Political Polarization Comes for Marriage Prospects
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
> This could be personal (should partisans become less selective?)
The author tells people what to do, with, one would assume, no chance of success
> or societal (how could we reduce partisanship?).
The author proposes, well, I've no idea really, some form of radical social reform? How would one do that, artificially? Is it even desirable?
> Even just asserting with evidence "nothing can be done, and here's what's in store for society" would be something.
The author makes wide-ranging predictions based in a political moment (these are rarely if ever accurate, realistically).
Honestly, all of the above are, I think, common _failings_ of this sort of article and the author has done well to avoid them.
Back in the day it worked because the gap between Democrats and Republicans was relatively narrow. Can't imagine a marriage where one person is a Trump republican and the other a liberal democrat working out.
I know more Republicans who vote for them despite their social issues than do. Trying to predict anyone's views based on the D/R is a gamble at best.
We discussed and had opinions on these things but they were mostly abstract as far as our marriage was concerned. One exception might have been abortion. Our marriage followed her unexpected pregnancy. Though she was strongly in favor of legalized abortion, she was at least as strong against having one herself.
> Back in the day it worked because the gap between Democrats and Republicans was relatively narrow. Can't imagine a marriage where one person is a Trump republican and the other a liberal democrat working out.
This is it. I don't think it was narrow before. It's that today the distance is far greater and it's turned into a DMZ where people get shot if they try to cross.
I feel like back in the day, the political spectrum was more narrow and although there were disagreements it was more on how to apply the law, not on if a law should exist at all.
Roe v Wade for example is from 1973. This law was established in my childhood, and as a nominal conservative I support it. Removing it is a radical change, leading to an alien landscape where people are fleeing newly antiabortion states and refusing job offers on the basis of what laws they have to live under. Life, death, and medical care are too fundamental to be left to the states. If you do, then do you really have a strongly knit country?
I’ve digressed a bit, but I think the stakes have changed so people on both sides of the spectrum share little common ground.
The trouble, there, is that the modern American mainstream right (and to a large extent the right, or at least the far-right, in most developed countries), _is not conservative_; in general it's far more radical, and wants to make far more sweeping changes, than the mainstream left.
There was a fairly long period when the political right heavily overlapped with 'conservatives', that is people who are perhaps overly into Chesterton's fence, but that's largely over now.
> leading to an alien landscape where people are fleeing newly antiabortion states and refusing job offers on the basis of what laws they have to live under.
I would note that that people having to be conscious of repressive state laws isn't _all that alien_; ethnic minorities in the US have moved states based on the laws they'd be living under for literal centuries, and LGBT people have similar concerns (it wasn't even legal to be gay nationwide in the US until 2007, for instance). The difference here is the abrupt _removal_ of pre-existing rights, of course.
As a post-conservative (hard right for two decades), I agree with this. I also think the left had a part in our arrival here. ex: I think ignoring the rural poor for generations whizzed away a lot of good will. In this, the left clearly lost their way.
But I also keep coming back to one overriding factor: That no one anywhere wants to clean their own house. No matter what I belong to now or have ever been a part of - that nature either dominates or barely doesn't.
I know a couple where the guy is extreme right and the wife is middle. The wife had to prohibit all discussion of politics, in private or with company, because they usually got out of control.
This is also a problem between generations. I know a lady, leaning right but not what I'd call extreme, who no longer is speaking to her daughter who is extreme left. It's crazy to me that politics is being given this much power in some people's lives.
Here's a clue to everyone: politicians don't care about us, at all! They only want to keep us divided and fighting amongst ourselves so we don't unite and fight against them.
- Biology of sex is complicated (true), Sociology of gender is complicated (also true), therefore we should give people some slack here and protect them of bigots want to punish them for something they have been born into.
- Sexuality is complex and consenting adults should be allowed to do what they want
- Sexuality is complex and people should be able to marry other people regaedless of sex and gender
Given the fact that these are all well researched topics I am not sure how a liberal position like that could be considered extreme.
Extreme would be something like demanding that gay people are ahot on the streets or that kids genitalia are checked at school.
They say: $political_enemy wants to force children to do $x, therefore we must ban $x. Of course their goal is not to ban $x for children, but for adults as well. And the gullible public goes "Oh lord, not the children!" and supports them.
So be aware that in reality it is the right who wants to forbid gender reaffirming care for adults — if they gave a single fuck about children they would do something about the leading cause of death for children. Don't you think kids getting slaughtered is "a bit" worse than a tiny fraction of them undergoing gender reaffirming surgery? And if you don't exactly know what gender reaffirming surgery means, read up on it please?
The kids are just an excuse.
Just like with the book bans, where they first say they want to protect kids and then they ban books from public libraries that can also be used by adults. Or drag shows, first it was about kids now they want to ban adults from them as well (see: https://www.theguardian.com/culture/commentisfree/2023/mar/1...)
Example: Banning books or drag shows, for others because you don't like them is not what I would call "liberal". But hey, in certain political circles words have lost all connection to their meaning, so knock yourself out.
As a European I don't like the Democrats either, but pretending both sides are the same is a spwcial kind of mental gymnastics.
Edit: that said, the “right” in America has been very meek in its “bans” compared with the left. You’re talking about politicians running on promises to remove books from local schools, winning on that platform, and following through. And then usually it gets overturned by some judge and quietly goes away. Meanwhile, we’ve seen for years school boards making decisions to remove books based on “left”ish principles and receiving little national backlash, even in ruby-red districts. No massive furor, no “this-is-a-threat-to-our-democracy” handwringing, maybe a write up in some rag like Breitbart or an episode of Tucker Carlson. It doesn’t get overturned, and people just accept it because they have no other choice. Which of these is less liberal?
Again, I agree that there’s no left in America. But that’s increasingly true globally, especially among very-online political wonks. If Marx rose from the dead today, the entire left would condemn him as a crypto-fascist. And the right is much the same. It can’t conceive of itself as anything more than the half-hearted preserver of yesterday’s lies. It doesn’t have the vision or the will to be truly “right” in any historically normal sense of the word.
1. Drug legalization: This is mainstream where I live. A majority of people are for a legalization (or at least a decriminalization) of Marijuana in some fashion or another. This is pretty much the same in the US as far as I can judge. There are some outliers that would extend that to other drugs as well (as e.g. Portugal did with quite some success), but that is a minority opinion among US Democrats, especially among those in any position of power.
2. Gender affirmative care (this includes btw. stuff that affirms the gender people had at theie birth) are relatively non-issues where I live. People who really need this get it. People who don't, don't. There are very few people who would lighty perform operations on their bodies. There are even fewer parents who would allow their children to undergo such a thing. This is basically a made up propaganda-talking-point that literally has no influence on my or your life at all. There have been studies that show links between the feeling of disgust and right wing ideology. Such a topic where you can other a powerless minority that right wingers feel disgusted about is a textbook manipulation example. My advice: Focus on voting for policy issues that actually impact your life instead of letting them manipulate you into voting against your own interest.
3. Defunding the police is a non issue in my country. Why? Because our police for the most part doesn't execute people without trial and they serve and protect instead. Of couese europe has bigot cops as well, but better training and a more service orientwd culture make all the difference here. If they would have the same bad culture as US cops I can assure you that defunding them would be quite popular.
P.S. where exactly I live is not relevant, this would hold true for my country and all surrounding neighbour-countries.
2. Nobody needs it. What they need is proper treatment for gender dysphoria or autogynephilia. Unfortunately, the entire discourse around this subject isn't a conversation but a struggle session where mountains of legitimate scientific criticism are silenced.
> This is basically a made up propaganda-talking-point that literally has no influence on my or your life at all
I thought you were a leftist; why the radlib talking-points? Of course nobody's actions occur in a vacuum. Everyone's life choices affect everyone around them. Antisocial behaviors should be discouraged, and prosocial behaviors should be encouraged. And it is quite a large social phenomenon in the United States.
> There have been studies that show links between the feeling of disgust and right wing ideology.
This is just silly. There have also been studies linking "leftist" ideology to dark triad personality traits, but does that have any bearing on whether or not your argument is correct? Besides, disgust is a normal, natural reaction. It's evolutionarily beneficial. I don't know why you think smearing your opponents with a healthy trait is a winning strategy.
> Because our police for the most part doesn't execute people without trial and they serve and protect instead.
This shows your ignorance of the actual situation in America. Unjustified police killings of civilians are vanishingly rare. To put it into perspective there are around 150 shootings of unarmed people by police each year. This is certainly going to be higher than in your country, but our violent crime rate is also certainly much higher, necessitating more police action. This number doesn't take into account people who were struggling to take an officer's gun and other mitigating scenarios. You reference "bigot cops", so I presume you're referring to the BLM narratives. There is a racial disparity in absolute numbers, but when controlling for all such mitigating factors, it actually reverses. Police are less willing to shoot black suspects because they know they'll be under the microscope much more than for shooting white ones.
But anyway, like I said, we can put a number at around 150. On the other hand, we had 1,200 children age 6-17 on puberty blockers 4,200 on hormone treatments, 282 receiving mastectomies, and 42,000 total diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2021. That last number had doubled since 2017. Based on projections at the time, all are surely much higher now. So which of these is "basically a made up propaganda-talking-point?"
In the end, your rebuttal boils down to "my country doesn't have the same problems yours has, so we haven't tried fixing them." But it seems confirmed that your country hasn’t legalized drugs, doesn’t have a massive social push for transgenderism, and hasn’t defunded the police.
This is obviously true, but the reason they're able to do it is that there is a legitimate disagreement about the most core beliefs that roughly splits our society in half. Yes the politicians are self serving, but that doesn't make them wrong when for example they say "democrats want to murder babies" because their supporters do genuinely believe abortion is murder. That's not manipulation really, conservatives would believe that either way. We divide ourselves very well without any grand conspiracy.
But first how distinct is distinct? Are we taking extreme activist or just pretty committed?
Second how much of the potential mate pool remains closer to political center. Seems like 30 to 35% potentially given the graph.
Because if distinct is not that extreme and you have a decently sized center pool, then your say slightly left of center males can marry the distinctly left females and have reasonable overlap on value. At least to the point political views are not a negative and shared values in other areas can be the foundation of the relationship.
The lack of a centrist pool or unwillingness of the distinct individuals to shop for mates in that pool would signal a problem, but I don’t see the article build a case for either condition.
And while politicians have long been addicted to pushing a threat mindset on the population - I can't personally recall a time where a primary goal was to turn citizens against each other.
I don't think that's true; I don't think political engagement or polarization is higher than, say, the period of the Korean War-Civil Rights-Vietnam-Watergate period.
I think partisanship is higher because we are in a normal partisan alignment (where the most politically salient issues tend split along the party divide) unlike the long, 60-ish year, overlapping realignment period starting with the New Deal Coalition stirring up the old alignment and continuing with Civil Rights stirring things uo further before that realignment had shaken out.
I think this is a compelling argument and you may be right. But I think the flavor of modern divisiveness closer fits those days where Birth Of A Nation influenced a lot of the US. The scope may be less but indications are we're moving that way.
Constitution as a frame for government worked well if you just want a land owning elite to run things, it works pretty poorly when you want to have a functioning democratic republic.
It doesn't account for political parties, the checks and balances are weak and mainly depend on a gentleman's agreement, and a federal legislature that's biased towards land-based apportionment also functions poorly.
Political polarization in the US is more potent than elsewhere because our voting system ensures that there are only two parties and that purists take over said parties. A parliamentary system that's reflective of the actual popular vote would be much more functional and responsive to what people actually want out of their government.
GOP had a bunch of extremists take over and how they run half of the political system and look to Orban and Fidesz as a model of how to slowly smother democracy in its sleep.
“Failed to account for” is a romanticization. The factions largely existed as the system was designed, and it was designed around and to accommodate them, with actual parties being set up around them immediately. Washington wasn’t making a warning, he was complaining about the existing status quo.
> Constitution as a frame for government worked well if you just want a land owning elite to run things, it works pretty poorly when you want to have a functioning democratic republic.
And it was a compromise between factions whose one point of agreement was that they wanted a landed elite to run things. This wasn't an accidental result.
(From their main source article on the claim that marriages across party lines are falling.)
One of the more irritating habits of the media is to present two studies whose methods make any comparison, especially with a rather small change in numbers, fraught, explicitly acknowledge this problem, _and then proceed to compare them anyway_.
Does it?
> I suspect the number of people getting married will drop even more.
Marriage used to happen when you were 20. You don't think it through at that age. These same people want you to do just that: Do a decision at 20 and stick for it for the rest of your life regardless of anything else. But, in my opinion, they are correct this will improve the number of married people (you only need to do it once).
Admittedly, I do many things wrong. But this is one I've done well and could be helpful for those struggling with the above ("meets ALL of their criteria")
My wife and I are far apart politically... and our marriage is something I (and I think, we) cherish.
When dating I struggled with finding someone who met ALL my criteria. In the course of it someone taught me to sit down and select your three (and ONLY three) "must-have" criteria. All other things are then negotiable.
For me, I wanted someone who was smart, who shared my religious beliefs, and who was supportive of my entrepreneurial plans/journey.
(Side note, I cheated and said I also wanted to be physically attracted to them.)
Fast forward to me meeting my wife. There are a good deal of things we disagree on — politics being towards the top. Had I let that get in the way and looked for a laundry list of must-haves I would never have married her, would never have had our two incredible children , and might possibly either still be looking or have given up on my criteria and settled.
This trick (pick 3 "non negotiables", let the rest be negotiable) served me extremely well in finding a dog after meeting ~100 (before having criteria), in my wedding (open bar, all my friends can come, no shoehorning of food by the venue), and a few other cases.
I can only speculate on why it works so well. It likely works because it forced me to really list what was crucial and to be more flexible on things I'd otherwise list as crucial.
Either way, if this helps one person to simplify, focus, and be flexible enough to find a mate theme it was worth it. Hope it helps you.
And happy Father's Day to all you other fathers out there.
For example, if the female ideological shift left is occurring mostly in blue states, it may matter most to blue states; if it is homogenous across the board, a different conclusion is to be drawn.
In Ireland we have significant political divide, across multiple parties, but it’s largely not about rights on a party level. No party with elected representatives is campaigning on banning abortion or restricting LGBT rights or similar. And conversely when the abortion and equal marriage legalisation referendums were held, they had all-party support. Many _individuals_, of course, will have views that people might find abhorrent, but it’s less a case of “they vote for X so they must be a bad person”.
EDIT: To be clear, there are _problems_ with this consensus-forming approach, where social progress kind of has to wait until everyone gets in line; in Ireland the abortion legalisation referendum passed by 67%, which would imply that it could have been held long before and since passed, of instance. I don't think it would work for the US case anyway; the US has a party actively trying to remove _existing_ rights, which is a very different sort of thing.
Religious conservatives and liberal centrists are having a sex war. It's not one-sided.
The fact that sex (biology features) and gender (social role) are two distinct things that can be in a complex relation with each other and they try to aknowledge that? Or that people with certain sexual orientations can marry?
If the Democrats encode into law that sex and gender are a spectrum (for which we have ample scientific evidence) and they let people marry however they like I am not seeing how this hurts anybody else?
I mean what exactly do you mean by forcing those laws "by violence"? Got any examples that showcase this is a widespread Democratic agenda?
What do I have to imagine there? Forcing two MAGA-guys to kiss on gunpoint or what?
I'm afraid to ask, but what does this mean exactly?
I would note that the Democratic party has consistently neglected to encode abortion rights into law when it had full control of the legislative branches of the federal government at the beginning of the Biden, Obama, and Clinton administrations.
The point you make is one I’ve thought about over the last year and I’m curious to hear other theories and thoughts on why Democratic legislatures haven’t passed any federal-level abortion legislation. My inclination is to believe that some Democratic strategist(s) predicted that their party would get more votes by campaigning on “they’re taking away your rights” rather than “we’re guaranteeing your rights”.
This leaves the 2020-22 congress to shore up abortion rights. However those congresses had the narrowest of majorities and much larger fish to fry (pandemic recovery and inflation, etc etc).
It’s only been a strong and unifying rallying by cry for the party since the post roe era and even that wasn’t obvious until after the 2022 mid terms.
The Constitution already provides a lot of checks and balances: the bicameral legislature, the Presidential veto, and the Supreme Court. The filibuster is not in the Constitution, and it's unclear why we need yet another impediment to making any progress.
Well, this is kind of a strange statement in my opinion.
There are 2 indisputable facts:
1) The Democrats have had >50 Senators many times.
2) Those Democrats have not abolished the filibuster.
To my knowledge, the Senate majority leader has never even scheduled a vote to abolish the filibuster entirely, regardless of whether that vote would win or lose.
So, my feeling is that the Democrats have not tried to abolish the filibuster. President Biden (former longtime Senator) has said he doesn't support abolishing the filibuster. The party has never put political pressure on its members to abolish the filibuster. The leaders aren't campaigning on it. To my knowledge, it's not in the party platform.
The inescapable conclusion, I feel, is that the Democrats don't want to abolish the filibuster. Nothing is stopping them, except themselves.
That's because the Senate is an incumbent reelection support group. Party leadership doesn't want to put pressure on its members.
> like for example representatives in the house of commons are
The House of Commons is the UK. The House of Representatives is the US.
> Biden had a trifecta and wanted to remove the filibuster
False. Biden has supported a small number of limited exceptions to the filibuster for specific purposes. He has opposed eliminating the filibuster.
> manchin and sinema refused
Manchin and Sinema were not in the Senate during the first terms of the Obama or Clinton administrations. What about then?
> At that point there was nothing he could do.
Nothing the President of the United States can do...
Joe Lieberman refused. I don't really get this conspiracy narrative. No, Biden isn't a king, he can't pass laws without 50 senators. He didn't have that because he can't remove senators who vote against his policy like they do in the UK. Dems are not a monolith, leadership supporting a bill doesn't mean the politicians will vote for it.
At one point in the Obama administration, Democrats had 60 Senators, and again, only 51 are required to abolish the filibuster. So you can't blame 1 person.
Democrats are the greatest at coming up with excuses for why Democrats can't do anything. There's always an excuse, always a scapegoat.
> I don't really get this conspiracy narrative.
It's not a conspiracy, it's just typical politics.
> No, Biden isn't a king, he can't pass laws without 50 senators.
There's a lot more to politics than just voting. The President is the party leader and one of the most famous people in the country. POTUS can make a case publicly to the American people, lobby behind the scenes, twist arms, threaten, fundraise or refuse to fundraise, etc. Legal authority aside, POTUS has more political tools available than anyone.
But again, Biden has never wanted to abolish the filibuster. Carving out tiny exceptions is actually a dumb idea. Get rid of the damn thing. (Moreover, Biden himself was pro-life personally and only came to support abortion rights because he had to as a Democrat. His heart has never been in it.)
Let me come back to this though: you say Manchin and Sinema and Lieberman "refused", but show me their votes. When did the Senate vote to end the filibuster? Making politicians vote on the public record is a form of pressure. Politicians have to run on their votes and defend them. They don't have to defend nonexistent votes. That's part of the Congressional incumbent protection service: not forcing members of Congress to make votes that would be personally problematic for them.