Study: A threat from a common enemy may no longer unite polarized Americans | Hacker News Reader

Study: A threat from a common enemy may no longer unite polarized Americans

phys.org

19 pointsPaulHoule12 comments

It's hard to imagine a situation where a common enemy wouldn't just immediately be used for political and ideological purposes, like what happened with Covid.

Maybe a Watchmen-type attack on the whole world. Even there I'd be surprised. We're not only too polarized but I think have too entrenched of a power system for anyone at the "top" to ever think that different sidex working together would be in their (those at the top's) interests. I suspect what happens when a common enemy does arrive is some kind of collapse.

"Intensely polarized societies seem to create this backfire effect where, rather than bringing groups together, exposure to a common enemy makes them more likely to accuse each other of being on the enemy's side."

Seems like the "money quote" to me. If I'd had to guess what the conclusion of this article was going to be before reading it, I'd have guessed something very close to that. It's a pretty obvious scenario really... The easiest way to justify hate for your opponent in the face of a common enemy would be to make exactly that kind of leap "You're taking the side of our 'common enemy' therefore YOU ARE THE ENEMY!"

What I wish I knew, is how to prevent this kind of thing from spreading all through our society and polluting everyone's thinking.

You have to shut it down early, before it becomes entrenched. Unfortunately, the very longevity of the US as a republic has been part of the problem, because Cassandra types like myself who were pointing out such risks 10+ years ago were often refuted with truisms about guardrails, the universal love of the Constitution, and so on. Very well educated and experienced people can be so proud of the legal/ social/ political order (and sincerely dedicated to the relevant ideals) that observations about it's vulnerabilities and structural weaknesses simply don't register with them.

Groups of armed militants taunting and facing off against each other are becoming an increasingly common sight in the US. This is a scenario that generally does not end well. Saying that what we need is better education or a different approach to debate or for people to get out of their information bubbles is all very well, but the majority of people expressing these sentiments are just conflict-averse and don't have any first hand experience to draw on. In many ways, their unwillingness to acknowledge the severity of polarization has been part of the problem.

> truisms about guardrails, the universal love of the Constitution, and so on.

As an aside, I actually think the US is an extremely well set up liberal democracy compared to alternatives, and unlike many places that have just gone off the rails in one direction or another, the country has stayed relatively balanced under pressure. I think the increasingly intense hyperpartisanship we're seeing is actually the system struggling to maintain normalcy, sort of like how a control circuit might have to produce increasingly high internal currents to deal with some disturbance.

I think the US has been long-lived not because of any great institutional superiority but because the country essentially started with a free continent of unspoiled natural resources whose indigenous occupants were few in number and technologically unsophisticated. Australia is a somewhat similar example. Huge and largely empty tracts of land make a big difference; recall that many early settlers in the US sought their fortunes there because they did not have good economic prospects in Europe, eg because of primogeniture.

I'd suggest that the potential emergence of internecine conflict here is a reversion to the mean of political development. This pattern has been observed before in history by professional imperialists like John Baggott Glubb, and also by scholars like Peter Turchin, though I haven't read enough of his work to comment. 'The Fate of Empires' is a short essay by Glubb and well worth your time. http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf

Compared to Australia and Canada the US has done much better to preserve liberal democratic norms and (vs Canada, I don't know about Australian politics) has a functional system that lets voters toss out a government that they don't like. (Canada only has one political orientation, even if there are two parties).

Definitely what you say is a big factor but the US also has a stronger constitution and system of checks and balances vs peers

Canada has three parties with a strong and direct impact in policy, and in many provinces there are even more. As far as Canada having less lattitude in political orientation it's a simple result of the Canadian electorate being pretty close in opinion to one of the big three (except in Québec, but there are other parties there).

Maybe the results would have been different if it didn't involve the government or more specifically, trusting the government and anything they say. If anything the Internet and FOIA requests have proven just about every conspiracy theory about the government to be true, from false flags to fluoride in the water, often revealed by government actors themselves in books they have written years later. All this study seems to have revealed is government and political actors have succeeded in dividing the nation to reinforce parties for their own ends and not The People's benefit, and the government is interested in lining the pockets of it's corrupt officials and not representing The People.

What’s the fluoride in water conspiracy theory that’s been proven to be true?

And I guess I have the same question about which false flags you’re talking about.

The US was largely united after 9/11, despite the recent disputed 2000 election, so a common enemy did actually work in that case.

However, this unity fell apart when the US decided to invade Iraq, using terrorism as a pretense. And patriotism was then exploited as a weapon: "You're either with us (meaning our imperialism), or you're with the terrorists."

Things never recovered afterward.

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