Deeply Troubled

I am still deeply troubled by my personal encounter with the denial of reality and the big lie that's ongoing about about the election results. FiveThirtyEight's Maggie Koerth did a great write-up called Our Radicalized Republic with lots of data and trends over time about how we've come to this.

Well into the three-part story, she wrote this:

But changing these destabilizing trends is probably something that needs to start from the right. That’s because many of the beliefs and behaviors threatening American democracy started earlier and are more pronounced on that end of the political spectrum. Yes, both sides engage in dehumanization, delegitimization and conspiracy-mongering, but both sides have not gone about it in the same way, or at the same rate. “Political scientists really don’t want to say that. But the evidence is right there in front of us, and if we’re going to solve the problem, we have to know what the problem is,” said Joshua Darr, a professor of political science at Louisiana State University and FiveThirtyEight contributor.

The share of Republicans who see Democrats as a “threat to the nation’s wellbeing” is higher than the share of Democrats who see Republicans as a threat. Those on the right are more likely to silo themselves among people who share similar political opinions. And consistent conservatives are less likely to value compromise than do consistent liberals.

That imbalance is visible in this graphic, drawn from polling done by Pew Research just after January 6, 2021:

(Click to enlarge so you can see those numbers.)

Not long after this within the article, the idea of looking to Republican elites as a way to lead Republicans out of this dire trend is offered, but we all know that isn't working very well. What's happening to Liz Cheney right now? How many members of the Lincoln Project are still Republicans? (How's this for a fun fact: One researcher found that "people who saw the opposing party as evil were three times as likely to wish death on opponents within their own party.")

I think if most elected Republicans had acted together early on in 2017, things might have been different, but they didn't, so here we are.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I think I will go listen to a recent MPR show called How to help a loved one who is caught in a web of conspiracy theories.