, obsessed with weeding these people out, begin to agree to heightened limitations on freedoms such as privacy. For the McCarthy era, this enabled the infamous era of accusations of internal communist activities and unconstitutional persecution. Post 9/11, it was Americans allowing government spying on domestic users, racial profiling in airports, and incredibly invasive security checkpoints. Within civil discourse, this translates as pushing people farther apart on opposite sides of this line in the sand, encouraging tribal partisan behavior, or polarization. It also translates psychologically as feeling more powerless and part of an impenetrable system, and likely to disengage more from political conversation, particularly with policymakers, as they are reminded repeatedly by these losses in the freedom that they are subservient to the state.
Fast-forwarding to apply this theory to contemporary politics, using the defining example of our current state of political communication upheaval, Donald Trump has followed the same pattern of McCarthy in being selected as the figurehead of his campaign. He also was able to leverage the feelings of isolation resulting from a lack of community or identity and fears resultant in racism, xenophobia, and the like by creating artificial emergencies such as the crisis at the border. He painted his opponent as being the cause of the fears of his targeted electorate, and those who opposed him as being disloyal to the cause and therefore part of this evil or cause of the things most feared. Hillary Clinton, for example, was representative of the establishment- of the way things were, which had not been working for those who were being targeted by the Trump campaign. She was also associated with her husband, who was responsible for the decision viewed as the cause of the economic turmoil being experienced in these communities (e.g. sending manufacturing away through the shifting trade balance with China). Those who supported her were often in urban, liberal hubs, not experiencing these same pressures, and in fact, very much ignorant to them, and therefore, focused on other political initiatives.
By intoning complicity with these groups, and catering to the fearful ones, Trump was able to make it clear who would be protected by him, even though his policy preferences didn’t necessarily align with their interests. His rhetoric was familiar, referencing the comfortable, white male predecessors iconic of a less progressive American tradition when these communities were less vulnerable and things like racism were more acceptable. His purposeful political incorrectness made him a clear anti-establishment figure, which was both indicative of possible high risk, but also guaranteeing of radical change, for better or for worse. For many Americans, who felt they had nothing left to lose and no other opportunity relevant to them, or giving them a political voice, he seemed like the hopeful choice. This is where there is an overlap between the Obama electorate and Trump’s, or some of the more surprising demographic groups one by the Trump campaign, including many women whom he directly offended. However, his infamous dog-whistling painted him, to those minority groups and those interested in protecting them, as something to fear. His blatant disregard for restraints on executive power or traditions of state function inflates that fear to its most extreme end. Thus, for both groups, the stakes are incredibly high and emotional, making this an example of tribal polarization that resonates with those experiencing it as the worst state of civil discourse we have ever seen. The urgency for change has reached a peak. The point to remember, however, is that the very structure of our government and elections established the traditions which perhaps inevitably led to this, suggesting a structural solution is the only solution to civil discourse worth exploring, but also the degree to which this would be seemingly impossible.
The Technological Curve
The influx of technological advancement, such as social media, has added another dimension to the situation, as it has increased the speed at which communication happens, allowing for a more natural blending in of false or misleading information, and therefore, common acceptance of it, changing the quality and nature of trust within debate and civil discourse. It has also changed the intensity of radicalism acceptable, and allowed for the faster building of movements, heightening the fear that the opposite party or opinion will gain traction and destroy the vision one holds for the future of the state faster than can be stopped. Finally, the phenomena of echo-chambers have made all of these fears artificially more vibrant, and misunderstanding or ignorance between groups much deeper. All of this has contributed both to heightened extremism, polarization, and intolerance in our current culture of civil discourse, being used largely as a tool with the actors motivating the campaigns previously unpacked, as well as by those trying to resist them, creating a pattern in heightened sensationalism on both sides, in almost a Cold War of civil discourse.
Evaluation: Grassroots vs. Structural Initiatives
Having taken stock of the mechanisms leading to the current state of civil discourse, an evaluation must be made, morally and prudentially, of what would be the right approach to undoing them. The grassroots perspective has been largely headlined by several local and nonprofit initiatives. On the local end, for example, some communities have taken to painting benches or tables a particular color to mark them as a safe place for civil discourse, hoping to encourage more conversation. On a larger grassroots scale, full organizations have sprung up to systemize these conversational tools in a way that can be spread easily to a wide array of places. Better Angels, for example, is a nationally reaching nonprofit which brings free civil discourse workshops to local communities and college campuses. They aim to maintain equal participation from what they refer to as “reds” and “blues,” or traditionally conservative learning vs. traditionally liberally leaning people. Their workshops come in three varieties to meet communities with the methods most resonating to them, but all involve a debrief for opposite sides to reflect on the origins of their political identities, and what psychological influences may have created the identities they don’t share. Bridging the Gap is another Washington, D.C. based bipartisanship initiative, which offers professional training and public resources, as well as scholarships to try to encourage better and more frequent policy debates. More specifically, within education, there are many civil discourse and communication-related projects, such as American University’s very own Project on Civil Discourse. These often produce both workshops and research on the subject.
These organizations are far from alone. Rather, they exist in a wave of projects that have sprung up, which aim to a degree to work together, but have hesitated in making partnerships to expand the traction of their work as they all fear being associated with an organization which fails to maintain the bipartisan dedication. In other words, the anxiety of polarization is so high, that it is creating road-blocks in projects to combat it because no one can fully trust anyone to not fall into the red-blue tribes. The same is occurring within grant distribution towards these projects. So, while a bunch of small initiatives teaming up at first seems like a nice compromise between structural and local change, it may be just as futile as working on the local level without targeting the structural roots of communication failures.
But is it prudent, or ethical, to work from an institutional and structural upheaval perspective, either? To create a structural change, the most common considerations, as explained previously, are a literal restructuring of the government’s elections systems, public media, speech, etc. The reason is that to change education, the values passed from parent to child, or the habits of both local communities and media, which shape political psychology, you need to change the institutional practices that build these things, which come from governmental institutions and delegations of freedom. This drifts into an incredibly slippery slope of limiting civic freedoms and freedom of the market. This is visible through the simultaneous wave of free speech initiatives popping up in opposition to efforts to control things like hate speech, or fake news on social media. It also would be politically nearly impossible, unless one were to utilize the same sensational fear which fuels the current state, a major hypocritical choice at best. Finally, a concentration of power would have to head the change, which makes the rest of the nation’s future dependent on their morality. As seen in other authoritarian states, while it can all feel great while everyone’s being taken care of, it only takes one set of leadership making bad choices to reach a very dark place, at which point no one will know how to politically associate in order to fix it, having been disengaged for so long.
Thus, society needs to balance control over the practices promoted and the desire to make the ethical evaluation of communication practices a more democratic process. Space between is occupied by one final option, less clear to explore, but perhaps quite effective. The social movement approach is hardly unique historically. Compassion becomes virtue within the Civil Rights Movement, LGBTQ+ Advocacy, the fight for gay marriage, Women’s Suffrage, and more. All of these combined grassroots initiatives of civil disobedience, media attention, and local conversations with the push for legislation, but not without the simultaneous shift in a large portion of public values, so that the change would be more democratic. Society cannot necessarily rely on this transition for civil discourse, as the media previously used slacktivism online, and civil disobedience loses its power, particularly as sensationalism is lost as quickly as it’s gained. All of this happens through communication, rhetorical and symbolic, and the entire point is to address the failures of communication. However, there certainly must be something that can be learned from it as a clue to what to do.
No Labels is an organization that is proving a great example of this mode of work. They are trying to work to provide local resources and grassroots tools for dialogue through guidebooks on how to approach policy and discussion events. However, they are also making soft strides in trying to habituate communication change from the inside of government, through their lobbying to establish the Problem Solvers Caucus, which brings together a bipartisan balance of Congress members to solve policy under a set of different communication methods and overcome traditional partisan blocks. Critics have accused the caucus of not “solving many problems.” As a concept, it is an interesting hybrid of a more democratic grassroots approach trying to create a government change to find solutions without a total overhaul of the system, and maybe create a democratic space to find further change. Rather than delegating power to a tiny group, it ensures that those working towards change are committed to a certain set of predetermined values such as bipartisanship. The question is how to take this approach to the next level, of one with more traction, which can “solve more problems?” Is there a way to speed up the change without losing ethical value?
In sum, there is certainly no easy fix in the race to solve the crisis of political communication. The stakes for the communities being hurt by current failures, as well as for preserving the democratic stability of our country, have reached a peak crossroads. However, the political feasibility and ethical considerations are both an all-consuming and unclear part of any transition. The questions and influences that have brought us here are hardly new, hence their having been fleshed out for theorists of numerous generations. The U.S. is just one in a whole host of countries experiencing parallel communication problems. However, by pulling back from the anxiety of the current generation and reflecting on the origin of the situation, as well as the critical consequences of each path forward, society approaches the best chance of finding one that works and can restore the American mores of E. Pluribus Unum.