Ghosts in the Machine
Are we more united than you think?
Alex Garland’s new movie, Civil War, pre-screening this week in New York City and hitting local theaters across the country on Friday, is taking our fears of deep polarization to a fever pitch and, says The Atlantic, is providing us with “a narrative of uncomfortable resonance.”
It imagines a worst-case scenario in which American society unravels into bloody combat, as frontline journalists try to make sense of the chaos and rebel forces from warring states descend onto the White House to evict a president who has refused to leave office and is staging attacks on his own citizens. Leading the opposition are two different states (red state Texas and blue state California), which decide to ally against the threat they consider greater than their partisan differences: efforts by dis-informants and fascist, pro-autocracy activists to destroy democracy, itself—and keep a majority of citizens from fighting back to build our democracy into a more perfect union for the benefit of all.
Early reviews don’t argue the film’s power. After its premiere last month for SXSW’s high-profile, hard-to-please film crowd in Austin, Texas, cross-generational reviewers and film industry leaders described it as “an emotional wallop” and a “wake-up call.” In a post-premiere audience Q&A, writer-director Garland told SXSW audiences “it’s a warning, and an argument against polarization.”
“…America has its own brand of exceptionalism and probably, in reality, feels its democracy is immune from disappearing,” he said, “but present day events and global history show us again and again that nobody is immune. We’re all subject to the same threats of fascism, and if we don’t start rising above our partisan differences to share our common values, provide checks and balances to power and exhibit human decency to solve the problems we share, then we will become totally out of control.”
Divide and Conquer
No question we feel divided across society today. At the very least, we’ve all got a personal story to share about how our partisan differences can de-socialize us or, worst case—as during other crises in our national history— descend into shouting matches with friends and family members over holiday dinners, far and wide.
But are we, today, more irretrievably vulnerable to disinformation and political violence, and therefore, more deeply divided as a nation— or are we really less divided ideologically and behaviorally—and share more values than we think?
New polls focusing on what divides us—and how—are beginning to suggest the latter, saying that despite political campaigns, disinformation and anti-democracy movements pushing forward this election year to turn us Americans against each other over race, gender, sexuality or immigration status, there is much shared frustration with Washington over its failure to otherwise come together to approve things already agreed and work out new bipartisan solutions to create better.
A number of new researchers on public opinion are also stepping forward to say we’re less divided than we think on other issues, as well. “Consensus may be hiding in plain sight,” says Tim Dixon, co-founder of More in Common, an international group studying division.
New Findings
Consider these emerging survey data findings, some by relatively new polling companies joining the polling industry to focus more on what diverse communities share in common beyond division—data that is shared with a variety of companies and nonprofits seeking new ways to close divides in the workplace, communities and state and local governments:
Populace, a nonpartisan think tank that gets cross-ideological backing from tech mogul Mark Zuckerberg and uber-conservative industrial magnate Charles Koch, says its polls analyzing Americans’ values, aspirations and political views have found Americans share more in common and mistakenly believe their views are in the minority. Its recent polls also have found that many people think, erroneously, that the country, as a whole, embraces values and priorities far different from their own. Founder Todd Rose said in a recent interview with the Chronicle of Philanthropy ‘s Commons Project that Populace conducts surveys differently from what Gallup and other polling firms produce because it aims to divine “private opinion”—by asking choice-based questions requiring respondents to consider tradeoffs in their answers and to choose policy statements that align best with their policy priorities.
According to a Populace survey, Biden and Trump voters rank some key issues similarly in importance, and nearly identically on the issues of quality health care, safe communities, unbiased criminal justice systems, the need for a thriving middle class and a modern physical infrastructure. And the shared values most closely held include the protection of individual rights like free speech, peaceful assembly, freedom of religion and the right to bear arms, but with some restrictions to keep schools and communities safe.
According to IPSOS, the international market research and consulting firm headquartered in Paris, most polling shops have a “blind spot” because they do not have “political extremism” or “saving democracy” as attributes in their most important problem questions shared with voters. In a recent poll to which Ipsos added “political extremism or threats to democracy” as a main worry among voters, the firm found “significant shifts in what Americans cite as their chief concern compared to more typical main issue questions.” Added Ipsos President Clifford Young in a recent interview: “Most public pollsters show immigration as the dominant issue of the day, but the market right now has a blind spot and is not capturing a critical concern among the public. …It looks like ‘saving democracy’ will be the key issue this electoral season, beating out the economy and immigration.” Young says this suggests that “the anti-Trump vote is real and that Biden might be down, but not out.”
The Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University has done polling to find common ground across American society, and George Barna, chief of the Center, says it has found there is a “supermajority”—two-thirds of both the Republican and Democratic parties—which support policies that aim to increase the manufacturing workforce, rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and make Social Security and Medicare financially solvent. “These issues should not be weaponized by politics but worked on to achieve, together, despite other differences,” Barna says. “That’s what good governance is about.”
More in Common, an international group studying division, found that Americans consistently see their political opposites as more extreme than they really are. Co-founder Tim Dixon says “we misunderstand each other often but even those who hold quite clear views are not as extreme as what the other side thinks.”
A recent Newsweek survey found that outside the Beltway, consensus is being forged quickly between red state and blue state voters over the legal protections for abortion. In Ohio, which voted for Trump before and after he installed Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v Wade, 57 percent of voters now support a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. And on the issue of immigration, blue-city mayors now agree with red-state governors that waves of migrants crossing the southern border represent a crisis that President Joe Biden needs to address.
A new survey by Pew Research says 65% of Americans are “exhausted” by the division in national politics, persuading them that the country is more divided than it is, with increasing belief that this perspective is warped by the intensity of the partisan battles over issues, but not by the beliefs of individuals they know and speak to from “the other side.” Populace’s Rose told the Chronicle: “We have a tendency to assume the loudest voices repeated the most are the majority but people are starting to question these assumptions. In truth, Americans hold many of the same values and aspirations for their lives and the country.”
New Rules
In short, breaking through the propaganda machine and creating content that disputes lies and misperceptions this election year will “not be a lost cause” and may be helpful in closing some of the sharpest divides.
Jay Ulfelder, a political scientist who studies civil wars and a former researcher of the Political Instability Task Force, a U.S. government program at the Wilson Center that helps policymakers understand and anticipate political crises at home and aboard, says another U.S. civil war is “very unlikely” but acknowledges that “there are so many bad things that could happen well short of a civil war.”
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat agrees. The New York University history professor who writes a column on Substack called Lucid about fascism, authoritarianism and propaganda, says “it will be critical this election year for pro-democracy campaigns to acknowledge democracy’s failures and to rally more Americans into the fold to help make it more inclusive, and to fight disinformation with bold and widespread messaging, together.
“…Resistance to tyranny is about keeping alive the feeling that it is possible to change things, that there are openings for change to occur and that we are the ones to make it happen.”
Adds Harvard historian, author and New Yorker writer Jill LePore, a long-time critic of what she calls “Americans’ public addiction with polls” says “the problem with polls isn’t technical. It’s political.”
Stay tuned.