On Elon Musk's polarization, Trump's "blood bath" language, and more
Some thoughts on polarization-related things over the last few weeks
This will be some thoughts on some polarization-related things that I’ve either worked on or that caught my attention over the last month. Topics in this post:
Elon Musk’s polarization — and our difficulty in separating political belief from how we engage with people who different political beliefs
Trump’s “bloodbath” language
Interview of Isaac Saul of Tangle News (who I think is doing some great work in depolarization space from news angle)
News about my book, and about David Foster’s new book
Elon Musk and our lack of a vocabulary for talking about extremely (affectively) polarized mindsets
I want to write a longer piece on just this, but it keeps continually surprising me how ignorant we are, as a society, about conflict and polarization. One major area of ignorance we have, as a society, is that we find it hard to differentiate between a) how one engages with people one disagrees with, and b) one’s beliefs.
We conflate these two things even though they are entirely separate. And this prevents us from being able to talk in clear ways about the divisive, contemptuous ways of engaging that people like Trump, Vivek Ramiswamy, Elon Musk, and many others, on the right and left, have. Pundits and journalists focus on those people’s beliefs but seldom talk about the thing that makes them actually divisive and unhelpful: how they engage with people they disagree with. We focus too much on beliefs and not enough on how one sees and engages with others with different beliefs.
We simply lack the vocabulary and knowledge as a society to differentiate these things and so we’re left with a situation where we only scratch the surface
Let’s look at Elon Musk: Elon Musk is a perfect example of someone who has been driven into very polarized and polarizing, us-vs-them, high-animosity ways of engaging with people he disagrees with. This is evident in the insults he slings constantly at his political opponents and at the highly certain mind-reading he does (e.g., statements that Biden and Democrats are purposefully flooding the country with illegal immigrants; no question or doubt on his part; he just knows they are).
The reason I find Elon Musk such a harmful person — someone who has dramatically added to the toxicity of our divides — is not because of his beliefs. It’s entirely possible to imagine a version of Elon Musk with the same general beliefs but who didn’t treat his political opponents with contempt and hate. My opinion that Elon Musk is doing much harm to America is due to how he engages with others; it’s his extremely polarized, conflict-ridden mindset. (I think Elon’s prediliction for having a polarized, warlike mindset has been evident for a long time, as exemplified in how he called that guy working on rescuing children in Thailand a “pedo” for no reason, amongst other incidents.)
I’ll say things aren’t that simple in practice because our extreme negative emotions can shift our beliefs, and our beliefs can shift our emotions; these things are connected — and that’s something I talk about in my books. Elon’s intense visceral dislike of Biden and Democrats, for example, can make him more paranoid and likely to confidently believe in outlandish ideas he wouldn’t believe if he lacked those intense negative emotions.
But just to say that they are separate dimensions, and thinking about them as separate dimensions I think helps us better see the landscape of polarization; it shows us the value of focusing on the negative, antagonist perceptions instead of focusing on people’s beliefs. Because you won’t have much luck trying to change people’s beliefs as they’ll perceive such an attempt as trying to win an argument or manipulate their minds; but you can try to correct their distorted perceptions of their “enemies” because most of us, deep down, do recognize that most of our fellow citizens are like us and aren’t monsters.
Farther down I talk about people’s highly pessimistic and highly certain reactions to Trump’s “blood bath” language. When people say things like, “It was obvious what Trump meant; he was threatening violence,” we can see that certainty as being driven by animosity and dislike. It is a case of emotions (fear, dislike) changing our beliefs and making them more hardened and non-negotiable. We can see people’s inability to admit ambiguity or other perspectives on Trump’s language there (e.g., “You’re naive for thinking Trump was speaking innocently”) as being a symptom of affective/toxic polarization. Arriving at highly certain conclusions about ambiguous, complex events and behaviors is the primary symptom of a mind significantly affected by affective polarization. Dislike drives certainty of beliefs and certainty of beliefs in turn drives dislike.
If we’re going to survive as a people, as a species, for much longer into the future, we will, by necessity, have to arrive at a better understanding of how conflict makes us behave in conflict-amplifying ways.
Trump’s “bloodbath” language
Many anti-Trump people were speaking as if this “bloodbath” thing from Trump’s rally was obviously inciting political violence. But it’s not at all clear to me; in fact, I thought it was, as Trump’s often incendiary language goes, a pretty innocuous moment for him. I thought he was primarily trying to communicate, “Biden winning will be very bad economically.”
And there were many other people, including anti-Trump people, who agreed with that. A FactCheck.org piece said that the economic meaning was the “most plausible, given the context of Trump’s comments.”
The fact that you can have even anti-Trump people reach very different conclusions on this helps show that one’s extremely pessimistic interpretation is not clear or obvious. When there are obviously other interpretations by many people, even people quite politically similar to you, claims that your view is non-debatable and obvious only highlight your level of polarization and bias. Put another way: in this example, I’m not the one arguing for certainty; I’m arguing for lack of certainty and giving the benefit of the doubt to people when unsure. The people who say “it’s clear what he meant” are the ones arguing for certainty. And this is not something one can be certain about.
One argument people have proffered for thinking he was talking about political violence is that he said “that’ll be the least of it.” That helps at least give some justification for why people interpreted it in more dark, pessimistic ways. In context, though, that seemed to me like he was just painting a vague, sweeping portrait of economic woes if Biden were to win. If I had heard it from anyone but Trump, it wouldn’t have raised any eyebrows for me. At the very least, I can say it’s far from certain to me that he was talking about violence.
Another argument proffered about the badness of what Trump said was that the context of his 2020 election behaviors and his January 6th behaviors meant that we shouldn’t extend him the benefit of the doubt. But that seems like simple bias. If someone speaks, like Trump does, for hours and hours at a time, he will inevitably say many things that can be interpreted in many ways. Is the argument that he can never use any sort of metaphor involving violence again? So many of our phrases and idioms involve violence. Is the argument that, due to his past behavior, we must take the worst possible interpretation of everything he says? This also seems an illogical conclusion that we wouldn’t appreciate our political adversaries applying to us.
One of the big reasons I got into depolarization work is seeing how people’s biased and high-animosity responses to the more extreme, divisive people they dislike actually help strengthen those people. In other words, we can help create the very things that upset us. We drive the cycle of conflict with how we respond to our adversaries. Trump, within a minute of the “bloodbath” language, said things that were objectively 100s of times more worrying and conflict-amplifying, like that “we won’t have another election” if Biden were to win. There are simply so many objectively true things to criticize about Trump and yet many people reach for extremely subjective worst-possible interpretations — and this helps create more support for Trump. (And I’m not the only person to talk about this; this piece highlighted how such overreactions help Trump.)
(If you’re a pro-Trump person reading this, I’d make the same argument to you; in a polarized landscape like ours, when you overreact to things you dislike on the far left and take the worst-possible interpretations of the things they do, you in turn will grant them more power.)
I have an essay here about our polarized, divergent views of Trump. I might add the “bloodbath” thing to it.
I interviewed Isaac Saul of Tangle News
Tangle includes takes from across the political spectrum on news events. There are other outlets that do similar things but I think Isaac is doing the best work I’ve seen in this space. I honestly believe that the more Americans read Tangle, the less polarized America will be. I talk to him about the depolarizing aspects, as I see them, of his work (some of which I think are more subtle and not obvious).
That talk is here: https://behavior-podcast.com/news-media-tends-to-deepen-our-divides-does-isaac-saul-have-a-solution/
David A. Foster’s new book on American polarization
Foster recently released Moderates of the World Unite! Reworking the Political Media Complex. He focuses on systemic ways we can make our discourse less toxic (e.g., changes to media and news). You can read my review of David’s book here.
You can pre-order my upcoming ebook on Amazon
You can put in a pre-order for my ebook on Amazon. (This book is for a liberal/anti-Trump audience, just a heads up.) I should have the pre-order for the paperback ready in not too long.