Oh, how I love it when I see a comment somewhere that starts out "all libtards," or "all repugs." It's not the wildly overused and unimaginative insults that are the problem; it's that word "all." Such broad generalizations do nothing except further cement the political divide in this country.
You can't take the behavior of one person (who it seems is almost always an outlier and/or ideologue) and ascribe it to all who share a political affiliation/race/religion/etc. ... not because it's not politically correct (do I have to remind you I hate that?), but because it's logically fallacious.
William R. Easterly, author of The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor, described on Bloomberg View the steps in what he called "bogus analysis of groups": "First, define the group by the outcome you are trying to explain. Second, invoke a stereotype and exaggerate it. Third, endow the group with innate permanent properties, akin to racial characteristics. Together, these errors establish a kind of collective guilt, blaming an entire ill-defined group for the failings of its individuals, even if the offenders are a tiny minority. This is both divisive and false--and all the more toxic because of its flavor of intellectual propriety."
As Easterly noted, "The crucial point is that all these stereotypes purport to be findings. In fact, they're the opposite: a refusal to see vast individual variation within groups."
Using the commonly held stereotypes, conservatives can't be pro-choice (which is not the same as pro-abortion, by the way), atheist or agnostic (or God forbid, Muslim) or gay. Likewise, liberals can't be Christian, straight or pro-life. I'm guessing that people think if such a thing were to happen, the space-time continuum would go kablooey and we'd all die.
And yet it hasn't happened, even though there are many people whose lives and beliefs belie those generalizations. Take a look at the Tomi Lahren dust-up with Glenn Beck and The Blaze, currently in a Texas courtroom after Lahren was fired following her admission that she's pro-choice (gasp!). And liberal writer Nat Hentoff, who before his death in January once described himself as "a member of the Proud and Ancient Order of Stiff-Necked Jewish Atheists," reportedly lost jobs because of his pro-life views (including, some believe, his 50-year-long gig at the Village Voice).
Oh, but they're not "real" conservatives/liberals, I hear you say. To that I ask: Who decides who is a real anything? Oh, right ... the hyperpartisan, because they're obviously such great judges ... at least they're certainly good at passing judgment on any who don't fit their idea of what their party is.
In a 2016 study, political scientists Douglas J. Ahler and Gaurav Sood found that partisanship's power seemed to lie "not in the actual composition of the parties, but in how people perceive the parties to be composed. We find that people make large, systematic errors when thinking about the parties' composition, considerably overestimating the extent to which partisans belong to party-stereotypical groups."
Two prime examples they cite are that Americans believe 32 percent of Democrats are homosexual (it's only 6.3 percent), and that 38 percent of Republicans make over $250,000 a year (that one's 2.2 percent). Those misconceptions, they found, color how partisans judge the opposing party, and even those in their own party (and it seemed to be worse among those who paid attention to political news). However, when given accurate information about the opposition's composition, the partisans in the study tended to rate the opposition as less extreme.
Gee, facts do come in handy, don't they? What was that NBC campaign? Oh, yeah ... "The more you know."
In reporting on the study in the Washington Post, John Sides wrote: "When we hear 'Democrat' or 'Republican,' we often think about who that party is. That is, we associate certain racial, religious and social groups with each party--often the same ones that we have for decades. Knowing which of those groups we like in turn helps us choose a party. Unfortunately, we have very caricatured notions of who the parties are. And the more we exaggerate the differences in the social bases of each party, the more tribal partisanship becomes."
Aw, c'mon! It's so much easier to just call liberals baby-killers even if they're pro-life, and conservatives Teavangelicals even if they're proud atheists. Don't make us consider them as people!!! Not fair!
As to those people that hyperpartisans like to point to to prove the other side is evil, evil, evil, I'll leave you with this admonishment from Easterly: "Whatever group we belong to, each of us should be held responsible for our own misbehavior, violence, and racism."
Personal responsibility? Novel concept. Next someone might say we shouldn't leap to conclusions.
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Assistant Editor Brenda Looper is editor of the Voices page. Read her blog at blooper0223.wordpress.com. Email her at blooper@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 04/26/2017