The Problem With... Political Media Personalities

Think about this: the current political polarization is actually not only unhealthy, but also unnecessary. It really doesn't have to be this way at all. I think people only appear to congregate into two masses because political parties and news media generally come in two contrasting flavors. In other words, it is the political influencers, and the culture they represent, that is the problem, not the general public. We need to understand where the problem is, in order to change things.

This is the situation right now: 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.

The problem with political media, both the old media and social media, and most of the personalities who work within political media, is that they ultimately end up reinforcing and worsening the political polarization. Due to audience capture, the need to generate clickbait headlines and titles, and the incentives to side with one political party over the other, it becomes very hard for them to remain truly objective and balanced in their outlook. Over time, they become like propaganda machines who deliver biased representations of the reality designed to rile up the emotions of their audiences.

The problem with watching tribalist, polarized political media is that one becomes unbalanced in their view of reality, and eventually loses the ability to think independently and objectively. If you don't see the whole picture out there, how can you think clearly about the issues, and judge where the truth is? If you get emotionally worked up over biased representations all the time, how can you think rationally, and talk through things calmly with those with another view? When you get sucked into the unhealthy culture of partisan political influencers, you stop being your normal self, and you become a zombie who ends up unconsciously waging culture war for rich and powerful people with an agenda.

Trans issues is one area where people have been unjustifiably and needlessly polarized by political influencer culture. Those with extremist opinions on both sides are heard way too loudly. Biased views and fake news is everywhere. Those in the middle who want a healthy discourse, who want to seek common ground and develop compromise solutions to move forward, are too often drowned out, or even intimidated into silence, by the extremists on both sides. This really needs to change. We really need to break the echo chambers and challenge the all-or-nothing, either with-us or against-us discourse out there.