There Are a Lot More of Us Out There Than You Think
Millions of Americans are over partisan politics and have been for a long time
The Question:
We live in a society where seemingly everyone and everything is identified with one political side or the other, and each side frames the possibility of the other taking power in apocalyptic terms. In this environment, how many people remain who haven’t picked a team and embraced its enmities? In other words, how many Americans are left who don’t hate each other?
The Thoughts:
American society has become so permeated by partisan content that people can structure their whole lives around it. They can go through their days without coming across a substantive or objective expression of a political perspective that differs from their own.
In the morning, people wake up in a home whose location, decor, and neighborhood mirror their values. They can then put on a news channel that squares with their beliefs. Their values are further reflected by the partner or lack thereof who woke up with them; how many (if any) kids they have to wake up and what schools they send those kids to; what they have for breakfast and where they work; how they get to work and what they listen to on the way. And if their workplace has an intranet or Slack channels, they can find partisan cliques at work, giving them more chances to spend all their time with those who think the same way they do.
After work, they can unwind with a movie or TV program that reflects their political and cultural prejudices. Finally, they can fall asleep to a late-night show whose host affirms their values and ridicules people who think differently.
On weekends or weeknights, they can engage in activities that reinforce their partisan identity, while relishing the fact that most folks from the other side would never do them. They can also snicker at what they imagine people from the other side actually are doing at that moment. And on Sunday, if they go to church, they can attend one where their beliefs will be preached from the pulpit and proclaimed in the pews.
In every part of their lives, they can surround themselves with people who think like they do. Or they can go online and feed their partisan fix with content that’s friendly to their side and feed their outrage with content that’s friendly to the other side. They can find solidarity with their fellow tribalists in online communities or on social media. If they date online, they can stipulate in their profiles that they will only date people who share their politics. And they can restrict their contact with family members from the other political tribe to social niceties at holidays or even cut them off completely.
This is the America we live in today, a place where partisan noise drowns everything else out. Where life seems like a loud, unending argument. Where families, friendships, schools, workplaces and towns are torn apart by politics. Where public spaces and geographic areas have become resegregated, but along partisan lines this time.
And the majority of Americans are over it.
In 2018, research from the non-profit group More in Common found that the way two-thirds of Americans feel about U.S. politics puts them among an “exhausted majority.” People all over the country hate that “politics is tearing apart their families and friendships and affecting their jobs and daily life,” group co-founder Tim Dixon explained in a press release about the study, titled “Hidden Tribes”. Most Americans are “fed up” with this status quo, he said.
Significantly, those in the exhausted majority are politically diverse. “Their views may differ on many issues,” Dixon said, “but a clear majority feel exhausted by the us-versus-them conflict which has spread from far-away debates in Congress to bitter disputes among neighbors, coworkers, and even family members at the Thanksgiving table.”
A 2023 Pew Research Center report reinforces these findings. As of July 2023, 65% of Americans said they “always or often feel exhausted when thinking about politics,” and 55% of Americans also said they always or often feel “angry,” according to Pew.
The Pew study contains a cornucopia of data that shows Americans’ disaffection with modern U.S. politics. Some examples: 86% of Americans think that “Republicans and Democrats are more focused on fighting each other than solving the nation’s problems,” 28% dislike both parties, and 22% believe our political system doesn’t have any strengths.
America’s disenchantment with partisan politics is also translating to disenchantment with political parties. In 2023, 43% of Americans identified as independents, according to Gallup. Only 27% declared themselves to be Democrats, while an equally paltry number called themselves Republicans.
But, again, statistics are evaluated empirically, and America’s exhausted majority are easy to overlook. They don’t aggressively push their views. They’re too exhausted—first, from working all day and handling all their other responsibilities, and second, from the encroachment of politics into every area of their lives. They are also constantly blocked from view by the minority of avid partisans who monopolize public attention.
So, perhaps instead of looking externally for the anti-partisan heart of America, we need to look inward. Maybe instead of the eye-test, we need to use the soul-test, if you will.
So, look deep inside and be honest with yourself. You don’t hate them. You don’t—even if their politics and culture are incomprehensible to you.
In fact, you want positive things for them, at least abstractly. You want them to have good lives. You wish them happiness, healthiness, safety, comfort, friendship, love and fulfillment. You hope they have happy holidays and birthdays. You want them to have healthy careers, marriages and births. You want their children to be well and well-adjusted. You hope they have pleasant retirements, surrounded by their loved ones. And if you were outside and saw them stuck in a snowbank in a car with a bumper sticker for the “other” candidate, you would help push them out without hesitation.
You would do these things because you are a good person who hasn’t yet lost touch with what it means to be human. Partisan politics hasn’t claimed your soul. And that means you can still see people from the from the other side as good too.
Just like your side, they enjoy holidays, warm weather, sports, comedy, romance, the Internet, being with family and friends, vacations, parades, picnics, the beach, comic book movies, reality singing shows and pizza. To name a few.
Ultimately, we all want a better life for ourselves and our loved ones. We want health and happiness. We want safety, comfort, friendship, love, fulfillment and all the other basic things that we all prize because they are embedded into human DNA.
These universal values may only constitute small points of consensus, but remembering that we share them is the first step toward bridging the chasm that separates us. It’s also the key to rediscovering another inherently human quality: empathy.
Once we understand that people who disagree with us are still pursuing the same core goals that we are, we can start to interpret the things they say and do through that lens instead of seeing them as menaces to the world. Once we realize that, at the core, we are all seeking the same things, we can begin to realize that we really are all in this together.
And we don’t hate each other.
* Portions of this post have been adapted from my upcoming book The Anti-Partisan Manifesto: How Parties and Partisanism Divide America and How to Shut Them Down (2024).TLDR:
American society has become deeply polarized, with people structuring their lives around political affiliations.
The majority of Americans feel "exhausted" by the constant political divisions, with 65% reporting feeling this way.
Partisan politics has permeated every aspect of life, from news consumption to social activities, leading to a resegregation along political lines.
Despite the divisiveness, there is an "exhausted majority" who still share common values and human desires, such as health, happiness, and fulfillment.
Recognizing these shared universal values is the first step towards bridging the political chasm and rediscovering empathy.
The silent majority, disenchanted with the partisan noise, is often overlooked, but they represent the potential for unity and understanding.
Individuals can cultivate empathy by understanding that those with different political beliefs are still pursuing the same core goals as themselves.
Connecting over our shared humanity, rather than focusing on political differences, is key to overcoming the current state of polarization.
