The Six Realities
Polarization has given way for an entire bifurcation of reality not just between parties, but within them.
As we often say, a core thesis here is that the arrival of the internet changed humanity in profound ways that we are still comprehending. With the increase in the sheer volume of information available to us came the increase in the volatility of information.
In lay terms, the 21st century saw us enter a world where the storylines that were available to us (and thus guided the evolution of our thoughts) expanded and diverged. This “big bang” of information didn’t cause a change over night, but over the past 15-20 years, it has led to people living in functionally different realities. Increasingly, we’ve moved from arguing what to do about issue X to arguing whether issue X is even happening or if issue Y is happening instead.
I covered this a bit with respect to Covid: one side saw a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, the other saw a once-in-a-lifetime mass psychotic event. Most of what we debated over that time was about what was even happening rather than arguing about different courses of action from a shared understanding of reality.
One bifurcation of reality is bad, but there is no reason that the effects of the internet would stop there. The same forces exist within the modern left and the modern right. We’re at a unique point now where we see both those forces dividing into separate realities as well.
It’s not just the presidential cycle, which often draws parties in different directions. That matters, but what is different this time is that the questions of what is even true (let alone what the best course of action is) is splitting as well.
When we interact with people in the real world, most of us tend to only come across people who are in the same reality. We’ve sorted ourselves so effectively by geography and social class that realities tend not to come into contact all that much.
So let’s look at the landscape of realities and try to give a sense of the realities one can choose to live in:
Magadonia
Magadonians live in a cult of personality that believe the word of their one lord and savior, Donald Trump. Ordinarily, a cult of personality around a single person wouldn’t necessitate its own worldview. But the depths of the cult and the division between Magadonians and the rest of the political world is so deep that it requires it’s own section.
Aside from the love of the Orange Man, Magadonians have bought into several broad themes that coalesce into a worldview. On some of these themes, they have allies from other realities, but taken together and with their adoration of Trump and the possibility that their view will shift on a dime as the Orange Wonder spits stuff out on Truth Social, they are their own bucket. They tend to believe:
Whatever Donald Trump says is true.
Mass immigration is a huge problem for the country and needs to be shut down.
The Political Elites and Establishment is an enemy force acting against the will and interest of the American people.
Reformists
Reformists are largely aligned to many of the structural problems that Magadonians see. However, they also tend to care about various other important things: the national debt and fiscal situation, the Covid response, and dare I say a standard of truth that isn’t present in Magadonia.
Their core tenants would be:
The U.S. is in a state of slow motion collapse that necessitates immediate action on immigration, fiscal soundness, and repair of the institutions that are so obviously broken.
American society and the world in general are in a state of crisis. Getting out of that requires some aspect of a return to past principles that have been lost in the modern age: family values, hard work, one single truth, free speech.
The far left (who we’ll get to) are a true threat to society and need to be actively combatted in the battlefield of ideology rather than acquiesced to.
Reformists realize that substantial action is needed, and cannot just rely upon the old mantra of conservatism to “conserve” the status quo. We need huge cuts to Government spending, radical curbs to the power and influence of Government, and much more. The time for playing nice is over: there are 60+ years of radical leftist policy that needs undone.
This is my tribe, my reality, so to speak. So take from that what you will. And yes, I’d love for more people to join me in this reality as I believe it is the closest to what is actually happening in the world today!
The Dinosaurs
The Dinosaurs are a misfortunate group of folks like David French, Jonah Goldberg, and many older “establishment Republicans” who are in denial about most of this. They long for the “good old days” where Democrats and Republicans in DC would grab a drink together, not understanding the true nature of the left.
To do my best to steelman this worldview, they tend to belive:
America needs to be the world’s policemen (in contrast to Magadonians and Reformists)
Moderate changes can be effective in improving governance, no overhaul is needed.
Politics should become less ideological and more practical.
As you may be able to tell, I don’t give this reality much credence. Perhaps 10 years ago, I would have placed myself here. I supported Mitt Romney around that time who is another perfect fit for this group.
But today? This group is willfully oblivious to hard facts about reality largely exposed by things like the Covid nonsense, the George Floyd riots, the Ukraine money pit, the tech censorship, the capture of institutions, and more. Hopelessly lost, they will go extinct, but they are messing things up quite a bit in the meantime.
The Old School Liberals
The counterpart to the Dinosaurs on the right, Old School Liberals are the people who the left has left behind. People like Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, Bret Weinstein, Bari Weiss, and others would be some of the well-known members of this group.
This group is diverse in their opinions, but are generally free thinking as they all share the openness trait more common amongst liberals. They share many of the same ideals as the rest of the left: strong social welfare/safety net, welcoming immigration policies, and thus want government involvement to be relatively high.
Despite all this, these folks often get branded as “right wing” or “alt right” for reasons that are clear only if you understand the dynamics in play. The fact is, each of those four examples I mentioned have stated that they have never voted for a Republican. So considering them a part of the right wouldn’t make much sense.
If we had to classify this group, we could say a few things are generally true:
Tend to have liberal mentalities on immigration, social safety nets, and bottom line believe that the Government can be a force for good.
Have become disillusioned with the left (particularly the True Believers who largely dictate Democratic policies at this point) and thus have shifted away from the Government-Media complex.
Given this separation, this group has increasingly come to see Free Speech and prevention of censorship (whether direct or indirect) as an issue of paramount importance.
The Trust-the-Government Groupies
The analog on the left of the Dinosaurs are those good souls who, somehow, trust what the government and its mouthpieces in the media are telling them. I hardly need to describe this group, because you know exactly what they believe and it can be summed up quite easily:
This group believes whatever they hear from the Government or the Mainstream Media.
Currently that means they believe: government good, scary right wing bad, need censorship, diversity good, cruise missiles good, climate change bad.
As unlikely as it may seem, this group is pretty large. Evidenced by utterly inexplicable fact that 37% of Americans have a “great deal” of trust in the CDC’s health recommendations as recently as March of 2023.
While it could be said about any of these realities, I really don’t know what you could possibly do to break someone out of their reality. Since it does happen, I am sure that certain statements can shift people over time, but these realities are so fundamentally different that just trying to talk to someone isn’t going to cut it.
In meme form, it’d more or less be this:
Memes aside, this group would eat glue if the Government (via the media) told them to. That sounds crazy, but it’s not a stretch: this group has already done much dumber things to their own body at the behest of the Government. Glue, after all, is non-toxic.
True Believers
Lastly and most dangerously, we have the True Believers: socialists and marxists who truly believe that, despite a death toll north of 100 million, centrally commanded socialism/communism will work this time.
Wokeness, social justice, and climate change are some of the tools that this group wields, but these are surface level manifestations of the underpinning worldview that is fixated on collectivist well-being rather than individual well-being. At the end of the day, they can and would drop any one of the surface-level causes du jour because the true mission is collectivism.
The most accurate description of this group for the 21st century would be this: they are a “Climate Death Cult.” They believe:
The climate is at or imminently headed toward an “apocalypse”
As such, strong collectivist measures are required for individual rights and autonomy to be curtailed in the name of “the common good.”
Necessarily, such a subjugation of individual rights requires immense centralized power. As power is what they need, power is their ultimate currency.
Thus, this group gravitates to these centralized institutions and looks to wield them against the core threat to their ideology: individual autonomy.
They may not have the cojones to push for outright depopulation in order to achieve “equity” and “save the planet”. Few are dumb enough to do it directly, but some will dog whistle about it, and some will try to convince the groupies that kids are bad for the planet.
The True Believers now run the show on the Democratic Party. The brilliance of the Biden campaign is that he appears as an old school liberal while his dementia allows the true power of the Presidency to be handled by the monolithic institutional bureaucracy that these True Believers have already infiltrated and largely control.
Modern (post-2016) political dysfunction can largely be boiled down to a shift on the right to the Cult of Personality Magadonians, while the left has been captured fully by the True Believers after years of being held in check by Old School Liberals.
While it’d be a disservice to this bifurcation to one factor, the volatility of information is a main driver of this separation. As we sit at the end of 2023, each of these six groups now has almost totally siloed sources of information. To the extent that one source does bleed over, it is almost always for purposes of dunking on another side or warning about their nefarious plans.
We could look at many dark outcomes from this process, as Americans increasingly find themselves isolated in views from their fellow Americans. Many such outcomes are easily imagined: totalitarianism, collapse, civil unrest, war.
But I’ll close on an optimistic note: the bifurcation within parties, should it continue, will hopefully prevent any of the terrifying outcomes should any of these six segments gain too much power. And should such bifurcation continue, we’ll eventually see 12 groups, then 24, then 48, and so on. We will quickly arrive at a point where the only logical conclusion is a “live and let live” reality that fundamentally gets us back to the Federalism and minimal governance structure that the U.S. was built upon.