another way politics poison everything…
Partisan tribalism is so toxic, it can indirectly influence people to vote against their best interests just to make a statement.
Unfortunately, people often act against their best interests and do so not because they haven't been told what would be a better choice or had evidence withheld from them, but because they're rebelling against authority, even if they chose these authorities themselves. That seems to be the thesis of psychologist Drew Westen in his book about the effect of politics on human behavior, as featured in BBC News. When people want to rebel and take matters into their own hands, facts seem irrelevant and whoever can stoke the most resentment will win the debate. Rationality and analysis have to fly out the window. It's all about who can harness the rage of a furious mob and bend it to their whims. In the American healthcare debate, the Republicans have been by far the most skilled at doing so, proving that negative politics work amazingly well and anger can replace policy.
I've seen how this plays out firsthand, hearing people complain about how they don't have health insurance of any kind because they can't afford it, yet fuming about the "socialist totalitarianism" of a health bill what wanted to make that insurance more affordable and punish the companies offering policies for rejecting sick patients in the name of profit. One would think that's a no brainer. If you don't have coverage, why would you side with a corporate lobby that wants to keep prices high and reject you if given the slightest chance? Well, according to Weston, the thought pattern behind such a position goes something like this…
They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best. There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots. As the saying goes, in politics, when you're explaining, you're losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.
But the flip side is that the decision is still being turned over by politicians who think they know best. All they do is trade one set of smarmy, self-aggrandizing politicos for another. And those other politicians could very well be on the take from the insurance companies who want to keep making money from denying people coverage and keeping health insurance out of reach for millions of people. There's also the huge element of red-baiting involved here. Calling anything "socialist" or "collectivist" or comparing it to "Communist Russia" immediately triggers outrage from a conservative base of voters who combine the above-detailed distaste for details with a searing, institutional hatred of anything that's described by Cold War terminology. Richard Hofstadter's image of "paranoid politics" in the U.S. is still alive and well.
The big question is how do we try to make laws that actually do something for a majority of the nation when an entire political culture hostile to facts, numbers and logical analysis has taken such firm root. We know that a furious monolog, or a feat of anti-intellectualism that manages to equate good education and command of the policy involved with elitism and snobbery, often substitutes the relevant facts for millions. But how do we get a real legislative framework in spite of these ridiculous political games? How can you run a rational government if emotions, hysteria and deep seeded paranoia frames every important action?
