Dear Editor, 

The previous four years were intensely divisive, essentially a running war over what is and isn’t ‘American’, how a leader should behave, which institutions matter, and the appropriate boundaries for executive power in a democracy. Many were alarmed to discover that our cultural norms and political institutions were more fragile than we realized, our appetite for vengeful demagoguery far greater than imagined. Others saw an elitist culture obsessed with rejecting the livelihoods and values of non-urban citizens, or proof of ‘deep state’ technocrat resistance to the will of the people. 

The only constant in the past four years was outrage. The media, whether MSM or Alt-Right, played mercilessly on our most visceral instincts to stoke fear and amplify indignation. In pursuit of addict style ‘engagement’, social media algorithms parsed us into tribes, segregated our feeds, and fed us a steady diet of rage, fear and blame. Shared truths were forgotten, buried under both hyperbole and misinformation. 

The patriotism of media / social media platforms driving these trends may be questionable, but their profit motive is glaringly clear. A study of Twitter posts, published in Science in 2018 (https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146), found that fake or otherwise misleading news stories are 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than truthful ones. The audience for misinformation is routinely an order of magnitude larger than the audience for accuracy. “False news spreads farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth,” the researchers concluded. 

The election of 2020 was thus billed as the most consequential of this era, a monumental battle for “the soul of the nation”. Many hoped it would usher in a ‘Blue Wave’ that not only evicted Trump from the White House but effectively obliterated Trumpism and its populist vulgarity. Others pined for a repeat of 2016, hoping Trump could pull off a tactical miracle at the Electoral College, defying the polls, money, and MSM media bias arrayed against him once again.

Now that (most) of the dust has settled, what has the election revealed? 

First, Trump lost both the popular and Electoral College vote. It was tight, and Trump garnered 74 million votes. His efforts to frame the campaign as ‘rigged’ will continue unabated even after Biden’s inauguration, presumably because Trump wants to maintain control of the GOP and ride a grievance narrative into 2024. 

The GOP fared better than expected in the Senate and House, and there was no ‘Blue Wave’. Absent a DNC surprise in the Georgia runoffs, Congress will remain split. A variety of state-level ballot initiatives also told a mixed story. Pot legalization continued its steady march across the land, but in California (of all places) voters for a second time rejected the use of affirmative action (racial) criteria in state hiring, contracting, and university admissions. 

Putting it bluntly, the election of 2020 revealed that we remain as divided as ever. There is no mandate for either side of the Red/Blue divide. Trumpist populism was neither fully repudiated nor broadly endorsed. Progressive socialism / environmentalism / antiracism likewise failed to gain broad support.

Where does that leave America? 

Segregated. Not so much by race, but by geography and media. We have been manipulated into tribes for the benefit of crass politicians and amoral media execs.

Like any segregated people, we have a great deal to learn about one another. Professor Katherine Cramer published a book in 2016 about the resentment rural people felt toward urban elites. Cramer observed she “became aware just how surprised many in the cultural elite were about the challenges facing rural communities and the fact that many people living in these places feel they are not getting their fair share of attention, resources or respect.”

To combat tribalism we need our media, academic institutions and political leadership to ‘lean in’ to collaboration and compromise. The 2020 election proves that most Americans are actually centrists or independents, who reject radical policies from both the right and left. If only the algorithms at Facebook or Twitter were built on positive, rather than negative, feedback loops perhaps the (unmanipulated) will of the moderate majority would be more evident. 

Lastly, we may need to bring back earmarks. An earmark is a provision inserted into a Congressional appropriations bill directing funds to a specific recipient. Politicians used to trade favors to get their earmarks approved so they could ‘bring the pork’ to their respective state or district. They were largely banned during the Bush administration, and politicians lost a personal incentive to reach across the aisle and seek compromise. 

Derek Ridgley
Nederland