Ezra Klein’s 2020 book Why We’re Polarized is a very, very
good but very, very unsettling book. If, like me, you have always believed (a)
that rational discussion can bring people together, (b) that more information
makes people reason better, and (c) that smarter people (like us) are harder to
fool than dumber people, this book is going to be very upsetting. Packed with
statistics and provocative psychological and sociological studies, Klein argues
that when our self-identity is threatened, facts and logic take a distant second
place to defending our identity and the group we identify with. And smarter
people are not immune from this, they are just better at building rationalizations for what they feel they
need to believe to preserve their identity. The problem we have today is that for
many people, both liberals and conservatives, both Democrats and Republicans, politics
has gotten wound up with our self-identity.
Klein discusses the positive feedback loop that is driving
polarization – people are polarized, so the media polarizes to gain readership
(what outrages, leads), which polarizes politicians and political institutions
as they try to win votes, which in turn polarizes people more. This summary, though, hardly does the book justice; there is a wealth of history (eg. how did the parties get so polarized in the first place) and interesting side issues as well. This book is
well worth reading if you want to understand what is driving politics today.
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