If You Think America Isn’t Divided, You’re Not Paying Attention

In 2008, my friend Bill Bishop wrote The Big Sort.  He highlighted that increasingly Americans were choosing to work, live, and worship with like-minded individuals.  In other words, blue states were getting bluer, while red states were becoming redder.

Bishop cited social psychology research going back as far as the middle of the 20^th Century.  What this research indicated was that the more homogeneous the group, the more extreme their opinions.  After all, nobody is challenging their assumptions or point of view.

I believe it is fair to say that the combination of academia, the legacy mainstream media (MSM), and the world of entertainment personifies how real this phenomenon is.  This Unholy Trinity has dominated our culture and politics in a single direction since as far back as the late 1960s in the United States.  Obviously, it took a while to pivot from a Leave It to Beaver world to one where Wokeness reigns.  However, once the pivot was made, it has taken hold with a vengeance.

Looking at the composition of the three groups, it is not all that hard to understand what is going on.  They are overwhelmingly partisan liberal Democrats.  As Bishop observed, these like-minded people have simply gotten more extreme in their behavior as the years have progressed. You do not have to be a MAGA warrior to join with the voices shouting: “You people have gone too far.”

Check out for yourself the political makeup of those professing to be impartial journalists.  We are not discussing content that is openly opinionated, one way or the other.  Instead, this is about declaring that the umpires of information are so united in their thinking, they cannot see for themselves just how biased they are.

Last week’s White House Correspondents Association Dinner was an exercise in breaking their arms patting themselves on the back.  Joe Biden’s cognitive fitness for office?  Maybe, they said to themselves, in retrospect, they should have been tougher on those telling them how he was sharp as a tack.  No chance their desire to prevent Donald Trump’s election had anything to do with them being blind to what most of America had already concluded with their own eyes.

Hunter Biden’s computer.  All things COVID.  The Trump campaign colluding with the Russians.  The list of getting things dead wrong is long and tilted in one direction only.

Jump to academia.  It is fine to call the sitting President of the United States a fascist, but a firing offense to refuse to call someone by their preferred pronouns.  Defending violent, antisemitic “protests?”  Why that is all about free speech and academic freedom.  Refusing serious conservatives the chance to speak on campus?  Just protecting the safe spaces that our students and faculty must have. 

Then, we have the world of entertainment.  Hollywood, where the McCarthy movement led to black lists in the 1950s, has given way to a world where it is imperative that every minority group under the sun is represented in any and all content presented.  Honoring our heritage and traditions?  Out of the question, since that would be accepting white, male authoritarian rule.

Simple arithmetic and a minimum amount of humility might tempt these institutions to modify their outlook and behavior.  When at least half of America disagrees with your insular, one-sided approach to things, maybe it is time to consider the possibility that refusing to “platform” voices that are not in agreement with you is both arrogant and not very smart.

It says here that without fundamental change, these institutions will continue to have decreased influence.  The first change that has to occur is one that allows people with a different view of things inside their doors.  The vast majority of Americans are no longer willing to view the Unholy Trinity as being fair and impartial, because they are not.

Common Sense:  Diversity is not 400 different demographic groups holding a singular opinion on every matter, getting together to lecture the rest of us.  A pluralistic society demands that competing points of view are present in the process.