Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America

I bought this some months ago but just started and finished it this week, Culture War? The Myth of Polarized America by Morris P. Fiorina with Samuel J. Adams and Jeremy C. Pope. Political science is not a field that I have a high interest in but this one seemed promising. And it delivered.

I read the second edition but apparently there is now a third edition. The blurb describes the argument well,

Is the nation really polarized on these hot-button moral, religious, and cultural issues? Should we believe the media pundits and politicians who tell us that Americans are deeply divided?

No, says Morris Fiorina. At a time when the rift between the “red” and “blue” states can seem deeper than ever, Fiorina debunks the assumption that Americans are deeply split over national issues. He presents quite a contrary picture — that most Americans stand in the middle of the political landscape and are in general agreement even on those issues thought to be most divisive.

Poking holes in the concept of a “culture war,” Fiorina explains that the majority of Americans are both moderate and tolerant, and that their greatest concerns are leadership and security, not moral values. Supporting his position with election data and a variety of public surveys, Fiorina concludes that the view of a divided America is simply false and that by recognizing our common ground, we have a basis for creating a more unified and moderate approach to government and politics in the near future.

A new epilogue relates the 2008 campaign and election to the general argument of the book, looking at the people and issues affecting the road to the White House in 2008, and speculating on what lies ahead for (un)polarized America.

Lot's of fascinating data and clever interpretations.

In sum, what we call the political class in America definitely is polarized and probably has become more so in recent decades. But as the quotation that leads off this book asserts, it is a mistake to assume that what is true of a fraction of Americans who are politically active also holds true for the great preponderance of us. In general, normal Americans are busy earning their livings and raising their families. They are not very well-informed about politics and public affairs, do not care a great deal about politics, do not hold many of their views very strongly, and are not ideological. In contrast, members of the political class are well-informed, care a great deal, have strong views, and are ideological. Moreover, and importantly, they have more extreme views than normal people.

[snip]

The problem is that people who care deeply also tend to have extreme views on the issues they care deeply about.

Fiorina argues that the myth of a polarized populace (as opposed to polarized political elite), arises and is sustained based on four factors.

We too easily confuse closely divided with deeply divided. Example - 100 close friends decided to go out Friday night. 51 suggest a taco place, 49 suggest a hamburger joint. They are closely divided. But nobody really cares which place they go as long as they go together. They are not deeply divided.

Political activists are not representative of the body politic. The division on particular policy issues between politicians is much more extreme than the division between citizens on those particular issues.

The media need conflict to sell stories. If it bleeds, it leads. It is in their institutional interest to see conflict whether or not there actually is conflict.

We confuse positions with choices. If the two parties propose two extreme candidates, the electorate, despite being bunched in the middle on policy issues, has to choose between those extremes. The fact that they have to make a choice between two extremes says nothing about their own moderate positions.

No One Had a Tongue To Speak

No One Had a Tongue to Speak by Utpal Sandesara and Tom Wooten. I stopped in a used bookstore, McKay, on the outskirts of Knoxville, Tennessee and quickly found a handful of books including this one. Never heard of it or the authors before. But what a find.

No One Had a Tongue to Speak is by two recent Harvard grads and recounts the antecedents, disaster, and epilogue of a man-made disaster that occurred in India in 1979 when a dam collapsed and nearly wiped out a whole city. In some regards this book can be seen as a parallel to David McCullough’s excellent The Johnstown Flood. Sandesara and Wooten did the research for the book while in college and completed it soon afterwards.

Hard to believe that it is by two literary novices. Well constructed, strong pacing. Similar to works by Walter Lord, Erik Larson, and David McCullough.

In addition to being a first rate book about a disaster, it also provides a brief introduction to the Indian caste system, religious beliefs, recent history and a touch of politics. A very moving account of good people struggling against terrible events. Highly recommended.

I have been on the lookout for books that recount historical events from the perspective of other countries and this comes close. For example, where are the Egyptian accounts of the Sinai War or the Cameroonian accounts of the Lake Nyos disaster?

What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person

In checking a translation of Dorothy Sayer's, I came across a book of hers, Are Women Human? Clickbait long before the internet.

Looking at some quoted passages, it looks like I need to add it to my shopping list.

A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.

Individuals

In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: (...) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.

On movements

But it is the mark of all movements, however well-intentioned, that their pioneers tend, by much lashing of themselves into excitement, to lose sight of the obvious.

Advocates

I always said the professional advocate was the most amoral person on the face of the earth. I'm certain of it now.

Misterioso

Just finished Misterioso by Arne Dahl, part of the Scandinavian Noire kick I have been on.

Fine. Author includes, what to me seem, a couple of superfluous trashy scenes to establish his edgy cred. Otherwise a standard mystery. Set substantially in Stockholm, rich in half-forgotten neighborhoods and vaguely recalled streets. That part I loved.

Where the right road was wholly lost and gone

I have long known Dorothy Sayers solely as a British mystery writer. Then, a few years ago, I came across a wonderful and erudite essay on her part, The Lost Tools of Learning, which I wrote about here. Now, I come across the fact that she translated Dante's Inferno, and considered that translation to be her greatest literary achievement. The opening lines:

Midway this way of life we're bound upon,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards

From Journals IV A 164 (1843) by Søren Kierkegaard, often abbreviated as "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

It is quite true what philosophy says; that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards. Which principle, the more one thinks it through, ends exactly with the thought that temporal life can never properly be understood precisely because I can at no instant find complete rest in which to adopt a position: backwards.

But I wonder if there is a further variant, Life is constructed backwards and lived forwards. Our understanding is always flawed and always subject to revision. That which is past is always being revised, not only based on new knowledge but probably also to fit our present psychological needs.

You just don't see people giving away more than half of their money

A deeply self-referential post stemming from Money, Status, and the Ovulatory Cycle (politically incorrect paper of the month) by Tyler Cowen. The abstract of the originating paper:

Each month, millions of women experience an ovulatory cycle that regulates fertility. Previous consumer research has found that this cycle influences women’s clothing and food preferences. The authors propose that the ovulatory cycle actually has a much broader effect on women’s economic behavior. Drawing on theory in evolutionary psychology, the authors hypothesize that the week-long period near ovulation should boost women’s desire for relative status, which should alter their economic decisions. Findings from three studies show that women near ovulation seek positional goods to improve their social standing. Additional findings reveal that ovulation leads women to pursue positional goods when doing so improves relative standing compared with other women but not compared with men. When playing the dictator game, for example, ovulating women gave smaller offers to a female partner but not to a male partner. Overall, women’s monthly hormonal fluctuations seem to have a substantial effect on consumer behavior by systematically altering their positional concerns, a finding that has important implications for marketers, consumers, and researchers.

As a child of the seventies or perhaps from living in Sweden for a number of years or by personality or family heritage or because I had an aunt who was an early progressive feminist - for whatever reason, I have a strong egalitarian streak expressed in the model that people of both sexes ought to be treated identically save for where there are explicit reasons not to based on biology.

One of the hoary tropes that was still in circulation, though declining, in the seventies was the idea of women as being slave to their biology.

So I have a fairly visceral reaction to this research. Really? You are resurrecting that old cliché?

But I am also, deeper still, an empirical rationalist. What is the truth? I look at this study, and after my knee jerk reaction, I also think - hmmph. Plausible. And I like being surprised by counter-intuitive information. From a press release about the research:

But, the studies find that ovulation doesn't always make women want more status. When women played against a man rather than a woman in the dictator game, the researchers found an even more surprising result. Whereas ovulating women became meaner to women, they became nicer to men. While non-ovulating women shared about 45 percent of the money with a man, ovulating women gave 60 percent of the money to the man.

"These findings are unlike anything we have ever seen in the dictator game. You just don't see people giving away more than half of their money," noted Durante. "One possibility is that we're seeing ovulating women share more money as a way to flirt with the men."

Dangerous and intriguing. I'll park it for the time being as something to be aware of but likely not true (small sample sizes, college based, and the WEIRD plague - Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic).

He knew but one secret, which was to do one thing at a time

From Remaking the World by Henry Petroski, page 68.

It is not only practicing engineers who seem to have learned the importance of keeping their minds under one hat while thinking about a hard problem. In his Journal of 1844, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote under the heading "Otherness":

Henry Thoreau said, he knew but one secret, which was to do one thing at a time, and though he has his evenings for study, if he was in the day inventing machines for sawing his plumbago, he invents wheels all the evening and night also; and if this week he has some goo reading and thoughts before him, his brain runs on that all day, whilst pencils pass through his hands.

While everyone, engineer and nonengineer alike, has experienced the feeling of being completely absorbed by whatever the mind is deeply engaged in at any given moment, it may be especially reassuring that so many engineers seem to have spent so many sleepless nights while their designs were progressing from the back of an envelope through increasingly complex and detailed calculations and drawings to the realization in an artifact upon whose safety the lives of so many depend.

Minds differ still more than faces.

From Philosophical Dictionary by Voltaire.

Minds differ still more than faces.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive

From C.S. Lewis in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.