President Trump won the 2024 election with a majority vote of 49.8%, a veridical paradox in my opinion. Politics in the United States is toxically contentious, so deeply divisive to the point that we’re unable to achieve even a simple majority vote from what is essentially a binary selection. Since 1996, the popular vote percentage of all election winners has hovered closely to that 50% mark, with the notable exceptions of President Obama’s election’s 52.9% majority vote, a slight but noticeable increase from the strict 50/50 split, and of President Trump’s first election in 2016, when he achieved a lower 46.1% popular vote, 2.1% lower than Clinton’s – perhaps another veridical paradox.
In the 29 years since 1996, our world has radically changed. The internet has rapidly grown into a global structure, weaving itself into every aspect of our lives along the way. The exponential increase of our computation power has led us to the development and mass distribution of highly complex smartphone devices which, just like the internet, have become ubiquitous. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 have irreversibly shaped our government’s views on national security. And the list goes on. This cut-throat political landscape is perhaps the only aspect of our lives that has not significantly changed in the last 29 years.
Why has this persisted, despite such accelerating change? Of all that’s evolved and progressed in recent decades, human nature itself remains unaltered. All of the cognitive biases, mob mentalities, and general apathies that afflicted us then are just as potent today, perhaps amplified by the echo chambers formed by social media, and in general, our patterns of internet usage. Most crucially, our propensity to entangle our identities with group memberships and fanatical associations with celebrities locks us in a perpetual battle of personalities fought atop a political landscape.
In my opinion, this identity-entangled politics (not to be confused with identity politics) forms the basis from which our current situation arises. Identity-entanglement precludes the possibility of effective political discourse altogether. When an individual builds their personality, their sense of being, on a political party, or worse, a famous political figure, they entrench themselves in its public-facing culture and the personalities of its figureheads. This brings about feelings of familiarity and fondness with its imagery, or more fundamentally, its symbols. The viewpoints of the party resonate at an emotional level.
These effects of identity-entanglement intensify one’s cognitive biases and cause mental short-circuiting when the desired outcome aligns with one’s identity-based beliefs. A study conducted in 2016, titled Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government, found that individuals with high numeracy, a measure of one’s ability to work with quantitative information, performed significantly worse when assessing data that would hypothetically disprove one of their existing political beliefs, as opposed to data which would do the opposite. However, when individuals were presented with the same exact data framed in non-political terms, their performance did not suffer to any degree. In other words, the political context of the data directly evoked mental short-circuiting behavior. The participants with high numeracy only invoked their skillset when short-circuiting behavior did not lead to their preferred outcome. This behavior was exhibited by both conservatives and liberals; political affiliation made no difference. They had the mental capacity, they just didn’t make proper use of it.
It’s impossible to remove identity-based biases entirely, even if you’re constantly vigilant in guarding against them. For many, it’s difficult to even recognize when their sense of identity interferes with their interests, or worse, their basic needs. For many more, their identities are so entangled with sensationalism and celebrity politics, they’re unable to even begin to participate in any meaningful political discourse and will likely fail to recognize the meaning of political discourse itself. An individual of extreme identity-entanglement will believe that politics is a battlefield of name calling, shaming, and flinging middle-school level insults, and will happily participate in that battlefield themselves.
Identity-entanglement thrives amid feelings of group belonging, shared experience and interests, fear, and to a certain extent, camaraderie, even if the individual in question self-isolates. However, these aspects themselves aren’t problematic, nor do they lead to the problems we’ve been discussing so far. A sense of belonging is healthy for an individual, and discussing shared beliefs and experiences is an excellent way to gain a deeper understanding of your circumstances and those of the people around you, helping all involved improve those circumstances. Even a certain amount of fear can be helpful, as it can help keep you focus and remind you of the need for vigilance. In a certain sense, these aspects of identity-entanglement are positive, so it’s easy to see why so many people allow this to happen, or even actively work to make it happen. However, none of these positive aspects require identity-entanglement, and in fact, will all provide more utility without it.
Once an individual moves beyond those and into the realm of identity-entanglement, they open themselves up to manipulation. The human mind is wired to protect itself physically, mentally, and emotionally. Threats to one’s identity fall under this purview of protection. When one’s mind perceives a threat to its identity, consciously or unconsciously, it has a somewhat similar reaction to a physical threat – alarms are raised and emotions are stirred. One’s ability to think rationally and objectively in this type of situation is severely diminished. When multiple such threats arise over time, one tends to build a framework of beliefs based upon selective evidence and short-circuiting thinking patterns that serves to keep their identity secured, as-is. They’d be likely to suspend disbelief for statements that their framework deems congenial to their sense of being while summarily dismissing statements that challenge it, regardless of their verifiability. Cognitive biases spin into effect. Politicians, marketers, and business professionals, among others, know exactly how to take advantage of this.
Statements by politicians and political pundits tend to evoke quick, visceral responses, particularly to those who succumb to identity-entanglement, eclipsing criticality and objectivity as they’re uttered. It takes significant effort, open-mindedness, and a healthy amount of courage, to overcome those visceral reactions, those temptations to lean on bad practices. Unfortunately, this seldom takes place, and those who take advantage of us know it. Untold amounts of money have been poured into research on marketing and human behavior to determine the best ways such people can push our buttons and manipulate our behavior.
These problems are compounded by those who follow politicians as celebrities or personality figures. Numerous studies across decades of research show that politicians’ speech patterns, mannerisms, and even choice of clothing influence elections to a significant degree. When an individual deeply identifies as an individual aligned with a political figure, something which can arguably be described as fanaticism, they are likely to blindly accept their statements as truth without any critical evaluation, and are likely to discount any questionable statements they make or practices they follow. Effectively, these individuals use the same cognitive biases to protect that politician’s identity as they would their own. When political figures clash, such people find it exciting in the same way they might find a middle-school argument exciting as a child. In light of this, official presidential debates of recent memory have been farces, nothing near the quality one would rightfully expect from such an important part of the election process. Whether you lean left or right, there’s no reason you and I should have to sit through an argument between Biden and Trump about their golf swing, or any number of interruptions, personal attacks, and overall lack of civility or meaningful discussion.
The irony of all of this is the fact that political parties target their own constituents, not those on the opposite side. They have far more influence over them – they speak their language and speak to their desires. When a political party lies, its own constituents fall for it, not their opponents. Their opponents won’t believe them even when they tell the truth.
The only way to rise above this is to keep your eyes open to the events around you, to keep your ears open to the expressions of new ideas, and to keep your mind open to the possibility that you’re wrong about any of your beliefs, at all times. As the saying goes, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. This openness naturally and effectively keeps identity-entanglement in check. If you can change your mind and are ready to do so as new evidence and sound ideas arise, there will be very little room for political affiliation and celebrity personalities to creep in. Learning the fundamentals of rational thinking goes a long way – concepts of logical structures, the concept of the burden of proof, and the practice of falsifiability – but even this will prove to be ineffective if the core problem of identity persists.
On a personal note, I take every measure I know of to ensure I continually follow this advice. It’s akin to striving for perfection – impossible to fully realize, but nonetheless fruitful in the pursuit. I’ll never consider myself a republican or a democrat, even if my beliefs tend to lean in one direction or the other. I strive to consider issues of politics on an individual basis and evaluate ideas based purely on their own merits.
