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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
There are people who believe that the political polarization now afflicting the United States might finally start to subside if Americans of both parties could somehow become more empathetic. If you're one of these people, the American Political Science Review has sobering news for you.
Last week APSR—one of the alpha journals in political science—published a study[$] which found that "empathic concern does not reduce partisan animosity in the electorate and in some respects even exacerbates it."
The study had two parts. In the first part, Americans who scored high on an empathy scale showed higher levels of "affective polarization"—defined as the difference between the favorability rating they gave their political party and the rating they gave the opposing party. In the second part, undergraduates were shown a news story about a controversial speaker from the opposing party visiting a college campus. Students who had scored higher on the empathy scale were more likely to applaud efforts to deny the speaker a platform.
It gets worse. These high-empathy students were also more likely to be amused by reports that students protesting the speech had injured a bystander sympathetic to the speaker. That's right: According to this study, people prone to empathy are prone to schadenfreude.
This study is urgently important—though not because it's a paradigm shifter, shedding radically new light on our predicament. As the authors note, their findings are in many ways consistent with conclusions reached by other scholars in recent years. But the view of empathy that's emerging from this growing body of work hasn't much trickled down to the public. And public understanding of it may be critical to shifting America's political polarization into reverse somewhere between here and the abyss.
(Score: 1) by VacuumTube on Monday November 11 2019, @11:06PM (7 children)
It's the reason Trump got into office. Everyone knew that political corruption was out of control prior to the 2016 election, and they were angry. It was a bipartisan anger, but Trump was able to take one side of the division and convince them that he was going to drain the swamp. At the same time he would extract revenge, and his supporters loved the idea. Those on the other side could see that Trump couldn't be trusted and would be a disaster, but the only alternative within their grasp was Hillary. Had the Democratic party nominated Bernie Sanders most of the angry people would have voted for him, and he would have easily won the election. Either the DNC foolishly underestimated the intensity of the anger, or they deliberately let Trump win because a Sanders presidency would be intolerable for them. This latter is probably the biggest risk facing America in the 2020 election.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday November 12 2019, @12:04PM (6 children)
Yes, I'd say you summed it up quite neatly. I preferred the kind populist, but we got a jerk populist instead. In surprise of all surprises, though, the jerk populist killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership immediately upon taking office. He started a trade war with China, which country has been playing us all for patsies for 40 years. He's also trying to do something real about illegal immigration, which I never cared about but which is a constant threat to the economic prospects of people lower on the ladder in the US like Latinos and Blacks (on average); result: their employment rates are the highest they've been since they started keeping labor statistics.
On the downside, he has not kicked enough of the High and Mighty in the nuts. But he has kicked some. Honestly if he frog-marched the Clintons, Jamie Dimon, and Lloyd Blankfein out to Guantanamo live on camera he'd win every state in 2020.
So I'll vote for the jerk populist again, gladly. I don't have to listen to his speeches. I haven't turned on a single, screeching MSM program in three years, because it has become more than obvious they are all lying, all the time.
Bernie Sanders is not the creature he once was. Bowing to Hillary after she openly cheated him broke something in that guy. Now he says he would give Cortez a lot of power in his administration, which to me is tantamount to a declaration of insanity. The only Democrat I don't actively loathe is Tulsi Gabbard, but I will never vote for another Democrat again until the Clintons are in prison.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by VacuumTube on Tuesday November 12 2019, @06:42PM
I think the reason that Bernie didn't condemn Hillary and the things she did is that he realized he would have less chance of becoming president if he alienated himself from the Democratic party. Bernie also respects the idea that politics requires a measure of dignity and respect for the opinions of others, even when you don't agree with them. He's been unwilling to jump into the mud-bath with his opponents. A least that's my assessment.
Trump has done a lot of damage to the country, and I don't believe that I could ever justify voting for him. He stands for the kind of tyrannical rule that the U.S. was formed to overcome. Trump is antithetic to the United States, however much we might enjoy the shame he brings upon a few offenders. The old cliche of throwing the baby out with the bathwater comes to mind as the best we could ever get from Trump.
(Score: 1) by VacuumTube on Wednesday November 13 2019, @03:48PM (4 children)
Phoenix666,
I know that this is getting to be a stale topic, but there's one other thing that's been nagging me since I forgot to mention it earlier.
You wrote:
" He's also trying to do something real about illegal immigration, which I never cared about but which is a constant threat to the economic prospects of people lower on the ladder in the US like Latinos and Blacks (on average); result: their employment rates are the highest they've been since they started keeping labor statistics."
I've heard this a lot, but I've never seen anyone cite any facts to back it up. From what I've seen illegal immigrants mostly end up with the worst jobs our society has to offer. It's not like there are people fighting for jobs picking fruit and vegetables. I've watched farmers disc under hundreds of melons in California because labor to do a second harvest has already moved on. Illegal immigrants aren't taking any significant number of jobs anyone else wants, are they?
Underemployment of minorities is a serious problem, but I don't think you can blame illegal immigration. A quick Google search brings up a lot of hits, such as the following:
"An IPC analysis of 2011 data from the American Community Survey found that, at the county level, there is no statistically significant relationship between the unemployment rate and the presence of recent immigrants who arrived in 2000 or later." from https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/economic-blame-game-immigration-and-unemployment [americanimmigrationcouncil.org]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 13 2019, @09:42PM (3 children)
Black and Hispanic unemployment is at a record low [cnbc.com]. Note: the source is CNBC.
Unskilled Workers Lose Out to Immigrants [nytimes.com]. From the NY Times.
I cite those two because I surmise you would reckon them credible.
Check the unemployment numbers for Black Men [stlouisfed.org] from the St. Louis Fed. It spiked crazy high under Obama. That's just for comparison.
I distinctly recall being shocked by how high black male unemployment was under Obama; it was Great Depression high. The press didn't dwell on it, though. Likewise the press has not made much of how low black male unemployment is now. Neither phase of those numbers fit the Narrative they wanted to spin, so they largely elided it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by VacuumTube on Thursday November 14 2019, @01:39PM (2 children)
"I cite those two because I surmise you would reckon them credible."
Okay, I had that coming. But could you tell me why believe that illegal immigrants are taking jobs from minority U.S. citizens? It really doesn't make sense to me, but perhaps you know something I don't.
I'm also interested in understanding why you apparently believe that the only hope of salvation of the U.S. is to destroy what exists and start over. Here again, it looks to me as though we have one more chance to make major changes before it's too late.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:44PM (1 child)
The question has been asked & answered, counselor. The second source cited, the NY Times piece.
Everyone across the political spectrum sees the same dysfunction. Elizabeth Warren in 2010 commented on the Dodd-Frank Bill, saying it should have smashed the big banks to pieces. In 2014 an FTC regulator became a whistleblower when she documented howregulatory capture [boingboing.net] has become near total in the financial system. Jeffrey Epstein ran an extensive pedophile and blackmail operation that involved many powerful people, including the Clintons, but he was murdered in his prison cell and the Clintons remain at large. The recent scandal about college admissions points up how even that is rigged.
Occupy Wall Street called the powerful interests responsible the "1%." The Tea Party and Trump supporters call them the "Deep State." But they're both talking about the same people, and they are very much on the same team, playing against us, the regular citizens. Left vs. Right, Republican vs. Democrat, and all those formulations are only kabuki theater meant to keep the citizens at each others' throats instead of fighting the people really responsible for their misery. Meanwhile, they steal everything that's not nailed down.
That is not a system that can or will reform itself. Q.E.D.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by VacuumTube on Friday November 15 2019, @07:06PM
Sorry that I misunderstood you on the NY Times article. I've had a little trouble understanding your point of view, but now it's now pretty clear. It seems the only thing we really disagree on is what it will take to fix the many problems. Even in that I have to grant that it's quite possible you're right. I just hope that you're not, but we'll see next year.