It seems to be worth mentioning that the conflict between Catholics and Protestants mentioned here, which ended in "cuius regio, eius religio" after a century and a half of religious warfare (that also included pogroms/expulsion of the ancestors of modern Ashkenazi Jews from Germany, witch hunts, and so on) was precipitated and caused directly by the invention of the printing press—the most consequential media revolution in world history behind writing, and ahead of the internet and social media. A new medium appeared, which eventually caused the scientific revolution, but in the meantime it left a huge amount of dislocation and pain in its wake in part because it empowered violent cranks who wouldn't have been given the time of day to voice their opinions. This may include Martin Luther.
Gurri "The Revolt of the Public" is an interesting book studying the effect of the internet on present day politics. As you indicate, there are many parallels to how the printing press impacted the civil wars in Europe around 1600.
Hey I’ll be right before you in a lineup alphabetically:) if we were kids we’d always be standing next to each other in line. Unfortunately that Z plays into things to my benefit.
Liberalism is soft, genuinely. But it stretches. An illiberal society is stiff and will keep its shape as circumstances change, but that same stiffness makes it brittle.
This. Authoritarianism might seem to work for a while, but when things drastically change and someone has to tell the boss things he might not want to hear…not so much.
That's a great explanation of liberalism. When we say that the US is a liberal democracy, everyone knows what a democracy is, but what "liberal" means is a bit mysterious.
I like Joseph Heath's description of the origins of liberalism, as a way to resolve the wars of religion, in "The Machinery of Government":
"The ideal arrangement is, of course, to live in a community in which everyone follows the teachings of the one true church, and where virtue is rewarded and vice is punished. The worst arrangement, by contrast, is to live in a community in which an ignorant majority seeks to impose its heretical views on believers, perverting and distorting the true word of Christ. The compromise is toleration: everyone agrees not to impose their views on others by force. From a doctrinal perspective, it is impossible to regard this as the best outcome.
"It is only when people come to see the close-knit community of believers, united by a shared pursuit of virtue, as *practically* unobtainable, that they began to take proposals for accommodating religious pluralism seriously."
Regarding the appropriate response to an illiberal demagogue, I agree that a far better approach than violence (which threatens the entire system of cooperation) would be to have institutions that are capable of blocking the demagogue's path to power, or at least restraining their actions once in power. Political parties (which filter out unsuitable candidates) are one such institution; elections; the courts; Congress; the civil service. Joseph Heath again, on demagogues and political parties as a particularly important institution: https://induecourse.utoronto.ca/thoughts-on-rob-ford-vol-3/
"Small-l liberalism at its core is a piece of civilizational technology to prevent civil wars." Interesting point. But it focuses on wars inside a nation. Unfortunately, liberalism has been less good at preventing wars between nations. What civilizational technology could prevent war at the global level? Are there any ideas of how to organize human life on planet Earth that go beyond nation states?
I was thinking of Mearsheimer's https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv5cgb1w ... I am not an expert but Mearsheimer's account seems to give a better account of what happened after 1990.
I am not interested in arguments about M as a person. His argument in the book I link above is that the attitude that international relations can be made more peaceful by converting with the use of force authoritarian regimes to democratic ones does not work. Would you agree with his specific argument on this point?
I completely agree with, "Small-l liberalism at its core is a piece of civilizational technology to prevent civil wars."
(And I love the phrase "small-l liberalism"—as well as the idea that "tolerance is the price we pay for freedom." Kudos to the author!)
Building on that, let’s consider the role of democracy in liberal democracy. For the 49% to peacefully accept the will of the 51%—even temporarily—requires a significant degree of trust.
I once heard a compelling definition of a nation: "A nation is the largest group of people where the minority (49%) accepts the will of the majority (51%) and still chooses to remain part of the group." This trust-based concept of nationhood aligns with the historical emergence of liberal democracy. While liberalism addressed internal divisions following the religious wars, liberal democracy as we know it arose alongside several other seismic shifts:
1. The rise of the modern nation-state.
2. The curtailment of absolute monarchical power.
3. The Industrial Revolution(s).
These transformative forces emerged within a relatively short historical period, suggesting a broader interplay may have been at work.
Now, onto the question of global-level organization. Beyond nation-states, how will the next level of human grouping be built? I’d frame the challenge as identifying: 1) the next larger group, 2) where trust can be cultivated, and 3) which is currently missing. This process, I believe, will likely be computer-mediated, leveraging advances in communication technologies—possibly even evolving from today’s much-maligned social networks.
Scaling human trust beyond the nation-state will depend on cultural rather than biological adaptations. That’s good news—cultural adaptations evolve far faster. Our environment, as humans, is fundamentally our group of fellow humans—we spend virtually no time truly isolated from others. Historically, these group sizes have expanded dramatically:
1. Initially, from hundreds of people (<1e3; hunter-gatherer bands).
2. Then, to hundreds of thousands (<1e6; early agricultural communities).
3. And now, to hundreds of millions (<1e9; industrial civilizations, modern nation-states, and—now growing, albeit with "growth pains"—supranational blocs).
Following this trend, it’s conceivable that future human group sizes could grow to encompass hundreds of billions (<1e12). However, such a leap will demand vastly improved communication, significantly higher signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), and an unprecedented level of trust. I suspect radical transparency will play a central role in fostering this trust, creating systems where truthfulness is incentivized and deception is minimized.
To formalize the America-specific question of why we have not descended into authoritarianism: Let's say that, for example, a president would need to exercise control over 70 percent of the government to remain in power (random number from my ass.) For mysterious thermostatic reasons, the party in power tends to lose every 2 years. I won't go into detail about why that is, but it is so. Moving on.
America's governmental system has a certain pace to it. In times of crisis it is reasonably fast. In times of regular procedural stuff, it is extremely slow. This is because the party out of power can slow-walk you as well as disagreement in your own party. The filibuster can also literally waste time and there are limits to how long people can stand to legislate. Also there are interest groups that have been waiting their turn since they were ignored by the last guy, and they prefer to be at the front of the line instead of assisting you in becoming a powerful ruler. There are some collective action problems when it comes to securing total power. So as a would-be dictator, you basically have 2 years to capture the government before you take a big blow to your power, and 2 more years after that until you take an even larger blow. All this time you would be going toe-to-toe with those in the civil service, governors, senators, house members, interest groups, the media, elites in general, the opposing party, and the judiciary. Power is so distributed in our government, and none of those that I mentioned have any term limits to boot - and are more localized meaning they generally have easier elections to win/people to win over. The president has so many cards stacked against him.
Most presidents look at this and barely even consider it a possibility that they could become a dictator, so they don't try. I believe that this is partially why we have not and likely won't plunge into a dictatorship. Not saying there won't be a struggle amongst the populace, it does seem like there are citizens looking for a fight, but that there just isn't quite enough leverage in place for a president to become a despot.
I find this quote a little bit sad. “Before I am anything else - a Democrat, a New Yorker, an American - I am a liberal.” For me it is a father, husband, son, brother, friend, and colleague who values the liberal tradition and takes a liberal worldview in the tradition of Locke and Mill. Political party and state don’t make the top ten.
When you reference Donald trump saying things, can you link the video proof of him saying it and not just reference to a news article. Just because a third party said he said it doesn’t mean it’s true. In some of those articles they don’t upload a video as well and just photos
The history here is very wrong, with all due respect — I love your insight on contemporary stuff, but it is a fairy tale to say today’s liberalism comes from the reformation. The historical line you’re drawing is too clean, that toleration of different religions was done by monarchs, not republics! What about the liberal revolutions of the 1800s, which seem much more related to how liberals think and operate now? Liberalism and enlightenment are not the same thing.
I so agree with the end of your commentary - That America is doing well in so many ways, but in spite of our success, we seem to have lost sight of our "better angels" in political discourse. I disagree completely with your politics, but I will defend your right to practice them as long as I draw breath. Social media has absolutely been responsible for the exponential increase in the ugly and violent exchange of words and actions by an ever-increasing number of citizens. Even with a calm head and anti-violent philosophy, it is all I can do to refrain from responding to the ugliness I have read just on Facebook since the assassination attempt. To suggest that either political party is behind this shooting is to perpetuate the insane narratives that continue to create chasms between us. If this behavior continues continues, the only way it can end is in the demise of our democracy and society as we know it. Both conservative and liberal citizens must begin to control themselves before we ask our politicians to do the same.
People use social media in other countries, such as the UK, Switzerland, Norway, etc, but it doesn't seem to have led to the same extreme outcomes as it has in the United States. (I'm British myself). So I wonder why it's had this particular effect in the USA?
I think you'd be wrong - extremist parties have been rising in the UK, Germany, France and many other countries. They haven't seized power in all cases, but they're definitely rising.
I think the USA's had it particularly bad simply due to luck - Trump got elected due to quirks in the electoral college despite not winning the popular vote in 2016, and Trump is uniquely, personally bad.
Also there have been several high-profile attacks against politicians in Europe, including the attempted assassination of Slovakia’s PM by stabbing, the past few years. Germany in particular seems to have a problem with politicians being assaulted in public.
Assuming political violence is a uniquely American thing is a kind of “reverse American exceptionalism,” in which the US can do no right and all bad things happen only there.
Also, I find the term 'polarization' unhelpful. That implies movement by all towards two poles. In fact we have one third of the electorate that has moved sharply to the right, as well as a good distance into the crazy quadrant. Most of the rest of the right supports that extreme shift electorally. The left, or in effect what is a center-left, has barely moved. None of their recent policy successes are substantially different than center-left policy attainments and goals of the last few decades. Criticism of and resistance to the right's shift towards extremism and into the crazy quadrant does not count as a shift leftwards, I think. Hardly a novel insight, but it bears repeating when 'polarization' is deployed.
Polarization is very much a two way street. Even if we accept that the center-left has had no shift in it's positions at all (this is patently not true, but I will accept it for the sake of argument), the culture and positions of the Democratic Party have fewer fractures and fewer overlaps with the Republicans than any point in the 20th century. The most centrist elected Democrats are still politically extremely distinct from the most centrist Republicans, and inter-party coalitions don't exist on anything other than maybe a few foreign policy issues. For most of the 20th century, there were plenty of coalitions that didn't really line up along party lines at all. Like look at the partisan breakdown of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Or for NAFTA - Colorado had one Republican senator (Hank Brown) vote for it, and a Democratic Senator (Ben Campbell) vote against. But Maine did the opposite! Republican William Cohen opposed NAFTA, Democrat George Mitchell favored it. Those sorts of breakdowns don't happen in 2024.
Another way to put it - who is the fourth most 'centrist' Democrat in the senate? After Sinema, Manchin, and Tester, who is the most likely to defect? I don't know that there is an answer to that question! Whoever the fourth most centrist Democrat is - they are largely indistinguishable from the party leadership. That's not at all true of 20th century Democrats. Actually, it's just a silly question in general for 20th Century Democrats - you have explicitly conservative Democrats (and liberal Republicans).
Now if you want to argue that the Democrats have coalesced in a much saner, better place than the Republicans, I'd agree 100%. But they have coalesced. There is a distinct Democratic 'pole' that didn't exist until like 2011.
If they coalesced on an existing center-left ideological space (which has been the core identity of non-Southern Democrats from before WW2, whatevoccasional nal deviations from that the complexity of the US political landscape has generated), with less variation, that is not movement towards an extreme, which is the implied meaning and common understanding of 'polarisation', that both sides have become more extreme. If we all live near the equator and your lot moves to the North Pole, we all are not polarized, you have moved to an extreme latitude. Us equatorial types don't constitute a pole, except by redefining what poles (extremes) are.
To the degree that partisan policies or positions can be plotted on a simplified ideological or political scale or space, and they have been so plotted, what I describe is what has happened. Such plots are easy to find.
The damage 'polarization' does is to obscure significant real-world shifts. On It's own or infrequently used, the damage is perhaps slight, but it is a part of the rhetorical mishmash that is bothsiderism, whose intellectual damage is significant.
As thing stand in 2024, most elected Democrats have very similar positions on almost all issues, and those positions are to the left of most Americans. Both of those things are recent developments, and they have happened alongside similar developments in the Republican party. That's polarization.
Now you are free to argue that one side is a lot better than the other one, or that one side is more strongly in the tradition of the postwar consensus on most issues, but that's still polarization. There are two very distinctive nodes in American politics in 2024, and you can't decide one of them gets to be on the equator because you prefer it to be so, or because there are 15,000 left-wing ideologies held by a total of 30,000 people in this country, or because saying so implies that the Democratic node is equivalent to the Republican one.
Similarity, that is, coalescing, has nothing to do with movement towards an extreme, or pole. You are confusing the two. I thought I had demonstrated that. To elaborate on my perhaps clunky analogy, if we Equatorians all lived in a band between 15°S and 5°S, and if they all move to near 10°S, or even to -15°, or even to 20°S, while your lot moves to 85°N, and in many cases entirely off the surface of the planet, that is not polarization of everybody, and the Equatorians are not living at a pole.
That the median Equatorian is now far removed from the median Polarist does not imply polarization of everybody. There has been an absolute movement of Polarists, resulting in an increased relative difference, but not general polarization.
This article sounds a lot like your claims in its framing, but is undermined by its own data, which shows a slight absolute leftwards movement of Democrats and a much larger absolute movement of Republicans.
The Wikipedia article on polarisation is also worth reading for a quick overview of academic usage of the concept
Are we done with 'polarization' now? I don't think you can back up your claims. And I think you should give some thought to why it is so important for you (and so many others) to bang this particular rhetorical drum. Hint: you don't want to face up to the extremist nature of Republican governance and goals, particularly in a time of an explicit embrace of authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, and whatever the latest Trumpist obsession is. It's a rhetorical device deployed in the service of intellectual cowardice.
And to repeat an earlier point, if the Equatorians resist the efforts of the 85° Polarists to force them to live in a Polarist world, that is not polarization, that is resistance to forced movement to one pole.
As to the relation of the Democratic ideological or policy positions to median American electorate views, you're going to have to give some polling evidence for your claim that Democrats are to the left of 'public opinion'. I can't find it, framed as a general claim, and with any robust attempt at capturing 'public opinion' as a singular entity. I don't think self-identification with broad labels is very clarifying. Certainly on a number of issues you could make a case, but generally? How would that case be made?
The only really interesting poll at the national level IMO is the popular vote. You know who won the popular vote 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2000, to take the last 25 years.
I agree with almost everything you say here, until you the part where you are talking about America doing pretty well. I think that is certainly true in aggregate, but I think understanding how this isn't true is important to understanding the rise of Trump. I think humans have evolved alongside the idea of status and this is really important. The status of the people who support Trump has been falling for a long time. This is particularly true of rural males.
The markers of status in rural communities have dissolved and people are looking for new things to take their place. This dissolution has basically caused chaos and despair in large swathes of the population. A stable manufacturing job used to be a marker of high status, along with owning a home, etc. A lot of these things are no longer accessible to the average person. In many communities owning a big pickup truck has become a big marker of status. This doesn't help the level of understanding between educated urban males and rural males.
I'm not sure what the answer to all this is. Maybe it is possible to create new markers of status that would be more beneficial to society. I think society could really benefit from things like volunteering becoming high status instead of educational level, fancy vacations, etc. I do think that it is important to think about and understand the role of status in the social processes at work here.
It seems to be worth mentioning that the conflict between Catholics and Protestants mentioned here, which ended in "cuius regio, eius religio" after a century and a half of religious warfare (that also included pogroms/expulsion of the ancestors of modern Ashkenazi Jews from Germany, witch hunts, and so on) was precipitated and caused directly by the invention of the printing press—the most consequential media revolution in world history behind writing, and ahead of the internet and social media. A new medium appeared, which eventually caused the scientific revolution, but in the meantime it left a huge amount of dislocation and pain in its wake in part because it empowered violent cranks who wouldn't have been given the time of day to voice their opinions. This may include Martin Luther.
Gurri "The Revolt of the Public" is an interesting book studying the effect of the internet on present day politics. As you indicate, there are many parallels to how the printing press impacted the civil wars in Europe around 1600.
Hey I’ll be right before you in a lineup alphabetically:) if we were kids we’d always be standing next to each other in line. Unfortunately that Z plays into things to my benefit.
Liberalism is soft, genuinely. But it stretches. An illiberal society is stiff and will keep its shape as circumstances change, but that same stiffness makes it brittle.
This. Authoritarianism might seem to work for a while, but when things drastically change and someone has to tell the boss things he might not want to hear…not so much.
That's a great explanation of liberalism. When we say that the US is a liberal democracy, everyone knows what a democracy is, but what "liberal" means is a bit mysterious.
I like Joseph Heath's description of the origins of liberalism, as a way to resolve the wars of religion, in "The Machinery of Government":
"The ideal arrangement is, of course, to live in a community in which everyone follows the teachings of the one true church, and where virtue is rewarded and vice is punished. The worst arrangement, by contrast, is to live in a community in which an ignorant majority seeks to impose its heretical views on believers, perverting and distorting the true word of Christ. The compromise is toleration: everyone agrees not to impose their views on others by force. From a doctrinal perspective, it is impossible to regard this as the best outcome.
"It is only when people come to see the close-knit community of believers, united by a shared pursuit of virtue, as *practically* unobtainable, that they began to take proposals for accommodating religious pluralism seriously."
Regarding the appropriate response to an illiberal demagogue, I agree that a far better approach than violence (which threatens the entire system of cooperation) would be to have institutions that are capable of blocking the demagogue's path to power, or at least restraining their actions once in power. Political parties (which filter out unsuitable candidates) are one such institution; elections; the courts; Congress; the civil service. Joseph Heath again, on demagogues and political parties as a particularly important institution: https://induecourse.utoronto.ca/thoughts-on-rob-ford-vol-3/
So, GOP is not a (working) political party because it didn't filter out Trump despite its traditional establishment being largely not keen on him?
American political parties are quite weak, as in institutionally weak. GOP especially for the reason you noted.
If you're interested in that idea, I'd recommend the new book The Hollow Parties - https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691248554/the-hollow-parties
Bret Deveraux just wrote a great post on (small-l) liberalism and the US. It was for the Fourth of July — obviously before the shooting — and it pairs well with a lot of the points made here: https://acoup.blog/2024/07/05/collections-the-philosophy-of-liberty-on-liberalism/
Thank you for the link. This article was fantastic and I'm going to check out the rest of his blog, especially the post in Cicero.
"Small-l liberalism at its core is a piece of civilizational technology to prevent civil wars." Interesting point. But it focuses on wars inside a nation. Unfortunately, liberalism has been less good at preventing wars between nations. What civilizational technology could prevent war at the global level? Are there any ideas of how to organize human life on planet Earth that go beyond nation states?
Liberalism has turned out to be pretty good at preventing wars between states, if you believe the Democratic Peace Theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory
I was thinking of Mearsheimer's https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv5cgb1w ... I am not an expert but Mearsheimer's account seems to give a better account of what happened after 1990.
This would be a longer convo, but I think Mearsheimer is terrible, and is pretty close to just being factually/empirically wrong.
Any details?
https://x.com/DrewPavlou/status/1716388303006745064
Mearsheimer probably shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
I am not interested in arguments about M as a person. His argument in the book I link above is that the attitude that international relations can be made more peaceful by converting with the use of force authoritarian regimes to democratic ones does not work. Would you agree with his specific argument on this point?
I completely agree with, "Small-l liberalism at its core is a piece of civilizational technology to prevent civil wars."
(And I love the phrase "small-l liberalism"—as well as the idea that "tolerance is the price we pay for freedom." Kudos to the author!)
Building on that, let’s consider the role of democracy in liberal democracy. For the 49% to peacefully accept the will of the 51%—even temporarily—requires a significant degree of trust.
I once heard a compelling definition of a nation: "A nation is the largest group of people where the minority (49%) accepts the will of the majority (51%) and still chooses to remain part of the group." This trust-based concept of nationhood aligns with the historical emergence of liberal democracy. While liberalism addressed internal divisions following the religious wars, liberal democracy as we know it arose alongside several other seismic shifts:
1. The rise of the modern nation-state.
2. The curtailment of absolute monarchical power.
3. The Industrial Revolution(s).
These transformative forces emerged within a relatively short historical period, suggesting a broader interplay may have been at work.
Now, onto the question of global-level organization. Beyond nation-states, how will the next level of human grouping be built? I’d frame the challenge as identifying: 1) the next larger group, 2) where trust can be cultivated, and 3) which is currently missing. This process, I believe, will likely be computer-mediated, leveraging advances in communication technologies—possibly even evolving from today’s much-maligned social networks.
Scaling human trust beyond the nation-state will depend on cultural rather than biological adaptations. That’s good news—cultural adaptations evolve far faster. Our environment, as humans, is fundamentally our group of fellow humans—we spend virtually no time truly isolated from others. Historically, these group sizes have expanded dramatically:
1. Initially, from hundreds of people (<1e3; hunter-gatherer bands).
2. Then, to hundreds of thousands (<1e6; early agricultural communities).
3. And now, to hundreds of millions (<1e9; industrial civilizations, modern nation-states, and—now growing, albeit with "growth pains"—supranational blocs).
Following this trend, it’s conceivable that future human group sizes could grow to encompass hundreds of billions (<1e12). However, such a leap will demand vastly improved communication, significantly higher signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), and an unprecedented level of trust. I suspect radical transparency will play a central role in fostering this trust, creating systems where truthfulness is incentivized and deception is minimized.
To formalize the America-specific question of why we have not descended into authoritarianism: Let's say that, for example, a president would need to exercise control over 70 percent of the government to remain in power (random number from my ass.) For mysterious thermostatic reasons, the party in power tends to lose every 2 years. I won't go into detail about why that is, but it is so. Moving on.
America's governmental system has a certain pace to it. In times of crisis it is reasonably fast. In times of regular procedural stuff, it is extremely slow. This is because the party out of power can slow-walk you as well as disagreement in your own party. The filibuster can also literally waste time and there are limits to how long people can stand to legislate. Also there are interest groups that have been waiting their turn since they were ignored by the last guy, and they prefer to be at the front of the line instead of assisting you in becoming a powerful ruler. There are some collective action problems when it comes to securing total power. So as a would-be dictator, you basically have 2 years to capture the government before you take a big blow to your power, and 2 more years after that until you take an even larger blow. All this time you would be going toe-to-toe with those in the civil service, governors, senators, house members, interest groups, the media, elites in general, the opposing party, and the judiciary. Power is so distributed in our government, and none of those that I mentioned have any term limits to boot - and are more localized meaning they generally have easier elections to win/people to win over. The president has so many cards stacked against him.
Most presidents look at this and barely even consider it a possibility that they could become a dictator, so they don't try. I believe that this is partially why we have not and likely won't plunge into a dictatorship. Not saying there won't be a struggle amongst the populace, it does seem like there are citizens looking for a fight, but that there just isn't quite enough leverage in place for a president to become a despot.
I find this quote a little bit sad. “Before I am anything else - a Democrat, a New Yorker, an American - I am a liberal.” For me it is a father, husband, son, brother, friend, and colleague who values the liberal tradition and takes a liberal worldview in the tradition of Locke and Mill. Political party and state don’t make the top ten.
Great piece, and I hope it gets traction and attention.
When you reference Donald trump saying things, can you link the video proof of him saying it and not just reference to a news article. Just because a third party said he said it doesn’t mean it’s true. In some of those articles they don’t upload a video as well and just photos
Wow this was really simple and straightforward, appreciate your investment in understanding these things.
The history here is very wrong, with all due respect — I love your insight on contemporary stuff, but it is a fairy tale to say today’s liberalism comes from the reformation. The historical line you’re drawing is too clean, that toleration of different religions was done by monarchs, not republics! What about the liberal revolutions of the 1800s, which seem much more related to how liberals think and operate now? Liberalism and enlightenment are not the same thing.
I so agree with the end of your commentary - That America is doing well in so many ways, but in spite of our success, we seem to have lost sight of our "better angels" in political discourse. I disagree completely with your politics, but I will defend your right to practice them as long as I draw breath. Social media has absolutely been responsible for the exponential increase in the ugly and violent exchange of words and actions by an ever-increasing number of citizens. Even with a calm head and anti-violent philosophy, it is all I can do to refrain from responding to the ugliness I have read just on Facebook since the assassination attempt. To suggest that either political party is behind this shooting is to perpetuate the insane narratives that continue to create chasms between us. If this behavior continues continues, the only way it can end is in the demise of our democracy and society as we know it. Both conservative and liberal citizens must begin to control themselves before we ask our politicians to do the same.
People use social media in other countries, such as the UK, Switzerland, Norway, etc, but it doesn't seem to have led to the same extreme outcomes as it has in the United States. (I'm British myself). So I wonder why it's had this particular effect in the USA?
I think you'd be wrong - extremist parties have been rising in the UK, Germany, France and many other countries. They haven't seized power in all cases, but they're definitely rising.
I think the USA's had it particularly bad simply due to luck - Trump got elected due to quirks in the electoral college despite not winning the popular vote in 2016, and Trump is uniquely, personally bad.
Also there have been several high-profile attacks against politicians in Europe, including the attempted assassination of Slovakia’s PM by stabbing, the past few years. Germany in particular seems to have a problem with politicians being assaulted in public.
Assuming political violence is a uniquely American thing is a kind of “reverse American exceptionalism,” in which the US can do no right and all bad things happen only there.
Also, I find the term 'polarization' unhelpful. That implies movement by all towards two poles. In fact we have one third of the electorate that has moved sharply to the right, as well as a good distance into the crazy quadrant. Most of the rest of the right supports that extreme shift electorally. The left, or in effect what is a center-left, has barely moved. None of their recent policy successes are substantially different than center-left policy attainments and goals of the last few decades. Criticism of and resistance to the right's shift towards extremism and into the crazy quadrant does not count as a shift leftwards, I think. Hardly a novel insight, but it bears repeating when 'polarization' is deployed.
Polarization is very much a two way street. Even if we accept that the center-left has had no shift in it's positions at all (this is patently not true, but I will accept it for the sake of argument), the culture and positions of the Democratic Party have fewer fractures and fewer overlaps with the Republicans than any point in the 20th century. The most centrist elected Democrats are still politically extremely distinct from the most centrist Republicans, and inter-party coalitions don't exist on anything other than maybe a few foreign policy issues. For most of the 20th century, there were plenty of coalitions that didn't really line up along party lines at all. Like look at the partisan breakdown of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Or for NAFTA - Colorado had one Republican senator (Hank Brown) vote for it, and a Democratic Senator (Ben Campbell) vote against. But Maine did the opposite! Republican William Cohen opposed NAFTA, Democrat George Mitchell favored it. Those sorts of breakdowns don't happen in 2024.
Another way to put it - who is the fourth most 'centrist' Democrat in the senate? After Sinema, Manchin, and Tester, who is the most likely to defect? I don't know that there is an answer to that question! Whoever the fourth most centrist Democrat is - they are largely indistinguishable from the party leadership. That's not at all true of 20th century Democrats. Actually, it's just a silly question in general for 20th Century Democrats - you have explicitly conservative Democrats (and liberal Republicans).
Now if you want to argue that the Democrats have coalesced in a much saner, better place than the Republicans, I'd agree 100%. But they have coalesced. There is a distinct Democratic 'pole' that didn't exist until like 2011.
If they coalesced on an existing center-left ideological space (which has been the core identity of non-Southern Democrats from before WW2, whatevoccasional nal deviations from that the complexity of the US political landscape has generated), with less variation, that is not movement towards an extreme, which is the implied meaning and common understanding of 'polarisation', that both sides have become more extreme. If we all live near the equator and your lot moves to the North Pole, we all are not polarized, you have moved to an extreme latitude. Us equatorial types don't constitute a pole, except by redefining what poles (extremes) are.
To the degree that partisan policies or positions can be plotted on a simplified ideological or political scale or space, and they have been so plotted, what I describe is what has happened. Such plots are easy to find.
The damage 'polarization' does is to obscure significant real-world shifts. On It's own or infrequently used, the damage is perhaps slight, but it is a part of the rhetorical mishmash that is bothsiderism, whose intellectual damage is significant.
As thing stand in 2024, most elected Democrats have very similar positions on almost all issues, and those positions are to the left of most Americans. Both of those things are recent developments, and they have happened alongside similar developments in the Republican party. That's polarization.
Now you are free to argue that one side is a lot better than the other one, or that one side is more strongly in the tradition of the postwar consensus on most issues, but that's still polarization. There are two very distinctive nodes in American politics in 2024, and you can't decide one of them gets to be on the equator because you prefer it to be so, or because there are 15,000 left-wing ideologies held by a total of 30,000 people in this country, or because saying so implies that the Democratic node is equivalent to the Republican one.
Similarity, that is, coalescing, has nothing to do with movement towards an extreme, or pole. You are confusing the two. I thought I had demonstrated that. To elaborate on my perhaps clunky analogy, if we Equatorians all lived in a band between 15°S and 5°S, and if they all move to near 10°S, or even to -15°, or even to 20°S, while your lot moves to 85°N, and in many cases entirely off the surface of the planet, that is not polarization of everybody, and the Equatorians are not living at a pole.
That the median Equatorian is now far removed from the median Polarist does not imply polarization of everybody. There has been an absolute movement of Polarists, resulting in an increased relative difference, but not general polarization.
This article sounds a lot like your claims in its framing, but is undermined by its own data, which shows a slight absolute leftwards movement of Democrats and a much larger absolute movement of Republicans.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/03/10/the-polarization-in-todays-congress-has-roots-that-go-back-decades/
The Wikipedia article on polarisation is also worth reading for a quick overview of academic usage of the concept
Are we done with 'polarization' now? I don't think you can back up your claims. And I think you should give some thought to why it is so important for you (and so many others) to bang this particular rhetorical drum. Hint: you don't want to face up to the extremist nature of Republican governance and goals, particularly in a time of an explicit embrace of authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, and whatever the latest Trumpist obsession is. It's a rhetorical device deployed in the service of intellectual cowardice.
And to repeat an earlier point, if the Equatorians resist the efforts of the 85° Polarists to force them to live in a Polarist world, that is not polarization, that is resistance to forced movement to one pole.
As to the relation of the Democratic ideological or policy positions to median American electorate views, you're going to have to give some polling evidence for your claim that Democrats are to the left of 'public opinion'. I can't find it, framed as a general claim, and with any robust attempt at capturing 'public opinion' as a singular entity. I don't think self-identification with broad labels is very clarifying. Certainly on a number of issues you could make a case, but generally? How would that case be made?
The only really interesting poll at the national level IMO is the popular vote. You know who won the popular vote 2020, 2016, 2012, 2008, 2000, to take the last 25 years.
...whatever occasional...
Do you have examples of elected Democrats engaging in political hysteria?
I agree with almost everything you say here, until you the part where you are talking about America doing pretty well. I think that is certainly true in aggregate, but I think understanding how this isn't true is important to understanding the rise of Trump. I think humans have evolved alongside the idea of status and this is really important. The status of the people who support Trump has been falling for a long time. This is particularly true of rural males.
The markers of status in rural communities have dissolved and people are looking for new things to take their place. This dissolution has basically caused chaos and despair in large swathes of the population. A stable manufacturing job used to be a marker of high status, along with owning a home, etc. A lot of these things are no longer accessible to the average person. In many communities owning a big pickup truck has become a big marker of status. This doesn't help the level of understanding between educated urban males and rural males.
I'm not sure what the answer to all this is. Maybe it is possible to create new markers of status that would be more beneficial to society. I think society could really benefit from things like volunteering becoming high status instead of educational level, fancy vacations, etc. I do think that it is important to think about and understand the role of status in the social processes at work here.