We Are All Complicit

Here are a number of statements made by each side about the opposition during the build up to the 2024 election. Read each one and think about which you agree with, and which seem absolutely preposterous:

• "(Trump would) ban abortion nationwide, restrict access to birth control and put IVF treatments at risk and force states to monitor women's pregnancies. Just Google project 2025 and read the plans for yourself."
• "Kamala Harris supports the execution of a baby after birth. That’s the kind of thing they’re promoting."
• "Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression."
• "Kamala Harris wants to outlaw red meat. That’s right, she wants to take away your hamburgers. That’s how radical she is!"

You might think the statements that align with your view seem accurate, while those of the other side are absolutely preposterous. Yet there are those on the other side who would believe the polar opposite from you.

But in a world where information hyper-abundance leads to an impaired ability to perceive the truth, how can we know that 'our truth' is the accurate truth?

Collision Course

For a while now I've thought of the two sides in America's political ecosystem as two trains barreling towards each other on a single set of tracks. The extremists on each end of the spectrum are on their train, screaming at the (more politically moderate) bystanders on the side: 'Quick, get on the train! They're going to slam right into us, look how crazy they are!'.

A decade or two ago, those extremists made up a tiny fraction of the total populace.

But for-profit media has figured out how to weaponize political opinion for their own profit. The more they can rile you up, the more likely you are to stay glued to the screen. The longer you do that, the more money they make from advertisers...and the larger the extremist population grows.

As an old marketing saying goes: 'if you aren't paying for the product, you are the product'.

Media companies have pulled off an honestly impressive bit of psychological judo to trick people into thinking they're consuming information products to stay informed, when the reality is they've been moldel into little packages of attention that are bought and sold to the highest bidder.

Attention is the product, and angry people pay attention for longer. When Thanksgiving dinner gets ruined by a screaming match between your blue-haired cousin and blue collar uncle? That's just the cost of doing business.

Privatized Gains, Socialized Losses

Media companies(and wealthy shareholders) profit from this, while the rest of us lose. The same thing happened in 2008/2009 when those in banking took huge risks and profited immensely from rising housing prices, then average citizens were stuck holding the bag when the bottom dropped out.

This has roots in the Matthew effect of accumulated advantage, the name coming from the gospel of Matthew:

For to every one who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.

In short, it's the principle of 'the rich get richer, the poor get poorer'. Many of the economic catastrophes of the last few decades have their roots in this, including:

• The 2008/2009 housing crisis:
  • Many middle and lower-income families lost their homes, or saw their home value drop precipitously, both scenarios decreasing their accumulated wealth.
  • Wealthier individuals and institutions were able to buy foreclosed properties at reduced prices, increasing their assets.
• Higher education/student loans:
  • Students from lower-income backgrounds are more likely to take on substantial debt to finance their education.
  • Black students, on average, carry higher student loan debt than other groups, with Black women holding the highest average debt.
  • Graduates with student debt are less likely to pursue lower-paying public interest roles, potentially reinforcing existing socioeconomic patterns.
• Covid-era price inlation:
  • Both housing and non-housing inflation moved up to their highest levels in many decades.

Attention monetization is just another example of this.

Your Thoughts Are Not Your Own

This might be a bit hyperbolic to say, but I'm of the opinion that the more time you spend consuming media in any form, the more likely you are to hold views that have to some extent been programmed into you.

It has been shown that that the more news media you consume, the larger the gap is between your perception of the world and objective reality.

I'd argue that middle-class people on the left and right have FAR more in common with each other than they do with the prophets of doom who are stoking the flames of this socio-political war.

When you travel as much as I have you quickly realize that most people (from the beaches of Thailand to the skyscrapers of NYC) pretty much want the same things: safety and security (both present and future) for themselves and their loved ones. When you boil down most people's goals and desires to their simplest form, it comes back to some version of that.

Which brings me back to my original point...

We Are All Complicit

If you can accept that the average citizen on the other side of the aisle is more your ally than enemy, and the true enemy is the one who profits from our division, then you'll realize that the real problem we need to address is polarization and division itself.

So ask yourself: how am I complicit in becoming more polarized, or increasing polarization in those on my side or the opposite side?

If you're a left-leaning person (which most of my friends are, so I'll primarily address them), understand that if you're someone who regularly says that all conservatives are woman haters, racists, homophobes, etc; you are the problem.

I know that's going to be hard for many people to accept, but it's the truth.

Democracy cannot work without understanding and compromise between the two sides of this debate. There is no future where liberals convert all conservates, or vice versa. That will never happen, so we have to learn to live with each other.

So instead of condemning those who believe differently from you as evil and beyond redemption, as a wise man once said (while quoting another wise man):

If you can do that, without judgment...you might find that you have more in common than you think. And if we can all do that, we might just find a way to move forward.