It’s time for me to have my final say on a dispute with Matt Yglesias that has been going at a fairly slow pace.
A couple of weeks ago, Matt put up a post (really a Substack newsletter, but I still think in blog terms), headlined Polarization is a choice with the subtitle, “Political elites justify polarizing decisions with self-fulfilling prophesies”
I responded with a snarky but (I thought) self-explanatory note, saying “Peak both sidesism here. Republicans want to overthrow US democracy, while Democrats stubbornly insist on keeping it. Surely there is some middle ground to be found here ”
A few days ago, Matt came back to ask “I’m curious what actual things the article says you believe are wrong. You clearly didn’t like it since you choose to mischaracterize it in a mean-spirited way, but I’m not sure what you didn’t like about it.”
So, here’s my response.
I start from the position that the Republican Party is an extreme-right party, comparable to Fidesz in Hungary, which its intellectual leaders much admire. It’s anti-democratic, racist and dominated by delusional claims and conspiracy theories encompassing just about everything.
The far-right positioning of the US isn’t new. It’s been developing over at least thirty years, notably since the launch of Fox News. But the rise of Trump has crystallised the transition from a more-or-less normal rightwing party to an organisation of the far-right.
By contrast, the Democratic party is a moderate party of the centre and centre-left: even members perceived as leftwing in the US context, such as Sanders and AOC would be unremarkable centre-leftists elsewhere.
This shift has cost the Republicans some political support. From being the unchallenged majority party in the 1980s, they have become a minority, which has accelerated their shift to anti-democratic positions. But they still command the support of nearly half of American voters, and, within that half, the majority is committed to Trump personally, and to positions that can fairly be described as fascist.
In this context, what can we make of an article headlined “Polarization is a choice: Political elites justify polarizing decisions with self-fulfilling prophesies”. My brief and snarky response was “Peak both sidesism here. Republicans want to overthrow US democracy, while Democrats stubbornly insist on keeping it. Surely there is some middle ground to be found here ”
I don’t see how my claim of both-sidesism can be denied here. The headline refers to “Political elites”, with no suggestion that one side bears more of the blame than the other (except that “elites”, while presumably intended neutrally here, is widely taken as rightwing code for “educated people we don’t like”). The article is entirely consistent with this reading. Republicans and Democrats alike are praised for compromise, and criticised for pursuing the policies preferred by their activist supporters. In this context, Trump’s actions in office are explicitly compared with the moderate reforms proposed by Biden on taking office (the Jan 6 insurrection is not mentioned).
Similarly, “polarization” is an inherently symmetrical metaphor, with the clear implication of an undesirable move away from a neutral or middle-ground position, defined by the views of the median voter. And here we come to a point which, I think, is at the core of our disagreement.
Matt’s argument, stated in the headline, is that political polarization results from the choices of political professionals to position their parties further away from the views of the median US voter (which are implicitly assumed to be moderate and sensible). In reality, the far-right radicalisation of the Republican party has involved a series of self-reinforcing interactions between Republican voters and activists and the Republican political-intellectual-media class. The core of this dynamic is the interaction between voters (particularly Republican primary voters) and the rightwing media, starting with Fox and extending to Alex Jones, Newsmax and Stormfront.
The intellectual and political classes have mostly followed rather than led, with the old establishment gradually replaced by delusional extremists of various kinds.
To sum up: an analysis of the US political scene that starts from the assumption that it involves a contest for the middle ground between two normal political parties, is fundamentally wrong. It’s less plausible even than the Republican mirror image of the view I’ve presented, in which it’s the Democrats who are plotting to end democracy and establish socialism. That view is crazy, but as long as you are willing to assume that anything you see or read from outside the Fox/QAnon bubble is part of the plot, it’s internally consistent.
Since I started writing this, I’ve been made aware of the 2025 Project, where the intention to establish a permanent rightwing dictatorship is about as clear as it can possibly be. To me, at least, its pretty clear where the “polarisation” is coming from.
John Quiggin 
I’ve no patience anymore with pundits like Yglesias, who continue to subscribe to a model of electoral politics that is grounded in POLICY POSITIONS in the face of overwhelming evidence that most American voters couldn’t care less about them. The US right has spent centuries trading on fear: fabricated narratives that the Blacks, or Irish immigrants, or the Jews, or Asian immigrants, or southern European immigrants, or Russians, or Asian immigrants (again), or Muslims, or now the Chinese, were on the verge of destroying White Christian America, thanks to the vicious anti-Americanism of der ewige Liberal. That fear is pretty much the whole right-wing strategy: fear that Americans will lose their jobs, their gas-guzzling trucks, their beef, their gas stoves, their right to be bigots, above all their FREEDOM!
I’ve spent many years now reading the kind of right-wing propaganda that I suspect Yglesias never touches. The comments threads of sites like the ‘New York Post’ and ‘Breitbart’ and ‘Gateway Pundit’, not to mention the constant deafening noise from Fox and Newsmax and talkback radio, are all the proof anyone should need that Republicans have no interest in evidence-based discussion of “policy”. They believe the most extraordinary nonsense about Democrats and “the radical Marxist left” and they haven’t the slightest interest in ending “polarization”. On the contrary, they constantly attack their own party’s representatives (except Trump) for being TOO CONCILIATORY.
Murdoch succession
The key to this is the family trust. As long as Rupert lives, he can impose Lachlan as operating boss of the empire. As soon as he dies, his shares devolve to the four adult children. If James, Elizabeth and Prudence don’t like what Lachlan is doing – and by all accounts they surely won’t -, they can together depose him. https://www.zawya.com/en/opinion/business-insights/murdoch-family-trust-the-real-battle-over-succession-has-yet-to-begin-nkl3wyok
None of them has inherited Rupert’s evil business genius and can plausibly step into the supervillain role.. The empire will likely break up. But if Lachlan keeps the US Fox News piece, it won’t change soon for the better.
My basic comment is that when your choice of editors and producers are all from the same side of the political spectrum, and when the vast majority of them are from the Radical Right, you cannot claim to be anything other than an international propaganda network, benefiting the true elite, I.e. the billionaire elites. Sure as sh!t didn’t do the rest of us any good. No reader of history can reasonably see Trumpism as less than totalitarianism, unless wilfully purblind to the very history books so many of them seem intent on burning.
Extremely frustrating for us non-elites, but the eternal human history is one of these arseholes. Trumpism, and similar groups in other democracies, have been and are still promoted by this excrement of an organisation. I harp on about it, I know, but Hannah Arendt’s book, On Totalitarianism, pretty much explains the nexus we are, once again, confronting. I hope that basic sense might prevail.
I had to look up who Matt Yglesias is. I think that was a good start. It is very good that I have not heard of another murky, meaningless, extreme right-wing pundit and apologist who runs about in a cloak of liberal drag, if that is what his cloak of motley is. These pundits have no consistent position on anything except that of writing outrageous things to gain monetized clicks.
I am going to keep working on not hearing of such people. I have read some history and some political economy. I already know what they think. I don’t have to read any more. I couldn’t do what kenalovell has done – “I’ve spent many years now reading the … right-wing propaganda”. My blood pressure and general equanimity could never handle it.
The positions of the extreme right become ever more absurd. The bottom line is that the political economy they propose is unsustainable at all levels from the environmental to the social. The whole program leads to complete collapse. We are almost all the way to their proposed eternal global system (neoliberalism forever) and the climate, environment and several significant regions are already collapsing before our eyes. As the collapse worsens the neolibs will get worse, blame everyone but themselves and lash out even more.
Four of the five earth systems, namely the biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere (and excepting the geosphere), have already been taken past the point of no return.
Thanks John your analysis of US politics in my view is both very accurate and very worrying. As you write, the current situation is a result of decades of trends. But the wilful blindness of right wing commentators to the Republican Parties’ complete and public forsaking of the rule of law and the (previously considered sacred) constitution via support for Trump”s Big Lie false claim that he won the presidency a second time, is stark. One has to wonder is there any unlawful act Republicans and their right wing media supporters wouldn’t support if it won them power? I”m no longer sure there is.
Anonymous above was me. I can’t figure out how to sign in. Maybe I shouldn’t comment if I can’t even figure that out! I think it’s more that my motivation is gone. Sh** keeps changing and I really can’t be bothered to figure out (again, sigh) how to do the same old stuff. There is no payoff in any sense, so why bother? World is doomed too so why bother? I’ll tend my plants. Keep self and family as safe as possible in the now in an insane world. The rest is quite hopeless. I’ll take a break from posting soon or right way.
Signed, Ikonoclast.
Iko, new commenters are automatically sent into moderation. So, if you want to post something (say, with the spelling Iconoclast) just do that. I’ll approve it and you’ll be automatically approved after that.
But I can’t blame you for wanting to take a break and tend to your plants.
Lachlan Murdoch’s first action as head of the family media empire has been to invite Tony Abbott to join the board. This is how polarization works – not by uncivil pundits like JQ abandoning the shibboleths of bothsideserism but tycoons making terrible decisions based on right-wing ideology.
Is Lachlan’s decision also his first big mistake? Rupert could have brought Abbott on board any time in the last 20 years, and chose not to do so. He does not hold a high opinion of the business acumen of politicians, and preferred to keep his propagandists as disposable hired help, like Tucker Carlson. I would back his business judgement any day against that of any of his children.
Well, I was curious so I went and skimmed it. Fwiw, many of the points seemed vague and un-provable to me (as opposed to just being wrong – which they may or may not be).
For one thing, it seems to me that it *is* the voters who swing who decide our elections – so, there *is* (always) a fight for the middle. (And let’s not forget, there is a non-negligible number of voters who went from Obama to Voldemort. I don’t understand this at all, even after all this time. I am not sure yet if it was immigration or outsourcing of jobs that won that election for the GOP. Or just general rage? But, based on what, exactly??)
Plus, I think many, many people lie to pollsters. And, I have my doubts about online polls. So, it’s a mess, as far as trying to get to the truth.
To me, it seemed that if we hadn’t had a pandemic, Voldemort might have won a second term. (Another truism of the US is that, for whatever reason, the right usually has more enthusiasm. They just seem to.)
That is to say, by the fall, because of the pandemic, that big black swan! – he already seemed incompetent/inadequate to enough voters that it was over for him, in the middle. That is how it seemed to me, anyway.
And, another explanation for 2018 is that Dems were so shocked by 2016 that there was a backlash. It wasn’t due to things V had actually done by then, iirc.
Hillary Clinton did *not* seem particularly left, at any point. She seemed mildly proggy, with a lot of chair re-arranging policies. And it seemed to me and to many that she only lost because they didn’t work the Midwest hard enough.
Moderate Dems are afraid of the New Left types because when they run, they can siphon off enough voters to make us lose. This is a real and continuing threat.
Btw, that last comment was me, N. There isn’t the place to put in your email address and username anymore, fwiw. (I think my device just updated itself, maybe I have a bug.)
I wanted to add, I may agree that the GOP isn’t “normal” anymore.
I am not sure yet. I hate to think so. I tend to be one of those who thinks that V just brought the vitriol out into the open – he didn’t create it. So, I don’t even know that he changed the country – we always have had people who felt this way.
Their own party must have been suppressing them – and, now it doesn’t. Hence the lack of normality. (The main suspected cause is fear of his influence over the base.)
And if they nominate this turkey again, then, yes – they are over as far as normality goes.
Again – I don’t understand it. I do agree that our media polarization is a huge part of this. (I am going to ask two of my right wingy friends if they believe the lie. I hadn’t wanted to know before, but now I do.)
Btw, James – I saw the other day that there is a new book on Eastern Germany, written by someone named Katja – is that the same person as from the SameFacts site? She was a very interesting writer.
I am talking a lot today – I hope that’s okay. (It’s N again.)
I don’t read Yglesias anymore, so I don’t know if maybe he was just having an off day? (I don’t read many political blogs anymore, other than this one.)
Really, I’m not even sure I got the point he was trying to make. Maybe he was responding to something I don’t know about?
As for polarization though – that is kind of a real thing. Or at least, our discourse here does seem highly problematic.
So, while I would agree with you that the DP is still “normal” in a way that the GOP doesn’t seem to be – in the sense that we don’t nominate actual probable criminals, at least – there is still a lot to be hashed out in the center. In fact, we have to actually re-build the center, perhaps.
N: – “Btw, that last comment was me, N. There isn’t the place to put in your email address and username anymore, fwiw.”
There is a place to put in your address and username.
Directly below “Leave a reply. (log in optional)” are three icons. Click on the envelope icon and a dropdown appears…
“There is a place to put in your address and username.”
No envelope item shows consistently. When it does it accepts the addy not the name then displays the supposedly private addy to the world in the post if posting proceeds.
Sometimes a gear icon appears in a drop down menu for notification options…
Thanks, Geoff!! (Oooh it worked!)