Moral Injury?
Can a nation suffer moral injury? I recently read an editorial with this title. James Childs, the author of the editorial, teaches at Trinity Lutheran Seminary at Capitol University in Columbus, Ohio. Apparently, he’s familiar with the field of moral injury as applied to combat veterans. The Defense Department describes moral injury as an extreme and unprecedented life experience that transgresses deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.
A combat veteran of the second Iraqi war illustrates a sense of moral injury: “Moral injury describes my disillusionment, the erosion of my sense of place in the world. The spiritual and emotional foundations of the world disappeared and made it impossible for me to sleep the sleep of the just … I have a feeling of intense betrayal, and the betrayer and the betrayed are the same person, my very self… What I lost in the Iraq war was a world that makes moral sense.”
Childs cautiously believes a sense of moral injury can be applicable to a nation.… Read the rest
Demographics and Left vs. Right
As the 2020 election draws nearer publicity about the growing political and cultural divide becomes more prominent. The increasing progressive agenda of Democrats certainly bolsters discussion about this division. However, a recent report by the U.S. Census, The Graying of America, suggests that demographics could be more important.
Baby Boomers, people now aged between 55 and 73 years, are driving this significant demographic shift. As they age, this large demographic cohort expands the number of older adults. The Census Bureau projects that in 2030 older Americans, those older than 65, will comprise 21% of the population. This compares with today’s percentage of 15%.… Read the rest
Liberal and Conservative Ideological Identities
Political polarization may be the most fundamental problem in contemporary American democracy. Much of the literature on democratic backsliding centers, for example, on intense political polarization as the primary cause of this backsliding. Recent research suggests that ideological self-categorization underlies affective political polarization. A very recent paper by Kristen Hanson, Emma O’Dwyer, and Evanthia Lyons make this point very clear.
Social identity and political ideology
Using social identity theory and self-categorization theory Hanson et al. explore the subjective meaning people attribute to liberal and conservative labels. Social identity theory posits that politically polarizing behavior is a consequence of self-categorization. Self-categorization creates a social identity that forms a person’s self-concept.… Read the rest
Ideological identities and wise reasoning
This post continues the comment portion of the last post on liberal and conservative identities. The comments here primarily focus on the summaries drawn by the research authors on those participants who self-identified as conservatives. The conservative participants equated conservative beliefs with American values. Many equated liberals with socialism or as heading toward socialism. They saw the liberal outgroup as un-American. Although none of the self-identified liberal participants used the word socialism, many conservative participants thought socialism was a threat. Conservatives saw political conflict in the United States as a battle between two ideologies, American and non-American. They perceived themselves as defending America against an un-American liberal aggressor.… Read the rest
Plutocratic Populism
“It is impossible to make sense of our current politics without wrestling with this central contradiction of the past twenty-five years of Republican governance.” This quote identifies the central paradox in understanding our current political situation as addressed in a recent paper by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. The “contradiction” in the quote refers to (1) the biggest complaint about taxes among ordinary Republicans has consistently been that the rich and corporations do not pay their fair share vs. (2) the intent of governing Republicans to ensure that these groups increasingly pay less taxes.
Our current political scene generates a great many topics that seek to explain our polity of today.… Read the rest
Empathy, the Coronavirus, and Political Polarization
The recent controversy over when or whether to restart the economy considering the coronavirus epidemic prompted me to examine the role of empathy in political polarization. Trump apparently prompted by arguments made by some business and investor interests publicly articulated his view that social or physical distancing, with some exceptions, should end by Easter to restart the American economy. Public health officials and related scientists suggest that such a move could endanger the health of many Americans, making the epidemic much worse.
These differing viewpoints often reflect the political polarization in our country. Republicans, with some exceptions, tend to support the restart view, especially as developed via the Fox news network.… Read the rest
Political polarization, the pandemic, and mask-wearing (1A)
This is the first post dealing with political polarization within the COVID-19 pandemic. This post focuses on the influence of right-wing populism and the fight against mask-wearing. The next post in this series fleshes out many of the themes and contexts developed in this post.
Why do many if not most Trumpists/Republicans refuse to wear masks remains for me one of the imponderable facets of the coronavirus pandemic. Wearing masks not only protects others from being infected but also, according to recent research, probably helps the wearer as well. Wearing masks in nearly costless and a minor convenience but remains a significant action that reduces the rate of infection.… Read the rest
Political Polarization and COVID-19 Avoidance (1B)
The first post in this series on political polarization and the COVID-19 pandemic. It focused on the reactions of right-wing populism toward public health guidelines that recommended various ways to combat the spread of the coronavirus. I then noted that I thought the research did not pay enough attention to the communication and information ecology played in explaining the behavior of right-wing populists. Since that post, several very recent papers deal with issues related to the first paper. I highlight three papers that flesh out the analysis contained in the first post.
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