#politicalpolarization — Public Fediverse posts

https://www.europesays.com/unitedstates/57452/ All the president’s nominations: Taking stock at the 200-day mark #Article #CenterForEffectivePublicManagement(CEPM) #Commentary #Congress #Courts&Law #ExecutiveBranch #FixGov #GovernanceStudies #NorthAmerica #PoliticalParties #PoliticalPolarization #POTUS #presidency #PresidentOfTheUnitedStates #USGovernment&Politics #USStatesAndTerritories #WhiteHouse #WhiteHouse&ExecutiveBranch

https://www.europesays.com/unitedstates/53535/ Can a “Third Force” Help America Move Beyond Political Division? #CivicEngagement #Cross‑partisanCollaboration #DemocracyRenewal #DemocraticReform #PoliticalCampaigns #PoliticalParties #PoliticalPolarization

https://www.europesays.com/unitedstates/52268/ How rural economic woes imperil GOP majorities #2026Midterms #Article #Business&Workforce #Campaigns&Elections #CenterForEffectivePublicManagement(CEPM) #Commentary #Congress #FixGov #GlobalEconomy&Development #GlobalTrade #GovernanceStudies #NorthAmerica #PoliticalParties #PoliticalPolarization #presidency #PublicOpinion #SupplyChains #Trade #Trade&SupplyChains #USEconomy #USGovernment&Politics #USStatesAndTerritories

https://www.europesays.com/unitedstates/47330/ Electability over ideology: Takeaways from the 2026 primaries #2026Midterms #Article #Campaigns&Elections #CenterForEffectivePublicManagement(CEPM) #Congress #FixGov #GovernanceStudies #InternationalAffairs #NorthAmerica #PoliticalCampaigns #PoliticalParties #PoliticalPolarization #presidency #research #USDemocracy #USEconomy #USForeignPolicy #USGovernment&Politics #USStatesAndTerritories #USTradePolicy

https://www.europesays.com/unitedstates/34594/ Assessing President Trump’s second-term staffing record #&Governance #Article #CenterForEffectivePublicManagement(CEPM) #Conflict #Congress #democracy #ExecutiveBranch #FixGov #GovernanceStudies #GovernmentReform #InternationalAffairs #NorthAmerica #PoliticalParties #PoliticalPolarization #POTUS #presidency #PresidentOfTheUnitedStates #research #StateOfTheUnion2026 #USGovernment&Politics #USStatesAndTerritories #WhiteHouse #WhiteHouse&ExecutiveBranch

https://www.europesays.com/unitedstates/27062/ Americans agree on corruption, but partisanship shapes who is blamed #Article #Campaigns&Elections #CenterForEffectivePublicManagement(CEPM) #Congress #Courts&Law #Crime #FixGov #GovernanceStudies #Justice&Safety #NorthAmerica #PoliticalCampaigns #PoliticalParties #PoliticalPolarization #presidency #PublicOpinion #research #Society&Culture #USGovernment&Politics #USStatesAndTerritories

https://www.europesays.com/unitedstates/20861/ GAO data reveal the decline of ordinary appropriations law #Article #CenterForEffectivePublicManagement(CEPM) #Congress #Courts&Law #FederalFiscal&TaxPolicy #FixGov #GovernanceStudies #NorthAmerica #PoliticalInvestigations #PoliticalParties #PoliticalPolarization #presidency #research #USEconomy #USGovernment&Politics #USStatesAndTerritories

Korea’s Crises Hold Clues to the World’s Future

Tesla CEO Elon Musk once said South Korea would be the first country on Earth to disappear. If…
#EuropeSays #Korea #KR #Seoul #East-Westrebalancing #globalizationandinequality #Koreanyoungergeneration #PoliticalPolarization #populationaging #SouthKoreabirthrate
https://www.europesays.com/korea/179379/

https://www.europesays.com/people/256504/ Op-ed | If meeting Trump is good for Mamdani, why was it bad for Jeffries? #BipartisanCooperation #DemocraticParty #DonaldTrump #FabienLevy #GracieMansion #HakeemJeffries #JaredKushner #NewYorkCityPolitics #NewYorkCityGovernment #NYCMayor #PoliticalPolarization #RepublicanParty #TrumpAdministration #UnitedNationsGeneralAssembly #ZohranMamdani

DATE: October 3, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: Americans often fail to notice when Democrats and Republicans are moving in the same direction

URL: https://www.psypost.org/americans-often-fail-to-notice-when-democrats-and-republicans-are-moving-in-the-same-direction/

Informing people about how the political attitudes of opposing parties are moving in the same direction over time might help reduce partisan hostility. New research published in Political Psychology suggests that people frequently fail to notice how much support for certain social issues has grown within both parties. When people read about these shared trajectories of opinion change without being reminded of the current gap between parties, they tend to expect more future common ground and report slightly warmer feelings toward their political opponents.

To understand how political divides operate, psychologists often look at descriptive social norms, which are individuals’ perceptions of what other people believe or do. In politics, perceptions of these norms are frequently distorted. For instance, a study covered by PsyPost in 2021 indicated that both Democrats and Republicans overestimate how much the opposing party dislikes them. When people assume their political opponents hold extreme or hostile views, it often drives further polarization.

Researchers often try to correct these false assumptions by presenting static norms, which describe the current level of support for a specific issue within a group. However, static norms only capture a single moment in time. Dynamic norms, on the other hand, describe how a group’s beliefs or behaviors are changing over time. A 2017 study found that showing people a trend is growing in popularity can persuade them to adopt new behaviors, even if current support is relatively low.

Applying this idea to politics requires overcoming another layer of misperception. A 2022 study indicated that Americans often misjudge how public opinion has shifted over decades, usually overestimating how much attitudes have changed, especially in a liberal direction. The authors of the new study set out to test whether correcting misperceptions about these trends could soften partisan hostility. How such a message is framed may matter: a 2021 paper argued that describing partisan divisions can make division seem like the norm and inadvertently deepen polarization.

The research was led by Trystan Loustau, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College. “A lot of research shows that Democrats and Republicans have distorted perceptions of one another, and that these misperceptions can make political divisions seem larger than they really are,” Loustau told PsyPost. “But most of that work focuses on a snapshot of the present: what Democrats or Republicans believe right now. We were interested in whether people also misperceive change: even when members of both parties are moving in the same direction on an issue, do people recognize that convergence?”

“That seemed especially important because the direction people think society is moving may shape how they imagine its future,” Loustau explained. “If you believe the two parties are becoming increasingly divided, you might respond very differently to political opponents than if you believe there are areas where they are gradually finding more common ground.”

In the first study, 368 Democrats and Republicans estimated current support and changes in support for 12 social issues on which support had actually risen in both parties. The researchers found that participants systematically underestimated attitude change. Only about half of the estimates accurately recognized that support for these issues was increasing. They also underestimated current levels of support by about 12 points for Democrats and 20 points for Republicans.

Misperceptions were especially pronounced when evaluating Republicans. Only about 25 percent of Democrats’ estimates and 44 percent of Republicans’ estimates regarding Republican attitude changes were accurate, compared to 77 percent and 66 percent accuracy for Democratic attitude changes. This finding is in tension with the 2022 study: here, participants often missed real increases in support for progressive positions, especially among Republicans. The authors suggest people may expect Democrats, but not Republicans, to move left.

In addition, the researchers found a correlation between recognizing these trends and intergroup attitudes. For every additional 10 percent of estimates that correctly identified change in the opposing party, participants felt about 3 points warmer toward that party on a 0-to-100 scale. This association held after accounting for accuracy about current support, which itself was unrelated to warmth.

“Political disagreement is real, but our perceptions of it are not always accurate,” Loustau pointed out. “We may be particularly bad at noticing when attitudes are changing.”

To see if correcting these misperceptions could help, the researchers randomly assigned 1,187 partisans to a dynamic norm condition, a static norm condition, or a control condition featuring apolitical topics. The dynamic norm message provided both the past and current levels of partisan support alongside the percentage-point increases over time. The static norm message only provided current support levels.

The results indicated that the dynamic norm group expected more future common ground between parties than the control group. Combining the current support levels with the trend data did not produce broader positive changes in attitudes toward the outparty, meaning the opposing party, such as warmth or expectations of belonging. The authors suggest that presenting the current levels of support alongside the trend may have inadvertently reminded participants of the existing gaps between the parties.

For the third study, the team refined the intervention using a new sample of 1,154 participants. This time, the dynamic norm condition isolated the trend information by completely removing references to current levels of partisan support. The message focused solely on how support had grown within each party over time. Participants were randomly assigned to read the refined message, the original combined message from the second study, the static message, or the control material.

The refined message increased expected common ground and expected future feelings of belonging with the outparty. People who read it reported outparty warmth of about 32.5 on a 100-point scale, compared to 25.9 in the control group, and also rated members of the other party more positively. The researchers noted that a recent review of 77 depolarization interventions found an average gain of about 5.4 points in outparty warmth, making the refined message’s 6.6-point difference comparable to that average.

The refined message was the only one to outperform the control condition on all four of these measures. On warmth and positive evaluations, however, it did not statistically outperform the original combined message or the static message, and the static message also raised warmth relative to control. No version of the message changed how much people saw the other party as overlapping with themselves.

“What surprised me most was how much the way we presented the same information mattered,” Loustau said. “It was a useful reminder that more information is not necessarily better: emphasizing how far apart the parties remain may overshadow evidence that they are moving in the same direction.”

He added, “The broader takeaway is that focusing exclusively on today’s partisan divisions can obscure meaningful ways in which public opinion is changing.”

The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2024, which found that showing partisans how much their core personal values overlap increased perceived similarity, strengthened beliefs that compromise is possible, and made people more hopeful. That study focused on present-day overlap in values, whereas the new study focused on how opinions on specific issues have shifted over time.

As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The sample was an online group of participants rather than a nationally representative one, and outcomes were measured right after reading the messages, with no follow-up.

The study also relied on real statistics for issues that were primarily progressive in nature, so it is not known whether these effects would hold for conservative policies or in different political contexts. Using real polling data also meant the researchers could not test larger shifts in opinion, and many of the real changes they presented were modest.

“The effects on attitudes toward the opposing party were small, and I think it is important to be clear about that,” Loustau noted. “A brief informational message is not going to eliminate partisan polarization. At the same time, polarization is a large, persistent social problem, so even small changes produced by a relatively minimal intervention can be informative, particularly because the intervention consisted simply of changing which accurate information about public opinion people saw.”

“I would view the findings less as evidence for a single solution to polarization and more as evidence that people’s expectations about where political groups are headed can influence how they think about those groups in the present,” he observed.

It is also possible that emphasizing negative trajectories could have the opposite effect. Messages highlighting increasing disagreement or polarization might inadvertently increase hostility. Future research could explore whether this kind of dynamic messaging works for other intergroup conflicts, such as those involving race or religion, and whether the observed changes in attitude persist over longer periods of time.

“Long term, I’m interested in what happens when we encourage people to think about political differences in a more future-oriented way,” Loustau said. “Rather than focusing only on how different we are right now, I want to understand what changes when people recognize both their own and others’ capacity to change. That shared capacity may itself be a form of common ground, opening space to imagine not just what society currently looks like, but what we want our relationships and world to look like in the future.”

The study, “Partisans misperceive and are influenced by dynamic norms,” was authored by Trystan Loustau, Ashley Fabrizio, Liane Young, Jordan Wylie, and Stylianos Syropoulos.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/americans-often-fail-to-notice-when-democrats-and-republicans-are-moving-in-the-same-direction/

-------------------------------------------------

Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org

Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #DynamicNorms #PoliticalPolarization #CrossPartisanHope #SharedTrajectory #PublicOpinion #PoliticalPsychology #BelongingRatherThanDivision #Misperceptions #InterpartyWarmth #CivicsCommunication

https://www.europesays.com/unitedstates/5833/ The civic consensus beneath America’s political divide #Article #CenterForEffectivePublicManagement(CEPM) #Commentary #FixGov #GovernanceStudies #NorthAmerica #PoliticalCampaigns #PoliticalParties #PoliticalPolarization #PublicOpinion #Society&Culture #USGovernment&Politics #USStatesAndTerritories

DATE: September 29, 2026 at 09:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG

** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------

TITLE: As America shifted left under Trump, emotional hostility widened the partisan gap

URL: https://www.psypost.org/as-america-shifted-left-under-trump-emotional-hostility-widened-the-partisan-gap/

Over the course of Donald Trump’s first presidential term, American public opinion generally shifted in a more liberal direction, driven primarily by left-leaning and independent voters changing their minds on specific issues. At the same time, emotional animosity between the two major political parties intensified, a shift that appears connected to the widening gap in policy preferences. These findings were recently published in American Politics Research.

Political scientists often track changes in public opinion using a concept known as the public mood. This mood tends to operate like a thermostat. When a conservative administration is in power, the public typically reacts by moving to the left, and when a liberal administration takes over, the public usually shifts to the right.

Beneath these broad swings, there is also a phenomenon called partisan divergence. This refers to the growing gap between Democrats and Republicans on specific policy issues, such as health care, taxation, and immigration. Over the past few decades, the two parties have moved further apart on these topics.

This policy divide has been accompanied by a rise in affective partisanship, which is the emotional dislike or hostility that voters feel toward the opposing party. Theoretical models help explain how these factors interact. For instance, a 2024 study covered by PsyPost demonstrated that a stronger connection between political disagreement and personal dislike tends to drive people into two opposing ideological camps.

Understanding how public opinion shifts requires looking at individual voters. The authors of the new study note that a study covered by PsyPost in 2023 found that party identification remained remarkably stable between 2011 and 2020. This indicates that when the public mood changes, it is often because people who already identify with a party are changing their minds on issues, rather than simply switching their party allegiance.

The research was conducted by Alan Yang, a senior lecturer at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and Robert Y. Shapiro, a professor in Columbia’s Department of Political Science and School of International and Public Affairs. “We were interested in whether the election of an ‘untraditional’ Republican president in 2016 may have upended or accelerated past patterns of opinion change, partisan divergence, and ‘affective partisanship,'” the researchers told PsyPost.

Because Donald Trump’s platform did not always align with traditional conservatism, it was an open question whether the expected liberal reaction would occur. The authors wanted to see if partisan gaps continued to widen, and whether the emotional animosity of the era played a role in how individuals changed their minds on policy issues.

To explore these questions, the researchers analyzed data from the 2016-2020 American National Election Study (ANES) and the 2016-2020 General Social Survey (GSS). Both datasets are uniquely useful because they use panel designs, meaning they surveyed the exact same individuals at multiple points in time. This setup allows researchers to track whether an individual actually changed their answer from one election year to the next.

The team examined 32 specific policy questions from the ANES and 40 questions from the GSS. These questions covered a wide range of topics, including government spending, racial equality, immigration, foreign affairs, and social issues like abortion and gay rights. The researchers tracked how responses changed between 2016 and 2020 across the entire sample and within specific political groups.

To measure affective partisanship, the surveys used a feeling thermometer scale. Respondents were asked to rate their feelings toward Democrats and Republicans on a scale from 0 to 100 degrees, with higher numbers indicating warmer, more positive feelings.

The analysis indicates a noticeable overall shift in a liberal direction between 2016 and 2020 across many policy areas. For example, support for keeping or increasing welfare spending, providing more government services, and expanding immigration levels grew substantially. “We found an (expected) liberal rebound in aggregate opinion after the election of a Republican president, which was an open question given that Donald Trump was not a mainstream conservative Republican,” the researchers noted.

However, this overall shift masked a growing divide between the political parties. The partisan divergence continued to expand, and it did so asymmetrically. The liberal shift in the broader public mood was driven almost entirely by Democrats and Independents adopting more progressive positions on issues like government spending and racial equality.

In contrast, Republican opinions generally remained stable on these issues, or moved slightly to the right on specific topics like scientific research and alternative energy. The findings are in line with research covered by PsyPost in 2026, which found that widening issue divisions were largely driven by the left shifting in a more progressive direction. It is worth noting a slight measurement difference, as the previous study clustered respondents purely by their policy beliefs, whereas the new study measured divergence between self-identified partisans.

The emotional temperature of the country also shifted notably. Overall affective partisanship increased, but the most dramatic changes occurred among Republicans. Between 2016 and 2020, Democratic panelists maintained a steady level of warmth toward their own party and cooled by roughly four degrees toward Republicans.

Republican panelists, on the other hand, grew over 10 degrees warmer toward their fellow Republicans and cooled by about eight degrees toward Democrats. The gap between how much Republicans liked their own party versus the opposing party grew by nearly 19 degrees, which was a much larger jump than the three-degree increase observed among Democrats.

When the researchers looked at individual changes, they found that these short-term increases in emotional polarization predicted changes in actual policy preferences. For both Democrats and Republicans, individuals whose partisan animosity intensified were more likely to change their minds on specific high-profile issues. At the individual level, the researchers found that an “increased affective partisanship level was associated with Republican partisans moving rightward and Democratic partisans moving leftward across a number of highly salient policy preferences during the period of the first Trump presidency.”

For example, voters who developed stronger negative feelings toward the opposing party were more likely to adopt their own party’s typical stance on issues like immigration, the environment, and racial justice.

As with all research, there are a few things to keep in mind. The study looks at a relatively short four-year window that was dominated by a highly unusual political environment and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is hard to know whether the specific dynamics of the Trump presidency will continue into future election cycles.

The relationship between emotional animosity and policy opinions is also highly complex. The data shows an association between the two, but untangling which one causes the other is a challenge. People might develop stronger negative feelings toward the opposing party because they disagree on policy, or they might change their policy views because they want to distance themselves from a party they dislike. Both processes likely happen at the same time.

To see if these dynamics persisted after Trump left office, the authors plan to expand their timeline. “We see as a next step for us and others to extend this analysis to 2020 to 2024 using the available panel data for this period,” Yang and Shapiro said.

The study, “Individuals and Public Opinion Change: The Liberal Rebound, Continued Partisan Divergence and Affective Partisanship 2016–2020,” was authored by Alan Yang and Robert Y. Shapiro.

URL: https://www.psypost.org/as-america-shifted-left-under-trump-emotional-hostility-widened-the-partisan-gap/

-------------------------------------------------

Private, vetted email list for mental health professionals: https://www.clinicians-exchange.org

Unofficial Psychology Today Xitter to toot feed at Psych Today Unofficial Bot @PTUnofficialBot

-------------------------------------------------

#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #PublicOpinion #PoliticalPolarization #AffectivePartisanship #PartisanDivergence #LiberalRebound #TrumpEra #PublicMood #PolicyChange #ANES #GSS

Perception Gaps: Why Misjudging Our Political Opponents Is Damaging American Democracy https://www.byteseu.com/2387575/ #CivilDiscourse #DemocracyAndTrust #PerceptionGap #PoliticalMisperceptions #PoliticalPolarization #PoliticalViolencePrevention #Politics

https://www.europesays.com/people/237123/ Merz faces uphill battle for leadership after disappointing regional election loss in Germany #AfD #AlternativeForGermany #BärbelBas #Berlin #bureaucracy #ChristianDemocraticUnion(CDU) #Economy #FarRightExtremism #FriedrichMerz #Germany #KarinPrien #LarsKlingbeil #LeftParty #ManuelaSchwesig #MecklenburgWesternPomerania #PensionSystem #PoliticalPolarization #Reform #RegionalElections #SaxonyAnhalt #SocialDemocrats #SPD #taxes

https://www.europesays.com/people/222959/ Bill Gates Says ‘It’s a Strange World’ — Only 8% of Americans Think Politicians Are Doing a Good Job vs. 80% in China, Where They Don’t Elect Officials #BillGates #institutions #PoliticalPolarization

https://www.europesays.com/3210637/ John Frank: Political labels often more strategy than ideology #2026MidtermElection #DemocraticSocialism #JohnFrankWEAU #MAGAExtremist #PoliticalBranding #PoliticalCampaignAds #PoliticalExtremism #PoliticalLabels #PoliticalPolarization #Politics #SocialistMeaningPolitics #WisconsinElection2026 #WisconsinPolitics #WisconsinVoters

https://www.europesays.com/people/191844/ Jeffries wants to pack the court. Trump wants to own it. Both are wrong #Constitution #DonaldTrump #HakeemJeffries #Polarization #PoliticalPolarization #Politics #Reform #SupremeCourt

Beyond the Bleachers: Why Political Team Sports Are Ruining Real Community

Table of Contents

• I. Introduction: Real Politics, Manufactured Hate
• II. Why We’re So Divided: How the Gap Was Built
  • A. The Blueprint: How Housing Laws Separated Us
  • B. Team Sports Politics: The Rise of the Political “Homer”
  • C. The Mental Loophole: “You’re One of the Good Ones”
• III. What We Can Actually Do About It
  • 1. Stop Being a Spectator: Challenge the Bubble, Not Just the Noise
  • 2. Refuse to Be the “Exception”
  • 3. Evaluate Policy by Human Impact, Not Scoreboards
  • 4. Clean Up Your Attention: Turn Off the Outrage Engine
• IV. Taking Back Control
• Glossary
• Bibliography & Further Reading

I. Introduction: Real Politics, Manufactured Hate

In 1995, two colleagues met on a job site, spent two years working side by side in the high-demand world of enterprise engineering, and laid the groundwork for a friendship, a bond that would span more than three decades. They live on opposite ends of the country. They don’t call or text each other but over thirty years, through career changes, family milestones, and the quiet passage of time, they remained in each other’s corners—wishing each other well, celebrating life’s victories, and honoring a bond built on direct, daily human experience.

Yet, step onto a social media timeline today, and that same thirty-year friendship looks like a statistical impossibility.

Look at one of their profile pages, and you’ll see non-stop political fighting: culture-war debates, line-in-the-sand opinions, and aggressive party loyalty. To an outsider—or to an internet algorithm designed to spark fights—these two men should be bitter enemies. One is a Black writer who speaks openly about the history and realities of his community; the other a retired older white man who posts intense conservative takes that directly attack those exact ideas.

Why is it such a surprise that these two men are friends? Because the hostility we see online is not an illusion—it is real, visceral animosity driven by an artificial machine. When rival fans brawl in a stadium parking lot, the violence isn’t fake. It is completely irrational to bleed over the color of a jersey, but the hostility itself is dangerously real. We have allowed our political lives to be captured by that exact same dynamic: I often call my friend a homer, a sports term for a fan that will root for their team no matter what. He is the political version of that. In my opinion a victim of a multi-billion-dollar apparatus that takes genuine human fears, turns them into tribal aggression, and points them directly at our neighbors. On a screen, nuance disappears, and real people are flattened into political cartoons.

Now, some might look at my own writing and Facebook posts and say, “Aren’t you one of the people starting these arguments?” But there is a massive difference between picking fights for sport and holding the line with truth. I take painful care to answer commentators with calm, documented facts and to never respond in kind. In a culture addicted to outrage, presenting calm history will often be accused of “starting a fight.” But presenting documented reality isn’t picking a fight—it’s refusing to let a fake peace hide real problems.

The noise on our feeds isn’t proof that we secretly hate each other. It’s the result of a system built to keep us mad, market to our anger, and get us to sit on the sidelines instead of fixing things in our own backyards.

So how did our friendship survive that kind of dynamic?

Because in the real world, relationships are built on real-life experience, mutual respect, and how you actually treat people over time.

If we want to fix this, we have to look past the bleachers. We need to understand how we got so separated in the first place, stop falling for the mental tricks that keep us divided, turn off the outrage machine, and get back to the basic, everyday work of actually looking out for people, no matter where they live.

II. Why We’re So Divided: How the Gap Was Built

A. The Blueprint: How Housing Laws Separated Us

The biggest problem in our country is that our neighborhoods are so segregated. It is easy to believe a narrative when there is no information other than what we see in the media. When we leave work or school, we go home to neighborhoods where most people look like us. We have evidence in our coworkers and schoolmates to contradict the narratives, but we rationalize those examples away by labeling them “different.” They are seen as exceptions—sometimes even exceptional—which allows us to keep our original biases intact.

Our neighborhoods didn’t end up this way by accident, and it wasn’t just “people wanting to live near people like themselves.” It was built into the system by policy decisions made decades ago.

Back in the 1930s, the government literally drew red lines on city maps around Black and lower-income neighborhoods, declaring them too “risky” for bank loans. That cut those areas off from investment, while government-backed mortgages helped white families buy homes in the new suburbs and build family wealth. Later, when interstates were built in the 1950s and 60s, planners systematically plowed those highways straight through thriving Black business districts, slicing cities in half and creating physical walls between neighborhoods.

When direct housing discrimination was outlawed, local towns used zoning laws instead. By requiring big yards, single-family houses, and banning affordable apartments, towns made it too expensive for regular working families to move in.

That history created the neighborhood setup we see today. Because local property taxes fund public schools and street repairs, living apart means we experience totally different daily realities. When we don’t share the same roads, parks, or schools, it’s easy for politicians to convince us that the people living down the road are completely different from us.

• Redlining Maps: Cut off urban neighborhoods from bank loans
• Interstate Highways: Built physical walls right through town
• Strict Zoning Laws: Kept housing costs too high for working folks
• Separate Daily Lives: Made our neighbors’ problems feel distant

B. Team Sports Politics: The Rise of the Political “Homer”

As we grew physically separated, the way we look at politics changed, too. Politics stopped being about evaluating policy or fixing local problems and turned into pure homerism—a fierce, inherited personal identity where defending the franchise matters more than the actual state of the game.

If you grew up in a family of Mets or Yankees fans, you wear the jersey, cheer for the team, and stick with them even when they play terribly. You don’t jump ship just because of a bad season. In politics today, people treat their political party the exact same way. When “our team” messes up, we make excuses or blame the referees (the media or the other party). Switching sides feels like betraying your family and friends.

Worse, most political energy today is driven by Negative Partisanship—which just means hating the other team more than you even like your own. The main goal isn’t making things better; it’s making sure the other side loses. Social media and 24-hour news play right into this because angry people click more links, stay on screens longer, and generate more ad money. We stay glued to the bleachers, yelling at the opposition, because our frustration makes someone else rich.

C. The Mental Loophole: “You’re One of the Good Ones”

Much like those coworkers and classmates, when someone with strong political biases meets a real person from that group and actually likes them, they almost never change their overall view. Instead, their brain uses a mental shortcut called subtyping.

Rather than admitting their general opinion might be wrong, they make their friend a rare “exception to the rule.” They tell themselves, “Well, Mike is different. He’s one of the good ones.”

• Overall Belief: You hold a broad stereotype about a group
• The Reality Check: You meet a friend who doesn’t fit that stereotype
• The Mental Trick: You declare them “an exception to the rule”
• The Outcome: Your core belief remains completely unchanged

This mental trick lets someone keep a warm, loyal friendship in private while still holding onto hostile views about that friend’s broader community in public. The friendship stays in its own little box, and the bigger bias never has to change.

III. What We Can Actually Do About It

It’s easy to complain about how divided we are. Changing it takes real work. We can’t fix this by telling people to “be nice” or “talk it out.” Polite talk doesn’t fix broken systems or stop social media apps from making money off our anger.

Nor can we fix it by simply doing generic neighborhood charity. If our neighborhoods are segregated by design, doing local volunteer work often just means collaborating with people who already look, live, and vote like us. To actually dismantle the biases and homerism that keep us divided, our action has to be intentional: it must cut across geographic lines, challenge how we treat our friends, and disrupt the outrage economy.

• Stop Just Watching: Move past online commentary and demand tangible accountability that crosses zip codes.
• Refuse the “Exception” Frame: Stop letting friends isolate your character from your heritage and community.
• Evaluate Policy by Human Impact: Stop treating governance like a scoreboard where real human harm is accepted just to get a party win.
• Clean Up Your Attention: Starve the outrage engine of your time, capital, and emotional energy.

1. Stop Being a Spectator: Challenge the Bubble, Not Just the Noise

Most of what passes for “political engagement” today is passive consumption. Scrolling through angry news stories, dropping a biting comment on Facebook, or retweeting a scandal changes nothing on the ground. It is the civic equivalent of yelling at a television screen from the comfort of a living room.

True civic engagement requires getting off the sidelines and demanding structural accountability. But more importantly, it means bursting your own bubble. We cannot claim to be engaged if we only discuss problems with people inside our own demographic and geographical comfort zones.

The Takeaway: Stop treating social media commentary as civic participation. If your political engagement doesn’t involve listening to, working with, or addressing issues that impact people outside your immediate zip code, it isn’t civic action—it’s entertainment. Channel that energy into regional coalitions, broader civic oversight, and real-world organizing that crosses municipal borders.

2. Refuse to Be the “Exception”

The most dangerous mental shortcut preserving modern prejudice is “subtyping.” When a friend holds hostile views about a group but calls you “one of the good ones,” they aren’t paying you a compliment. They are protecting their bias from reality by putting you in a private box labeled “exception.”

Allowing ourselves or our friends to be isolated this way keeps the broader system intact. It gives people permission to maintain genuine warmth in private while voting for, posting, or endorsing rhetoric that harms that same friend’s community in public.

The Takeaway:

• If it happens to you: Refuse the frame directly. Make the connection unmistakable: “I am not an exception. The character, discipline, and values you respect in me did not happen in spite of my community—they were shaped directly by the family, heritage, and people you are dismissing.”
• If you do it to others: Confront your own inconsistency. If the actual people from other backgrounds you work alongside contradict the media’s scary caricature, stop letting cable news and algorithms convince you the rest of their community is the enemy. Trust real human evidence over digital narratives.

3. Evaluate Policy by Human Impact, Not Scoreboards

The thirty-year friendship mentioned in this piece is not a tidy success story where shared labor magically erased deep ideological divides. We remained cordial, but he remains a political homer. Even with decades of mutual respect, the pull of the political team jersey is powerful.

The point of breaking out of the bleachers is not to force everyone to share the same political philosophy. People have every right to hold their beliefs, advocate for their values, and vote for their interests. The goal is to stop treating governance like a fantasy sports league where “winning” is the only thing that counts.

Politics is not entertainment; it deals in real lives, livelihoods, and measurable consequences. When you blindly root for your team at all costs, you end up endorsing policies that inflict genuine damage on actual people—including friends you claim to respect.

The Takeaway:

• Count the Cost of “Winning”: If a policy backed by your party causes clear harm to real people on the other side, don’t blindly defend it just to put points on the board. A victory that leaves your neighbors damaged isn’t a civic win; it’s just partisan cruelty.
• Support Good Outcomes Regardless of the Jersey: If a proposal genuinely helps people—including those across town who don’t vote like you—don’t oppose it simply because an algorithm, a talking head, or your party’s playbook told you to hate the people who proposed it.
• Acknowledge the Work Still Needed: Recognize that even thirty-year relationships like mine are unfinished business. If we are honest, all of us—myself included—have work to do to ensure we value real human well-being over reflexive political loyalty.

4. Clean Up Your Attention: Turn Off the Outrage Engine

You can’t get off the political sidelines if you keep feeding the apps that make you angry. News networks and social media platforms rely on a simple business model: make you mad, get your attention, show you ads, and make money. Every time you click on a rage-inducing headline or argue with a troll, you are paying the people who profit from tearing us apart.

We need to guard our attention the same way we guard our health. Eating a daily diet of online outrage warps how we see other people, making every interaction feel like a fight.

The Takeaway: Take a hard look at your feed. Unfollow accounts that post anger-bait, insult people, or try to start fights. Stop giving your time and money to outlets that sell outrage instead of facts. Take that time back and spend it face-to-face with real people in your life.

IV. Taking Back Control

The division we feel today isn’t a permanent fact of life. It was built over time through policy, kept alive by money, and fed by an apparatus that profits when we treat our neighbors like rival fan bases. We’ve been coaxed into cheering and screaming from the digital bleachers while real communities bear the consequences of our negligence.

Understanding how the trap works gives us our power back. We are not obligated to play the role an algorithm picked out for us. We don’t have to surrender thirty-year friendships to online culture wars, nor do we have to accept being treated as rare “exceptions” to someone else’s prejudice. Most importantly, we do not have to treat politics as a game where our neighbor’s suffering is acceptable collateral damage for our team’s victory.

Real change won’t come from winning a Facebook argument, dropping a witty reply, or proving someone wrong in a comment section. It happens when we step out of the bleachers, turn our backs on the anger machine, and start measuring our politics not by who won the news cycle, but by how our decisions actually affect human beings in the real world.

Glossary

• Attention Economy: A business model where internet platforms, social media apps, and news outlets compete for your time and mental focus, often using high-conflict content to keep you engaged so they can sell advertising.
• Exclusionary Zoning: Local government laws that regulate land use by requiring large minimum lot sizes, setting high building standards, or banning multi-family apartment buildings—effectively pricing working-class and lower-income families out of specific towns or school districts.
• Expressive Partisanship / Homerism: A form of political engagement where party affiliation functions as a fierce, inherited personal identity and unconditional loyalty to a “team” rather than a practical judgment on policies or outcomes.
• Negative Partisanship: Political behavior driven primarily by hostility, fear, or dislike toward an opposing political party rather than affection or agreement with one’s own party.
• Redlining: The historic practice by federal government agencies (such as the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation) and private mortgage lenders of drawing physical red lines on city maps around Black or low-income neighborhoods to systematically deny them mortgages and capital investment.
• Subtyping: A psychological defense mechanism where a person encounters someone who contradicts their broad group stereotype and labels that person an “exception to the rule,” thereby preserving their original prejudice intact.
• Superordinate Goals: Urgent, concrete practical tasks or objectives that require cooperation among groups who might otherwise harbor hostility or distrust toward one another.

Bibliography & Further Reading

• Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2010.
• Bishop, Bill. The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008.
• Iyengar, Shanto, Gaurav Sood, and Yphtach Lelkes. “Affect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization.” Public Opinion Quarterly 76, no. 3 (2012): 405–431.
• Mason, Lilliana. Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.
• Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017.
• Sherif, Muzafer. Group Conflict and Co-operation: Their Social Psychology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966.
• Trounstine, Jessica. Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

https://www.europesays.com/people/179336/ Trump’s judicial appointment pace is unlikely to match his first-term record #Article #CenterForEffectivePublicManagement(CEPM) #Congress #Courts&Law #FixGov #GovernanceStudies #NorthAmerica #PoliticalParties #PoliticalPolarization #POTUS #presidency #PresidentOfTheUnitedStates #Research #TheInitiativeOnImprovingInterbranchRelationsAndGovernment #USGovernment&Politics #USStatesAndTerritories

Israel’s future is in jeopardy if it becomes a single-party cause

The late Sen. Lindsey Graham entered our lives during the darkest chapter our family had ever known. This…
#NewsBeep #News #BreakingNews #antisemitism #bipartisanship #breakingnews #Hamas #Hostages #Iran #Israel #LindseyGraham #politicalpolarization #pro-israel
https://www.newsbeep.com/671953/

Israel’s future is in jeopardy if it becomes a single-party cause

The late Sen. Lindsey Graham entered our lives during the darkest chapter our family had ever known. This…
#EuropeSays #Headlines #News #Europe #Europa #EU #Israel #antisemitism #bipartisanship #Hamas #Hostages #Iran #LindseyGraham #politicalpolarization #pro-Israel
https://www.europesays.com/iran/230631/

https://www.europesays.com/iran/230631/ Israel’s future is in jeopardy if it becomes a single-party cause #antisemitism #bipartisanship #Hamas #Hostages #Iran #Israel #LindseyGraham #PoliticalPolarization #ProIsrael

UC Berkeley: Does misinformation on Facebook and Instagram change what you believe?. “The experiment was successful in changing what people saw: participants assigned to the intervention were exposed to roughly 70% less content from untrustworthy sources. However, their political beliefs and attitudes did not measurably change, even among those who were previously exposed to the most content […]

https://www.europesays.com/3134719/ GAO data reveal the decline of ordinary appropriations law #article #CenterForEffectivePublicManagement(CEPM) #congress #Courts&Law #Data #FederalFiscal&TaxPolicy #FixGov #GovernanceStudies #NorthAmerica #PoliticalParties #PoliticalPolarization #presidency #research #USEconomy #USGovernment&Politics #USStatesAndTerritories

When Theater Breaks

What the Absence of Violence in Congress Tells Us—and What Its Arrival Would Mean

By Cliff Potts
Editor-in-Chief, WPS News

Rhetoric Without Rupture

Since 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives has operated in a state of sustained rhetorical escalation. Members routinely engage in aggressive verbal confrontations, staged outrage, and performative conflict designed for media amplification rather than legislative deliberation. Yet one fact remains decisive: there has been no confirmed physical violence between sitting members on the House floor during this period.

That absence is not trivial. It is predictive.

In unstable legislatures, sustained verbal escalation eventually crosses into physical confrontation. Historically, this has been true both internationally and within the United States prior to the Civil War. The fact that it has not occurred in the modern House indicates that institutional restraint remains intact.

Political Theater as Containment

The highly visible framing of American politics as “Red MAGA versus Blue Resistance” functions primarily as political theater. It reinforces partisan identity, sustains donor engagement, and drives media attention. At the same time, it masks a quieter continuity: broad bipartisan alignment around neoliberal economic structures and the influence of corporate and financial actors within governance.

The conflict is loud. The underlying policy consensus is not.

This does not indicate institutional health. It indicates managed conflict. Members perform anger, but they respect boundaries that protect donor confidence, institutional legitimacy, and personal political survival. The restraint is strategic, not ethical.

Historical Precedent: When Words Turned Physical

There is historical precedent for what happens when rhetorical escalation escapes institutional restraint. In the years immediately preceding the Civil War, congressional debate became increasingly incendiary, personal, and absolutist. The turning point was not merely harsh language, but the moment when political disagreement became physically violent on the Senate floor, signaling that the norms governing conflict had collapsed.

That incident did not cause the Civil War. It revealed that the governing system could no longer contain it.

Violence inside the legislature marked the transition from symbolic polarization to open sectional rupture. Once that line was crossed, compromise was no longer credible, and institutional stability rapidly deteriorated.

Why the Line Has Not Been Crossed—Yet

Physical violence between representatives today would immediately destabilize the institution itself. It would signal loss of control, threaten capital confidence, and undermine the legitimacy of governance. As long as elite political and financial actors maintain leverage through party structures, fundraising mechanisms, and political action committees, internal violence remains unacceptable.

The system tolerates shouting.
It does not tolerate disruption of order.

That distinction is intentional.

January 6 as an Externalized Event

The events of January 6, 2021 do not contradict this analysis. That violence was external to Congress, carried out by non-members, and ultimately absorbed by the system without full accountability for key instigators and enablers. Many retained positions of influence, funding, and institutional support.

The lesson internalized by the political class was not deterrence, but containment.

As long as violence remains externalized—directed outward rather than inward—the institution can continue to function without confronting its own structural fragility.

The Predictor to Watch

The critical indicator of future instability is not rhetoric, polarization, or media outrage. It is loss of restraint among lawmakers themselves.

If physical violence were to occur between representatives—actual assault, not symbolic gesture—it would mark a transition from performative polarization to institutional breakdown. At that point, political theater would no longer be sufficient to manage factional pressure.

Such an event would not be a momentary scandal. It would be an early signal of civil upheaval moving from the public sphere into the governing core.

The Directional Warning

For now, the absence of violence indicates that the system remains controlled, if brittle. The shouting serves a purpose. The restraint serves a higher one.

The danger is not that the performance will continue indefinitely.
The danger is that when it fails, it will fail suddenly—and without a script.

For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com

References (APA)

Brennan Center for Justice. (2021). The January 6 insurrection and the future of American democracy. https://www.brennancenter.org

Mann, T. E., & Ornstein, N. J. (2012). It’s even worse than it looks: How the American constitutional system collided with the new politics of extremism. Basic Books.

U.S. Capitol Police. (2023). Threat assessment and security trends report. https://www.uscp.gov

https://www.europesays.com/people/144700/ 250 exclusive: Mike Johnson reflects on balance of powers in Trump era #DonaldTrump #MikeJohnson #PoliticalPolarization #WhiteHouse

The civic consensus beneath America’s political divide https://www.byteseu.com/2177372/ #Article #CenterForEffectivePublicManagement(CEPM) #Commentary #FixGov #GovernanceStudies #NorthAmerica #PoliticalParties #PoliticalPolarization #Politics #PublicOpinion #Society&Culture #USGovernment&Politics #USStatesAndTerritories

From martial law to democratic renewal in South Korea https://www.byteseu.com/2133828/ #AndSecurity(ACDS) #AntiCorruption #Article #Asia&ThePacific #Commentary #Conflict #Courts&Law #Democracy #ForeignPolitics&Elections #Governance #GovernanceStudies #InternationalAffairs #PoliticalParties #PoliticalPolarization #Presidency #Society&Culture #SouthKorea #TheDemocracyPlaybookInitiative #USGovernment&Politics

Germany’s Pistorius warns social division threatens national security https://www.byteseu.com/2131667/ #BerlinBrandenburgAcademyOfSciencesAndHumanities #BorisPistorius #GermanMinisterOfDefence #Germany #HelmutSchmidt #NationalSecurity #PoliticalPolarization #SocialCohesion #SocialDivision