Political Culture in America Today

In my college years, I saw America’s university curriculum as a smorgasbord of diverse and delectable ideas. A cornucopia of philosophical, political, and social ideas that were, to me at the time, potentially delicious and also nutritious. I wanted to consume them all.

In contrast, the range of ideas available on social media back then (i.e., radio and TV) was very limited. It was a lonely neighborhood with a cluster of eateries, all of whose menus were comprised of the same half-dozen dishes, all based on the same half-dozen recipes, and all served with only the mildest of spices.

But it was safe and comfortable. Because when it was time to feed yourself, it didn’t matter which restaurant you chose.

When cable TV came along, the menu for new ideas promised a huge expansion as the number of channels went quickly from 13 to nearly 500. Unfortunately, the hoped-for diversity didn’t materialize. The eateries expanded by 4,000%, but the dishes available were all the same.

The internet did indeed expand the diversity of the idea menu exponentially. And for the first 10 to 15 years of this century, there was a flourishing of free ideas, opinions, and sources available to anyone that had access to the World Wide Web.

But then, sometime around 2010, all that rich, intellectual diversity seemed to thin itself out. Online searches for particular social, political, religious, and virtually any other category of collective thinking became more difficult. So difficult that it may as well have been scrubbed from the Web entirely.

Soon after Donald Trump was elected in 2016, another massive change began to take hold that eventually reduced the ideas and opinions available to knowledge seekers to just two: those of the percentage of the population that hated Donald Trump… and those of the Trump lovers.

This final reduction quickly transformed ideas and opinions (and even opinions of facts) into ideational weapons, where they have value only in relationship to whether or not they support one ideology or the other.

And that is where we stand today, with the world defined by ideological tribes that interpret every aspect of human knowledge – from history to psychiatry to medicine to art and literature – in terms of its usefulness in vanquishing (if not eradicating) the enemy.

It’s ugly. It’s also inescapable. For these competing tribal ideologies assert themselves antagonistically. Not just in everything we seek to understand about the world, but in everything we do. From the laws we pass about abortion and discrimination and criminal justice, to what we should do about the Russian occupation of Ukraine and the war between Israel and Hamas.

There is a huge intellectual and emotional advantage to this two-tribe cultural world we now inhabit. Each tribe gets to feel morally superior to the other because, having abandoned believing in the value of ideas, they have the benefit of believing that the ideology they subscribe to is not just absolutely correct, but also absolutely virtuous.

This is extremely dangerous and almost sure to end very badly for both tribes. The emotional mechanism that fuels and informs and preserves ideologies is always and inevitably not just uncharitable and anti-intellectual, it is mindlessly self-destructive.

So, yes, the two-tribe world we Americans now live in was sparked into life by the election of Donald Trump. But something else happened during the Trump presidency. A third group was formed of people that neither hated nor loved him but hated the way the Trump Haters set out to end his presidency by any means necessary. I consider myself one of that group, and I believe there may as many as ten million of us.

We cannot be identified by red hats or black masks or by the color of our skin or by our religion or lack of religion or by the level of our education. If there is something that unites us, it is the value we still hold in ideas, our deep distrust of ideology, and our unwillingness to submit our individuality to any sort of group-think.

And we could be the largest bloc of swing voters. Which would make the outcome of the next election interesting… except that we also are very reluctant to vote.

We Are So Much the Same. Then Why Are We So Damn Different?

When K and I had Number One Son, we parented him the way I imagine many first-time parents raise their children – to become, as Jordan Peterson advised, adults that we would like and admire.

Number One-Son did not disappoint. And when we had Number Two and Number Three Sons, we did the same. Again, the results were more than satisfactory.

But they are not at all the same kind of person. Their instincts, their interests, and their personal preferences are greatly different – as different as their physical features.

A common way of discussing these differences is to talk about nature vs. nurture – i.e., how much of a child’s temperament, intelligence, and personality traits are due to innate biological factors versus differences in parenting, teaching, and other social aspects of their developing lives.

Biology is definitely a factor. A much bigger factor than you might think considering that, from a DNA perspective, all humans are 99.6% the same. That tiny 0.4% difference accounts for all the physical differences – the bone structure, the height, the color of the eyes and hair and skin, etc. – not just between siblings, but among all human beings of every race.

But we also know that DNA accounts for other differences, such as temperament and even something as small as the way a child smiles or laughs. (You have your grandmother’s smile… your father’s laugh, etc.)

In fact, I think DNA goes even further than that. I’ve seen what I would call personal tics in my boys. The way, for example, that Number One Son rubs his nose that is identical to the way his grandfather, whom he never met, rubbed his nose.

As a parent, I find this eternally interesting and amusing to think about.

Recently, I was contemplating the way my children dress.

Number One Son has my sense of style – in that he always thinks he is stylishly dressed but almost never is.

Number Two Son’s sense of style is apparently (What do I know?) cool but low key.

Number Three Son’s is (again, apparently) particular and au currant. So much so that, once a year, when I visit the Chanel store on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach to buy K a few things for Christmas, the salespeople talk directly to him, not me, about what they think she might like.

Three boys with 99% similar DNA, 90% similar parenting (K did most of it and she is extremely consistent), and 90% similar childhoods in terms of the town they grew up in, the schools they went to, and so on.

Why such a difference?

I suppose it could be that small natural difference in their DNA, which does, after all, account for the very distinct differences in their physical appearances. But my guess is that it has to do with the happenstance of the particularities of the nurturing they received. Not from us, but from their teachers, their friends, and the hundreds of small but significant (to them) experiences they had growing up.

What do you think?