If you're trying to guess whether people are Republicans or Democrats, knowing a few basic facts about them can go a long way. What is their race and gender? How far did they go in school? What part of the country do they live in? Is their community urban, suburban, or rural?
For example, between 2016 and 2020, white Americans without a college degree supported the Republican Party by nearly 24 percentage points. If you strike up a conversation about politics with someone like that in rural central Maine, near where I live, chances are he or she will sympathize with the Republican Party.
Or consider gender and attitudes regarding crime and security. Men are about 10 percentage points more likely to support the death penalty and about 10 percentage points less likely to support gun control than women. Or what about attitudes towards ethnicity and illegal immigration? Compared to Latinos, non-Latinos support “increased deportations” as a partial solution by a 22-point margin.
While it is true that some people play politics outside of popular opinion, underlying demographic trends are powerful predictors of beliefs, to the extent that elections have become as much a turnout game as an exercise in persuasion. It's powerful.
But this raises an important question. If our political views and actions are significantly limited by characteristics such as race (which we have no control over) or factors such as education (our choices may be significantly constrained by other factors such as the social class of our parents) When it comes to politics, does anyone really think for themselves if it's so easy to predict?
Accusations that those on opposite sides of the political divide have abandoned critical thinking and moral reasoning are now common in American political discourse. Many on the left interpret the political leanings of non-college-educated white voters as evidence that the Republican Party's core base is ill-informed or ignorant. Who else will fall for Donald Trump's lies? Republicans regularly bring up the concept of “liberal groupthink” and how America's seemingly brightest minds can support simple, unworkable policies like defunding the police. We use it to understand what is going on.
These accusations form part of a broader phenomenon of partisan stereotyping that has become widespread as the country is divided. In addition to accusations that people in opposing political camps don't think for themselves, Democrats in 2022 are significantly more likely than they were in 2016 to say Republicans are closed-minded, dishonest, and immoral. it was high. Republicans felt about the same way about Democrats.
But it seems highly unlikely that our own political views reflect anything other than intellectual or moral virtue. For example, college-educated professionals may feel an affinity with the Democratic Party in part because the Democratic Party is more supportive of both higher education and educational expertise (and compensation) claims than Republicans. I rarely admit that. Instead, they reframe their class interests as altruism, imagining that they believe in what they do solely out of concern for the country's future.
Similarly, evangelical Christians support Trump in the hopes that he will appoint more pro-Christian judges to federal courts and enact education policies that favor religious schools. They consider themselves patriots, not those who maximize the status of the group. None of us know that the political opinions we most cherish are not the end result of a process of intellectual, moral, and spiritual inquiry, but are primarily a result of our position in society and the social consequences that come with it. I don't want to admit that it could be a function of pressure.
Of course, there are many situations in which it is acceptable or beneficial for people not to think for themselves. The loss in cognitive function that comes from having your phone navigate you in an unfamiliar city will likely be offset by improvements in driving safety and efficiency. When we get sick and trust a doctor to diagnose us and tell us how to get back to health, we are giving that doctor (and the broader health care system) some thought. On average, we will do far better than if we acted on lay knowledge, as evidenced by the high mortality rate of COVID-19 vaccine deniers.
But on most political issues, allowing our opinions to be unreflectively determined by our social position is an abdication of personal responsibility. It may be inevitable that our group identities, interests, and experiences shape our political leanings. But we need to know that our values ​​and political commitments are what we really think they should be, that our beliefs are based on sound reason and not on barbaric social forces. It is up to each of us to examine the beliefs we have absorbed from our social environment for confirmation.
Unfortunately, bipartisan society hardly rewards such ideological independence, even though both progressives and conservatives claim that role.
At the very least, reflecting on the social roots of one's political opinions and actions should encourage a degree of humility. Even if you have the “right” political beliefs, you may not be entitled to praise them. Your moral righteousness may be an accident of birth or a product of social good fortune. So what is the basis for allowing us to feel obscenely superior to our colleagues on the other side of the political aisle simply because our life circumstances are different?
This does not imply moral relativism, but it does suggest that we need to be more careful when giving praise or blame. Also, the contingency of our own positions clearly increases the likelihood that others' opinions contain elements of truth that have been overlooked.
Let's face it in a public place or at a polling place. You fight for your interests and values, I fight for mine. That is democracy in a large, diverse, and noisy nation. But if we can keep in mind that sometimes we stumble over our most passionately held beliefs, the tenor of our discussion might become a little more saner and more heartfelt. . The fact that we are all deeply social creatures, in politics and beyond, emphasizes our shared humanity, and we would be wise to never lose sight of that.
Neil Gross is a professor of sociology at Colby College and a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, and most recently authored Walk the Walk: Three Police Chiefs Who Defied Expectations and Changed Police Culture. He is also the author of “.
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