Subtract Division
To think of America as a large number, we keep dividing it to a lesser value. We are 1 country. 1 society. What’s even better is that we’re the most diverse population on earth. Lots of diversity. But diversity is not synonymous with extreme tribalism. Unfortunately, this tribalism plays out too much in our society’s politics. And this is a detriment to us Americans living with one another.
There are 2 core causes for our political divisiveness. These are not the only 2 but they are solid starting points for the effects.
1. Privately-owned 24-hour cable news channels
The 2 most obvious channels that are polar opposites in the political spectrum are MSNBC and Fox News. MSNBC is liberal and Democrat. Fox News is conservative and Republican.
Phil Griffin is the president of MSNBC. Griffin is of a wealthy New York family filled with Democrats. While he’s not public with his politics (Dana 1), one can logically assume that he represents what he was raised. From a www.newrepublic.com article, Rebeca Dana writes, “To MSNBC president Phil Griffin, news is war. And not one of those fancy modern wars fought by drones and computer hackers, either. ‘We are in a knife fight for every viewer,’ he says often…” (1). This shows one of the primary motives for cable news networks on how to report their version of the news – just get the most people watching our partisan bickering. Ratings equal profit.
MSNBC exists as a direct response to Fox News. Rupert Murdoch, a lifelong Republican, owns Fox News. This channel is indirectly owned by the Republican Party. Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenburg wrote on www.nytimes.com, “The right-wing populist waves that looked like a fleeting cultural phenomenon a few years ago has turned into the defining political movement of the times…The Murdoch Empire did not cause this wave. But more than any single media company, it enabled it, promoted it and profited from it” (2).
Both of these brief examples show the motive each respective owner has and his goal in politically bias broadcasts 24 hours/day. A lot of the public are married to at least one cable news station, leading to the political tribalism on both sides.
Both of these channels have TV personalities (not true journalists) to serve softball questions to their guests. MSNBC shows are for Democrats and Fox News programs are for Republicans. These yellow interviews provide politicians a platform to spit out their party’s consensual talking points and nothing but vitriol for “the other side of the aisle.” The talking heads on the 24-hour cable news networks never challenge the interviewees’ lies, deceptions, or uncivil decorum. In fact, this is more of a modern problem. Americans used to watch the evening news after they got home from work. CBS, NBC, or ABC. “…members of Congress were confronted with essentially uniform media environments. However, technological and regulatory changes of the last 30 years have transformed the television landscape…More channels have afforded media companies the opportunity to ‘narrowcast’ television content…resulting in cable television networks tailored to different segments of the public. Partisan networks emerged from this fragmented media environment…giving people ideologically slanted alternatives to mainstream news” (Arceneaux, Johnson, Lindstadt, and Vander Wielen 7).
Most of us are hungry for staying informed of what’s going on in our country and the world. But we need to be aware of those who feed us that information. If you trust a restaurant’s chef with satisfying meals, you’ll keep returning to that restaurant to eat. Unfortunately, the political chefs are for the most part continuing to serve blatant forms of propaganda. Your friends, families, or neighbors didn’t create this. You didn’t create it. The people we have hired to perform civic duties (government officials) and the state-run media are doing it. Yet a majority of Americans are reacting to their propaganda every day.
2. Entropy has existed in congress more than ever during the 21st century
Congress has had historically low approval ratings during most of the 21st century. In 2011, there was a 9% approval of congress (Cillizza 1). In 2019, 20% (Enten 1). And as of March 2022 – 21% (Duffin 1). If you had a job that you received a 21% approval rating, you would’ve been fired right away. Yet the majority of congress keeps getting re-elected. The American public needs to stop giving into anything these congresspeople say on TV and at fundraisers.
“Because legislators are often uncertain about what their constituents want, news media can shape their beliefs about constituents’ preferences in at least two ways. First, elected officials and their staff consume a variety of news and often infer citizen preferences directly from the content of news coverage…Second, by motivating attentive constituents to communicate their preferred positions to elected representatives, news coverage can also influence legislators through an indirect route” (Arceneaux, Johnson, Lindstadt, and Vander Wielen 7). Politicians repeat cable news talking points and vice versa. If too many of us believe congresspeople and the president based solely off of political party, then that only leaves flawed logical deductions to determine what is true and what is not. With this way of having these social habits, we live in a fantasy land. We’re smarter than this aren’t we?
As mentioned before, politicians generally avoid the other side’s channel because he or she will be challenged (legitimately or illegitimately) for his or her political and social behaviors. This keeps the public living in a false reality with state media propaganda. Americans will then borrow the cable TV and politician’s talking points to repeat to their friends and family who have different opinions. The friends and family can easily do the same with the opposite political tribe they have placed themselves in.
However, political divisiveness in our society is primarily on the surface of deeper prejudices. They’re rooted in cultural divisions. The differences involving race, creed, and income levels help produce the political animosity that we egregiously hold against our fellow citizens. “…social group polarization can lead to conflicts that are more purely ‘cultural’ in nature…about fundamental values and beliefs that are more threatening to social stability. Second, social groups have historically formed the ‘base’ of party coalitions, so increases in polarization among social groups are likely to produce greater partisan division” (Muste 432). The culture wars that cable news networks and politicians have helped create in tandem help keep the masses fighting while the establishment continues to comfortably rest.
A scholastic survey was done by some prominent American sociologists. Penny Edgell and Eric Tranby interviewed separate cultural groups in America about other cultural groups holding the same American values. “We investigate how Americans answer the questions ‘Who is like me?’ and ‘Who is different?’ when they are confronted with members of specific groups based on race, religion, ad lifestyle” (Edgell and Tranby 176). Guess what. Each culture had different assumptions about separate groups. “For some Americans, whom we term cultural preservationists, religious differences form the basis for a symbolic boundary that excludes those perceived to threaten a Judeo-Christian cultural core…One group, whom we call critics of multiculturalism, take group identities and differences seriously and focus on how such differences are divisive in American society and culture. Our third group, optimistic pluralists, evaluate diversity positively and do not see any group-based differences as a legitimate basis for exclusion; they believe that members of all ten subgroups we asked about share their vision of America” (Edgell and Tranby 177).
Which one do you think you belong to? Do you have a subliminal bias against people of different religions? Do you have inherent false judgments on any group that is different from yourself? Or do you see no problem with America’s unique multi-cultural diversity? I’m not putting you on the spot. These are legitimate questions. I’m simply asking you to ask yourself. Your writer here is no flawless saint nor do I ever pretend to be one. I am of the human race just as you are. Flawed, sometimes right, sometimes wrong, yet trying to find the most peaceful ways to live my one and only life. When can we start realizing that we are all of the same animal species? No one is magically better than another. Regardless of our races, creeds, lifestyles, politics, etc. – Can we not just speak as smart, mature, civil people anymore?
What we need to do is subtract the division. We are only dismantling the hegemonic ideas of community. Community. Remember that word? There used to be civil discussions amongst families, friends, and strangers. What happened to “agree to disagree?” Do we need to stop assuming the civility of our fellow Americans? I hope not. For my sake and yours. But we can change it.
Judge those in power before you judge your neighbor. The cable news propaganda and the politicians want us to be brainwashed and to keep fighting each other. That’s how they remain in power. We must remind ourselves that we are the employers of all elected government officials. They’re our employees. We pay them their salaries with a percentage of our income. We can be critical or complimentary towards them whenever warranted. It doesn’t matter if they have a “D” or “R” after their names. Truth and falsehoods do not reside in specific cultural groups nor do they in certain political parties. America has only 2 major parties. That means we need to be able to think independently – Not wholly by what politicians say and their 24-hour cable propaganda says.
We are 1 country. 1 giant human civilization. It is not smart, mature, nor civil to fight with extreme tribalism over our diverse cultures. All of us have the will power to make our society better. I personally believe that a Utopia is nothing but a theory. But is it wrong to try for it as a community? I’ll answer my own question with “No.” Hopefully, you can at least agree with me on this. If you don’t, then I respect that, my American friend.
Works Cited
Arceneaux, Kevin, Martin Johnson, Rene Lindstadt, and Ryan J. Vander Wielen. “The Influcence of News Media on Political Elites: Investigating Strategic Responsiveness in Congress.” Vol. 60, No. 1, American Journal of Political Science, January 2016, Midwest Political Science Association, Bloomington, IN, pp. 5-29, Jstor.
Cillizza, Chris. Congress’ Approval Problem in One Chart. The Washington Post. Washington D.C. www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/congress-approval-problem, November 15, 2011.
Dana, Rebecca. Slyer Than Fox: The Wild Inside Story of How MSNBC Became the Voice of the Left. www.newrepublic.com, March 24, 2013, The New Republic, New York, NY.
Duffin, Erin. “U.S. Congress – Public Approval Rating 2021-2022.” Statista.www.statista.com/statistics/207579/public-approval-rating-of-the-us-congress, May 9, 2022.
Edgell, Penny and Eric Tranby. “Shared Visions? Diversity and Cultural Membership in American
Life.” Vol. 57, No. 2, Social Problems, May 2010, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 175-204, Jstor.
Enten, Harry. Congress’ Approval Rating Hasn’t Hit 30% in 10 Years. That’s a Record. CNN. Atlanta, GA. www.cnn.com/2019/06/01/politics/poll-of-the-week-congress-approval-rating, June 1, 2019.
Mahler, Jonathan and Jim Rutenberg. How Rupert Murdoch’s Empire of Influence Remade the World. www.nytimes.com, April 3, 2019, The New York Times, New York, NY.
Muste, Christopher P. “Social Groups and ‘Culture Wars.’” Vol. 47, No. 2, PS: Political Science and Politics, April 2014, American Political Science Association, Washington D.C. pp. 432-442, Jstor.