Splitsville EXPLORATION OF THE POLES

The Not-That-New-Anymore Newsletter for Readers of The Split

Let’s start with the Word of the Year, newly-crowned by Merriam-Webster as reported by The Daily Beast: polarization.

“Polarization means division, but it’s a very specific kind of division,” Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, told the title. “Polarization means that we are tending toward the extremes rather than toward the center.”

You don’t say. And what, may one inquire, is this selection based upon? Is Merriam-Webster’s choice backed by anything?

Merriam-Webster’s choice is backed by the huge search traffic its site receives, and this year the data suggested that people wanted the exact definition of the word—especially in the lead-up to Donald Trump’s election win. The site’s own definition reads: “Division into two sharply distinct opposites especially: a state in which the opinions, beliefs, or interests of a group or society no longer range along a continuum but become concentrated at opposing extremes."

Much as we’re fans of Merriam-Webster’s Twitter/X presence (they have a great sense of humor), we’d like to suggest that the Word of the Year doesn’t apply to these Barely Unted States. We’re not “polarized” or “divided” in the ways those words seem to imply. To illustrate, we suggest the following thought experiment. It’s extremely complicated, but we think you’re up to it.

Let’s say we tell you that the Earth is flat, and you reply that the Earth is round. Still with us? Great. Now: Are we polarized? Granted, the sanewashing editors at the New York Times could find a way to suggest that we are, with headlines such as “Shape of Earth Subject to Dispute” or “An Old Geophysical Theory Finds New Life.” (The Onion would do better: “Area Moron Says Earth is Flat; Cites Being Able to Look Down the Street and Not See Any Curve.”)

But never mind the lamestream media. The point is, polarization, in matters not having to do with magnets or sunglasses, involves—as Merriam-Webster’s site reminds us—matters of “opinions, beliefs, or interests.” That is to say, polarization, in that political or zeitgeist-y sense, concerns subjective matters, about which opposing views all have equal validity. Alice hates anchovies on pizza; Bob loves them. Each is a defensible position because the nature of taste is, by definition, personal. Alice and Bob are polarized as regards anchovies.

But when we say the Earth is flat, we’re not expressing a defensible, valid opinion. We’re saying something objectively false, something equivalent to stating: “Don’t listen to anything we say—we’re just idiots.”

We’re banging on about this because, for years, now, pundits and experts and gasbags alike have been yakking away about how “America is a nation divided” and “Americans are more polarized now than at any time since the Civil War.” Yes, half the country is one way and half is another. That’s why we’re writing about them here. Their opposition provides yet another illustration of why we all live in Splitsville, where two different countries occupy the same geopolitical borders.

But this doesn’t mean we’re polarized. Why? Because the opposing sides’ positions are not equally founded on legitimate subjective opinions. One side—Democrats, liberals, progressives, the left—believes things that are objectively true. Although, really, who cares? When something is objectively true, “believes” (in the sense of “holds to be true in the face of challenges to its truth”) isn’t really the right word. To say, of the chair upon which you sit, “I believe this is a chair” adds nothing to the conversation: all sane people agree that it’s a chair, and your saying that you believe it’s a chair—while perhaps a canny move in your effort to prove your own sanity—is, to the rest of the world, an unnecessary redundancy. It’s a chair whether you, or anyone else, believes it or not.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that one side—Democrats, liberals, et al—are in the habit of observing, acknowledging, and responding to things that are objectively true. You know: “the facts.” They may all have different opinions about how to implement their values based on those facts, and they may disagree over the implications of those facts. But their choices and actions emerge as a consequence of everyone’s acceptance of a baseline description of reality as established by science, history, medicine, and so on.

All this, to normal people, might seem tediously obvious, but in this context we have to belabor it, because the other side, you will be the-opposite-of-shocked to learn, is the Republican-MAGA right, and what they believe would curl your epistemological hair. Having, for decades, been marinating in lies about everything from history to economics to climate science to psychology, their beliefs—Haitians are eating pets; millions of criminally insane immigrants are swarming across the border; blue state cities are crime-infested hellholes; “You can’t walk across the street to buy a loaf of bread without getting mugged”—are just flat-out wrong, their opinions unfounded and indefensible. Polarization does not apply.

Why, then, do so many apply it? Mostly—how’s this for a devastating poli-sci insight?—out of laziness. The two cohorts being described as polarized encounter each other in politics, so it’s easier, and seems true enough, to say that in their common pursuit of victory they’re both playing the same game. But they’re not. One team is playing football and the other is running a demolition derby. The left wants good, effective government that mitigates the injustices of capitalism (and even, when possible, the injustices of nature). The right wants to let the injustices flourish by hamstringing, and, ideally, destroying, government.

So please, pundits and op-ed writers and plain-old journalists, spare us “polarization.” It’s a both-sides-ist, pussyfooting evasion of a grim truth, a way of granting respect and legitimacy to a half of the electorate that doesn’t deserve it. We’re split, yes. But the two sides are not equal-but-opposite. At least we knew that Alice and Bob, however differing in their selection of toppings, both wanted to order pizza. If they were polarized according to the current usage, Bob would suggest having anchovies on only half the pie, while Alice’s method of avoiding small pieces of salty fish would involve telling Bob to go fuck himself, shooting him with her open-carry-3D-printed gun, and burning down the pizza place.

That, whether they knew it or not, was what MAGA voted for. And, in fact, they probably didn’t and don’t know it. (They also voted to curb inflation, and they don’t know that they’re not going to get that, either.) Lied to by moneyed interests, manipulated by demagogues, and their heads stuffed with lurid propaganda, they voted to stick it to the Dems, own the libs, give the finger to “elites,” and, by electing an autocrat who will wreck the economy, trash the environment, visit cruelty on millions, and allow oligarchs to dismantle the country and sell it for parts, to make America great again.