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I disagree entirely with the premise that political polarization has anything to do with social media or big tech. It is an absurd claim on its face, because human history is littered with countless examples of extreme political polarization long before smartphones or the Internet. It's a waste to even name them, because basically every historical event learned in school would qualify. Relatively speaking, the current period isn't even particularly highly polarized.
The only semi-charitable way to interpret these articles is to interpret them as apologia for why the current regime's systems of control have failed. Before the latest technology wave, the regime had everyone's opinion under control because they could make sure that all three news channels were broadcasting the correct messages. They cannot control social media as a whole, therefore, it must be social media's fault because people are able to exchange information and ideas without their consent.
The article itself is self-contradictory. In one paragraph, it's attacking Fox News for "cherry-picking" quotes from Democrats, and in the next says the only solution is to "stop big tech" from using their current algorithms. I guess it's left as an exercise for the reader how "big tech algorithms" caused Fox News's programming. Yet Fox News's current state could not possibly have been "caused" by social media, because as I recall, Democrats hated and mocked Fox News more in the 2000's than they do now.
The fundamental mistake the article is making is to mistake correlation for causation. While a relative increase in polarization has coincided with the rise of social media, this does not mean that one caused the other. In fact, there is not even a common cause. They are completely unrelated. All civilizations oscillate between periods of division and periods of cohesion. America was in a period of relative cohesion, but it could not last forever.
What’s causing the divide is the utter failure of the current system of delivering anything the people want from their leaders.
It can’t deliver on economics, in fact the standard of living seems to be getting worse. People are cutting back on things that were once considered normal. The hoops necessary to get to a decent wage and lifestyle are higher every decade. In 1950, a kid could barely graduate high school and still get a pretty decent job at a factory or something similar. He could expect at least a small house, a car, and to be able to support his wife and kids. That same lifestyle in 2024 requires a good college degree from a good university and quite often unpaid internships just to hope that if you and your wife work 40 hours a week, you can maybe have what your grandparents had with one less worker and less education.
It can’t stop crime. The number of anti-crime measures you take without thinking about them is crazy especially once you see how good it is in functioning societies. In Asia, it’s common for stores to leave their deliveries on the streets for hours. In some parts of Europe, people leave babies sleeping in strollers on the streets. In America, it’s common knowledge that you politely leave your car unlocked to prevent would be looters from having to smash windows to get at any valuables in the car. Porch piracy is a known problem. Personal safety often dictates when and where it’s advisable for the good people to go out. And police are basically told they aren’t allowed to stop a crime until it’s too late.
Education? About half of Americans don’t read above a 6th grade level. Many struggle with math more complicated than 10th grade algebra. All we can do with these kids is teach them The Narrative, encourage them to go into massive debt for the job training that K12 can’t give them and hope it turns out okay.
To me, it seems pretty clear that the problem is that what we have isn’t working, and everyone knows it, and so they’re grasping at the straws offered by radical and radically different ideologies to try and find a way to what people actually want — that the median American can live a modest but decent lifestyle in cities where crime is low enough that it doesn’t dictate how you live. They want their kids to have a good education and have the opportunity to be successful and happy. We have none of that, and the oligarchs in charge can’t give us that. So people are looking to other ideas: maybe socialism, maybe Christian theocracy, maybe some form of traditionalist society, maybe fascism, maybe some other idea.
The fact that we’re all so tuned into politics and it’s becoming so central to everything itself is a problem. If things were good, we would not care. People in all societies all over the globe got on very well in functioning societies without even trying to understand world affairs. They didn’t care that much even when given the vote. It was a small part of life, and probably came far behind other concerns like the health and welfare of their own family, sports, religion, and so on. Common people really only get super into politics when they are neither left alone nor helped. And this is where we are. Some 40% of the income earned by Americans goes to the government. And not only do we get what Moldbug calls “bad customer service” (meaning that the government doesn’t improve things for those taxpayers) but spends vast resources on harassing people about what they should think all the time (with their own money of course). Normies getting involved is a reaction, and polarization is the result. I contend that the only solution that will actually turn down the polarization is results.
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How did the US government forcefully insert bias in news broadcasting before?
I think the comment makes more sense if you interpret "the regime" to be not identical to "the US government" but rather what's referred to as "the Cathedral" or "the elites", i.e. a class of people who comprise newspaper editors and politicians among others.
A delightfully nebulous category, reminiscent of the “rootless cosmopolitans” of old.
Would looking at statistics of which party the journalists employed at the networks donate to make it less nebulous?
Let's say that reference to "the Cathedral" or "the Elites" is not a good way to approach this conversation. What would be a better approach? Reference to Blue Tribe?
The post two levels up adds the word "forcefully" to a description of such a coalition that did not previously contain it. How did that insertion add to the conversation?
It seems to me that @sulla's critique is on point and @MotteInTheEye's point is likewise a reasonable attempt at communication. I don't have nearly as much time as I used to for reasoned argumentation, but if you or @mdurak think the thinking here really is fuzzy, I can at least attempt to throw my hat in the ring as an interlocuter.
Blue Tribe is probably even worse, because almost certainly the vast majority of the Blue Tribe didn't have anything to do with journalist or tech company decisions and the like. Elites is at least a bit more specified, but there are non-Blue elites. As our own statement above says, we should try to be as specific as possible, so maybe Blue Tribe Elites would be better. But even then almost certainly not all Blue Tribe elites were doing X or Y. But every level of specification takes work, it would be crazy to expect you to find the exact people who did x or y. We'd never be able to carry out a conversation. So perhaps settling for some Blue Tribe Elites did X or Y is the balance. It indicates allegiance and position and that it is not all of the group.
Mind you, I'm as guilty as anyone of just saying Red or Blue, when I know it wasn't all of Red or Blue. Trade offs between saving time and mental effort with short-hand and generalizations vs accuracy is a real thing.
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@CrispyFriedBarnacles gave an apt example of JFK using the Fairness Doctrine to censor right-wing radio shows.
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By not inviting the channels’ major shareholders to the cool cocktail parties if they took a heterodox editorial position.
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I think this kind of article is just braining, the author has something he thinks or wants to talk about so he has to make up reasons to justify himself. This is really easy in politics. A million things are happening all the time and it's easy to remember a few and string them together. But Chuck Todd is not that smart and articles like this are really not worth much of anyone's time.
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