Ezra Klein, writing for Vox:
It’s what we might call the More Information Hypothesis: the belief that many of our most bitter political battles are mere misunderstandings. The cause of these misunderstandings? Too little information — be it about climate change, or taxes, or Iraq, or the budget deficit. If only the citizenry were more informed, the thinking goes, then there wouldn’t be all this fighting.
It’s a seductive model. It suggests our fellow countrymen aren’t wrong so much as they’re misguided, or ignorant, or — most appealingly — misled by scoundrels from the other party. It holds that our debates are tractable and that the answers to our toughest problems aren’t very controversial at all. The theory is particularly prevalent in Washington, where partisans devote enormous amounts of energy to persuading each other that there’s really a right answer to the difficult questions in American politics — and that they have it.
But the More Information Hypothesis isn’t just wrong. It’s backwards. Cutting-edge research shows that the more information partisans get, the deeper their disagreements become.
Somewhat depressing piece here. Klein believes that the solution to this problem will come from objective truth — from the fact that the economy is in shambles, or a war never ends. But in the current political system both sides have the same weapons — and most of those weapons serve to obfuscate the truth.
Complex effects have many possible sources, and it’s nearly impossible to isolate cause and effect, especially when the true cause may threaten your identity.
I think we’ll only see the end of this polarization when a new issue arises that divides the country along cross-ideological lines, as did the civil rights act of 1965.