By Willow (willowashmaple.xyz)

Get out of your echo chamber!

July 17, 2024

And the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech."

-- Genesis 11:6-7 (NRSV)

We live in a nation in which, though we may all speak the same language, we live in two completely different realities. At the same time, we are seeing what sociologists call the "Big Sort," a phenomenon in which Americans are self-segregating themselves into like-minded clusters. This has been happening as the U.S. has seen a steady decline in mediating institutions (such as civic clubs, fraternal lodges, bowling leagues, churches, and the like).

The media landscape has also become bifurcated since the advent of cable television and this trend only accelerated with the introduction of the World Wide Web and social media. Americans are no longer getting their news and opinions from a limited set of choices (remember, in the 1980s, most Americans only had four television channels and one or two daily newspapers).

The result is that people self-sort themselves into their echo chambers, consume news only from sources that affirm their biases, and interact only with those who belong to their bubbles.

Before the Korean War, the Korean Peninsula was not divided and people spoke the same language albeit with several regional dialects. After the Korean War, the country split into two, divided by the heavily fortified demilitarized zone (DMZ). Within a few decades, their languages morphed into something distinct and largely unrecognizable from each other, even though they write using the same alphabet and many words are the same.

Just like that, the United States now has a linguistic divide between liberals and conservatives. They see one thing and perceive two completely different events. These two sides cannot communicate with each other and are not willing to.

Eventually, the diverging languages shape bifurcated and polarized realities. It is a case study in what linguists call the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.

Liberals look at Project 2025 as though it is Trump's sinister plan to turn America into the Republic of Gilead, to recruit and unleash armed racists on immigrants and BIPOC folks, force public school children to recite the Bible and salute the Donald Trump portrait, and to pollute the planet to a point of no return while billionaires get even richer at the expense of everyone else.

Conservatives look at the Democrats and think that Biden will ban their faith and shut down their churches, confiscate their children to be forcibly brainwashed, "transed," and castrated, ban their cars and grills, rip babies out of their mother's wombs at 8 months, throw them in jail for misgendering because they failed to call their co-worker a "xe/xem," and censor their speech.

If you are a Democrat dreading another Trump victory, know that your feeling is mutual. There is a Republican dreading Biden's re-election.

It is this kind of divided reality that led to last Friday's Trump assassination attempt.

Step back, chill, and get out of your echo chamber. Try to understand the opposing views and the contexts in which they come from. And put everything in perspective.

Project 2025, as abhorrent as it seems, is a publication from a think tank (yes, literary genre matters). Think tank, by definition, uses research and imagination to write something wildly aspirational. Progressive think tanks do this, too, but most of them are simply impossible to put into actual policy because of funding, lack of political will, or both. Even Kevin D. Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation, calls this document a "menu of options." Just because you go to a Chinese restaurant and are handed a six-page menu does not mean you're going to eat them all.

The Republican Party, perhaps more so than the Democratic Party, is a big tent with many competing and often conflicting interests within. There are those who want religious freedom. There are those who support small- to mid-sized businesses. Then there are deep-pocketed special interest groups for the big corporations. Some Republicans are driven by what they view as traditional values. Some are driven by individualism and freedom. Scratch beneath the surface, though, the Republicans stand for four things: (1) limited government, (2) individual liberties, (3) free market, and (4) personal responsibility. Yet, the only things that appear to unite them are their collective bogeymen -- which almost always are the marginalized groups with no political leverage, such as unauthorized noncitizens, houseless persons, and transgender youth. And they are scared of them, even though they possess far more resources and privileges than they can collectively muster.

At the end of the day, a divided house cannot stand. This division dehumanizes others who are not like us (yes, the Left is just as guilty of this as the Right!) and leads to a justification of violence toward others. It blinds us to the fact that on the other side of the partisan divide are real human beings who are trying to live a life. And this polarization erases the nuances and diversity of thoughts.

When I was younger, most public libraries in their juvenile sections used to have a series of books called "Opposing Viewpoints." Each "Opposing Viewpoints" book was a curated anthology focused on a specific social or political topic and presented diverse voices from both sides of the debate. The series seems to have gone digital in recent years, which is unfortunate because they are no longer in prominent places on library shelves where anyone can see, but now they have to go to the "online resources" section of a library website and navigate through a sea of links to get there.

Opposing Viewpoints

Get out of your echo chamber. Try to develop empathy by putting yourself in the shoes of those who you disagree with.

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3 ideas for communicating across the political divide (a TED talk by Isaac Saul)

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