What I've Learned About Politics | TaraElla Report Lab

The ideas matter, the personalities do not. And polarization is not like the media says.

Welcome back to TaraElla Report Lab. Today, I want to look back on what I've learned so far, in the four years I have been regularly and seriously doing social and political commentary. I believe the things that I'm talking about today apply generally to all of my commentary, and is of great relevance to both my past and future work.

I guess the most important lesson I have learned is that what the media is telling us about political polarization is not entirely true. I said 'not entirely true' because, unfortunately, it is not false either. The Western world right now is indeed quite politically polarized, at least on a macro or aggregate level, and this does seem unprecedented in our history. Don't get me wrong, I do think this is unhealthy and it needs to change. However, when people talk about the polarization, there is almost an assumption of a simplified model, where people are reliably split into two camps, and their views on various issues are almost entirely predictable. What I've found is that this is a severe misrepresentation of the truth. Instead, on the individual level, there is quite a lot of variation in terms of how people actually see the issues, as well as the reasoning behind their views, which I think is actually the more important thing.

I think people only appear to congregate into two masses because political parties and news media generally come in two contrasting flavors. People generally support the political party closer to them, and consume the news media they are more comfortable with, which means they end up picking either team red or team blue almost all of the time. However, almost nobody is entirely blue or entirely red! When you're dealing with individuals, you really need to talk to them, and listen with an open mind, to understand where they actually stand. I think this individual variability shows that people are still mostly independent thinkers to some degree, which is a great relief! It also means that there is still plenty of room for big tent movements where we find common ground to resolve controversial issues.

Another important thing I have learned is that we should focus on the ideas, and not the personalities. If you attach your hope to a personality, they will almost definitely disappoint you some time in the future. Even someone who you think you agree with almost 100% today is basically guaranteed to disappoint you on something down the track. Throughout the history of TaraElla Report, I have shown great interest and even expressed support in many personalities, and to be honest the vast majority of them ended up greatly disappointing me on one or more important issues later on. (In some cases, the disappointment was indeed severe, although I generally don't talk about it in public because I don't want the drama.)

Which is why I have learned to say that, for me, the personalities don't matter, it's the ideas that matter. A related thing is, the fact that I have expressed interest in a person's ideas, or even support for a person, doesn't mean endorsement for all their ideas and positions. I have always thought that this was a self-evident thing, but in this age of rampant 'guilt by association', I think I need to spell it out more clearly.

Finally, I want to talk about my views on being positive vs negative. I would say I am very positive towards humanity, the goodness of human beings, even though I have a negative view on a lot of things about the status quo we are in. There's no logical incompatibility between positivity towards humanity, and negativity towards the status quo. I've found that too many people, in their bitterness towards the status quo, also lose their faith in humanity in general. I think Herbert Marcuse's views in Repressive Tolerance is a good example of this, and arguably also Michel Foucault's views on discourse and power. I think that's a dead end we should actively avoid. The antidote would be to have faith in our fellow humans, and our ability to make things better. We might need some time, we might need some more clarity and understanding, but we will get there.