I’m gonna elaborate on why I think partisanship is super key to what’s going on here.
Most of you are probably familiar with Scott Alexander’s red tribe/blue tribe distinction. The red tribe leans right politically and is oriented towards nationalism. The blue tribe leans left politically and is oriented towards internationalism.
Donald Trump made history the way he got newspapers endorsing his rivals. And yet he won the election. The opinions of people working in the media and the opinions of the public seem out of sync to a historically unprecedented degree.
A lot of the early attacks the media made on Trump were for things he said about culture war topics like immigration. Culture war issues are hyper-partisan issues marked by unusually high levels of fear, anger, and mistrust. Most politicians will apologize when the media calls them out for being racist or sexist. Trump didn’t, and this made him really unusual.
Later attacks were based on non culture war topics like whether Trump could be trusted with the nuclear codes. You’d think every American wants a president we can trust with the nuclear codes. But Trump got elected anyway. Why?
I suspect many Trump supporters thought something like this: “The media says Trump would be a terrible president because he won’t apologize for his culture war stances. But the media is not on my side in the culture war. (Democrats outnumber Republicans in the media 4 to 1.) The media also says Trump’s rash personality is a threat to the world peace. But I don’t trust the media, and it sounds like they are saying that mainly to get their way in the culture war. I know they’ve made hysterical statements to get their way in the past. Trump has demonstrated that the best way to win the culture war is to never apologize. Therefore, we shouldn’t apologize for Trump’s rash personality.”
By running culture war attacks alongside global stability attacks, the media implied that unapologetically having the wrong opinions in the culture war and threatening global stability were equivalently bad. Take the popular Trump=Hitler analogy. Hitler is someone who refused to apologize for his politically incorrect opinions. He’s also someone who had a tremendous negative impact on global stability. But I never saw anyone making this analogy clearly specify which of these issues they were more concerned about. It’s easy for me to see how a person from the red tribe could have dismissed the Trump=Hitler analogy as unjustified hysteria, based on their perception that the media exaggerates how terrible people in the red tribe are. This could have lead to them dismissing the possibility of Trump having a tremendous negative impact on global stability. The person offering the analogy is not making this distinction—you’d have to steelman their analogy in order to make it yourself.
To put it another way, the initial culture war attacks on Trump made him antifragile. People rejected these attacks as invalid, and that made it easy to reject further attacks as invalid. The media was the boy who cried wolf.
Red tribe people and blue tribe people have different values. Because the tribes collectively determine who gets the nuclear codes, we would like them to thoughtfully negotiate peaceful compromises.
In a good compromise, each party offers to give up some things it doesn’t care about much in order to get the things it cares about a lot. What we saw in this election was the opposite of a good compromise. The largely blue tribe media cared so much about their ability to extract apologies from candidates that they did not make a principled distinction between having the wrong opinions and threatening global stability. Trump’s largely red tribe support base told the media they cared so much about removing this ability, they’d elect someone who was a threat to global order to make their point. With no credible third party to referee the negotiation, Trump got elected.
I’m gonna elaborate on why I think partisanship is super key to what’s going on here.
Most of you are probably familiar with Scott Alexander’s red tribe/blue tribe distinction. The red tribe leans right politically and is oriented towards nationalism. The blue tribe leans left politically and is oriented towards internationalism.
Donald Trump made history the way he got newspapers endorsing his rivals. And yet he won the election. The opinions of people working in the media and the opinions of the public seem out of sync to a historically unprecedented degree.
A lot of the early attacks the media made on Trump were for things he said about culture war topics like immigration. Culture war issues are hyper-partisan issues marked by unusually high levels of fear, anger, and mistrust. Most politicians will apologize when the media calls them out for being racist or sexist. Trump didn’t, and this made him really unusual.
Later attacks were based on non culture war topics like whether Trump could be trusted with the nuclear codes. You’d think every American wants a president we can trust with the nuclear codes. But Trump got elected anyway. Why?
I suspect many Trump supporters thought something like this: “The media says Trump would be a terrible president because he won’t apologize for his culture war stances. But the media is not on my side in the culture war. (Democrats outnumber Republicans in the media 4 to 1.) The media also says Trump’s rash personality is a threat to the world peace. But I don’t trust the media, and it sounds like they are saying that mainly to get their way in the culture war. I know they’ve made hysterical statements to get their way in the past. Trump has demonstrated that the best way to win the culture war is to never apologize. Therefore, we shouldn’t apologize for Trump’s rash personality.”
By running culture war attacks alongside global stability attacks, the media implied that unapologetically having the wrong opinions in the culture war and threatening global stability were equivalently bad. Take the popular Trump=Hitler analogy. Hitler is someone who refused to apologize for his politically incorrect opinions. He’s also someone who had a tremendous negative impact on global stability. But I never saw anyone making this analogy clearly specify which of these issues they were more concerned about. It’s easy for me to see how a person from the red tribe could have dismissed the Trump=Hitler analogy as unjustified hysteria, based on their perception that the media exaggerates how terrible people in the red tribe are. This could have lead to them dismissing the possibility of Trump having a tremendous negative impact on global stability. The person offering the analogy is not making this distinction—you’d have to steelman their analogy in order to make it yourself.
To put it another way, the initial culture war attacks on Trump made him antifragile. People rejected these attacks as invalid, and that made it easy to reject further attacks as invalid. The media was the boy who cried wolf.
Red tribe people and blue tribe people have different values. Because the tribes collectively determine who gets the nuclear codes, we would like them to thoughtfully negotiate peaceful compromises.
In a good compromise, each party offers to give up some things it doesn’t care about much in order to get the things it cares about a lot. What we saw in this election was the opposite of a good compromise. The largely blue tribe media cared so much about their ability to extract apologies from candidates that they did not make a principled distinction between having the wrong opinions and threatening global stability. Trump’s largely red tribe support base told the media they cared so much about removing this ability, they’d elect someone who was a threat to global order to make their point. With no credible third party to referee the negotiation, Trump got elected.