This Is Your Brain on Partisanship
Is partisanship blinding us to truth and hurting our relationships?
Partisanship hurts the brain.
Commitment to a political group as the overarching framework for seeing the world distorts how we see others. Those on our team are assumed motivated by altruism while critics of our team are assumed motivated by animus or ignorance. As Jonathan Haidt says about morality in The Righteous Mind, it "binds and blinds." It binds us to our group and blinds us to truths about our group and those outside of it.
The latest example of this sort of groupthink can be found in the November issue of First Things' lead article. Carl Trueman, professor of biblical and religious studies at Grove City College and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, writes about "The Failure of Evangelical Elites." (The word "elite" is used in his article condescendingly, even though Trueman himself is an elite, given that he's a college professor and author of the lead article in First Things.)
The article appears at first to be about sectarian concerns, the survival of Christianity and such. But near the bottom the reader finds out he's actually writing about politics. The heart of this piece is an argument in favor of partisanship, or more broadly, tribalism.
Trueman begins that transition by writing, "Here’s the rub: Within Christian circles, particularly those of the leadership class and its associated institutions, the desire to appease religion’s cultured despisers has become a powerful force."
This argument is unoriginal. It has been aimed Trump-opposing conservative Christians since 2016. In fact, it's the argument I've heard the most.
It goes like this: You can't really be opposing Trump for the reasons you've stated — he's a race-baiter, misogynist and xenophobe. You must not actually be upset at his child-separation policy, appeasement of extremist groups, or betrayal of allies in Syria. There must be some other reason. You must be just saying those things to be accepted by your liberal friends or get invites to DC cocktail parties. (For the record, the only DC cocktail parties I've been invited to were a few hosted by conservatives and pro-lifers. Sad!)
This assumption, that Trump-opposing conservatives must have some ulterior motive, is the result of a brain outsourcing its thinking to partisanship.
For another example, check out this oddly worded sentence: "Yet leading anti-racist Christians operate within parameters set by cultural progressives."
Trueman has now segmented Christians into those who are anti-racist and those who, um, aren't anti-racist, and placed himself, well, not among the anti-racists. How does Trueman, who is by no means a white supremacist, end up here? Trueman thinks conservative Christians shouldn't work with liberals and oppose conservatives, even to oppose racism, because it represents disloyalty to their presumed team. In other words, it's partisanship.
For more reactions to Trueman's essay, check out:
David French, "Evangelical Elites, Fighting Each Other: As the culture war changes, there will be new divisions and new alliances." (Subscription only.)
Thomas Kidd, "Carl Trueman and the Evangelical Mind."
Paul D. Miller Twitter thread.
2 More Things
1) For some thoughts on partisanship and anti-vaccine messaging, check out John Piper, "A Reason to Be Vaccinated: Freedom."
"My point is this: Don’t be enslaved by fear of man. Don’t be enslaved by the fear of breaking ranks with ideological allies. The old name for this is peer pressure. You are free," he wrote.
2) Extremist groups are targeting veterans for recruitment. In an op-ed for MSNBC, Cynthia Miller-Idriss writes,
"Although they represent only about 6 percent of the American population, veterans are responsible for 10 percent of all domestic terrorist attacks and plots since 2015. Veterans are demonstrably more vulnerable to recruitment and engagement in the extremist fringe, compared to the civilian population, and they are disproportionately involved in violence. Preliminary data from a new survey underway by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) shows that 30 percent of respondents have personally witnessed extremism in the military."