The Washington Post published an article earlier this month essentially blaming former President Donald Trump and his supporters for the rise of polarization.
The article, titled “Science is revealing why American politics are so intensely polarized,” opens with a story of Trump supporters booing and raising their middle fingers at the media. It quotes several voters who are highly affectively polarized, all of whom are conservatives. (“Affective polarization” is a political science term essentially meaning that people feel anger and fear toward their political opponents.) The only mention of Biden supporters, by contrast, is a picture of a diverse group of college students diligently making signs for Biden’s campaign.
The subtext is clear: One side is contributing to the problem of affective polarization a lot more than the other side.
This implication is wrong-headed: Data show that both major political parties are contributing to affective polarization. As the article itself notes in one of its few nods to both sides being a problem, about 30% of people in both parties agreed that members of the other party “lack the traits to be considered fully human — they behave like animals.”
Both sides also struggle to see the other side clearly. A 2018 study noted how stark our lack of understanding of the other side is. “People think that 32% of Democrats are LGBT (vs. 6% in reality),” the study noted, “and 38% of Republicans earn over $250,000 per year (vs. 2% in reality).”
And while the Washington Post’s selective quotes might suggest that conservatives are more close-minded, studies show that both teams tend to be equally dogmatic. A 2018 survey published by Survey Sampling International and Cards Against Humanity asked partisans on both sides the following question: “If scientific evidence proved that the policies favored by [the other party] improved the economy, lowered crime, and made citizens happier, would you become a [member of that party]?” Eighty-six percent of Democrats and 88% of Republicans said no.
Insulting and caricaturing Trump supporters may even be increasing our societal levels of affective polarization. Democrats who read the Washington Post’s piece are going to leave with a distorted and negative view of Republicans. This isn’t hypothetical; it’s already happened. According to a 2018 Axios poll, 61% of Democrats consider Republicans to be “racist/bigoted/sexist.”
This astonishingly negative view is probably driven in part by the constant drumbeat of the legacy media calling Republicans racists and white supremacists. There’s little recognition among center-left or leftist outlets that someone might have virtuous reasons for voting for Trump or that nonwhite folks might see something in him worth voting for.
Pieces such as this one also threaten to move Trump supporters further away from the middle. One of the most effective small-government advocates of the 20th century and the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, Leonard Read, put it this way in his book Who’s Listening?, “Intolerance, confrontation, disgust with those of opposed views engender not improvement in others but resentment, not progress but regress.”
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As Monica Guzman, senior fellow at Braver Angels, told me in an interview, “People can hear best when they’re heard. The kindness of receiving people’s ideas openly, of listening to them and trying to understand them before jumping in to judge them or react to them, tends to unlock people.” The inverse is also true: When we insult and caricature people, we tend to push them further away.
The motto of the Washington Post is “Democracy Dies In Darkness.” I’ve previously argued that democracy can also die when affective polarization gets too high. Perhaps the Washington Post should take a look at its own role in our country’s plight.
Julian Adorney is a writer for the Foundation for Economic Education, a member of the Braver Angels media team, and a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the founder of Heal the West, a Substack movement dedicated to preserving and protecting Western civilization.