Americans Are Increasingly Segregating Themselves in Ideological Enclaves

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/culture/americans-are-increasingly-segregating-themselves-ideological-enclaves

Does your next-door neighbor vote the same way you do? How about the couple who live across the street, or your friends on the next block?

The odds you answered “yes” or “probably” to those questions have increased dramatically in recent decades. Forget red states and blue states: We’re increasingly living in red or blue counties, cities, even neighborhoods.

This phenomenon has been widely cited as one reason behind our current political polarization: It allows strident voices on the right and left to fairly insist they’re fairly representing their constituents. But why exactly are we engaging in this sort of ideological segregation?

Newly published research suggests this double-edged dynamic is driven by a basic psychological pull.

[Turbineguy]

1. It will take patience

but eventually all the teabaggers will be in one government subsidy-sucking place complaing about spending.

[Katashi_itto]

3. More likely our cheerful party of Proto-Nazis will become metastatic

[kelliekat44]

35. It will take waking up to how the mortgage brokers and banksters steer certain people to certain

neighborhoods and avoid selling to others in that neighborhood. Remember, they, the realtors, brokers, and banksters know all about you through those documents you fill out when applying to purchase a home or even a condo. They know your income, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, (and maybe even how much you contributed and to whom) age, family demographics, and sexual preference. It used to be called "re-lining" when it just involved blacks but now it involves a range of other factors. Sometimes people don't even realize where they are being guided to as buyers. More bigoted people usually ask about the demographics. Access to good schools, parks, and other resources is much lower on the list than it used to be. In sum, those in power still know how to use the "divide and conquer" strategy to turn us against each other and to control the benefits and privileges of a "democracy."

[SoCalDem]

2. Humans are tribal at the core

and, given the choice, will want to live near others who share common beliefs.

A perfect stranger at the bank last week eavesdropped on my conversation with the teller.. He felt compelled to WARN me ( we are moving to Oregon next year) about all the "Commie-Pinkos" there. He told me how happy they were to leave the freaks in Portland, and how sad he was that they "ruined" his birthplace.

My answer to him:

I told him I thought Oregon was gorgeous, and I was happy that he confirmed my suspicions about Oregon and how glad we were to be moving to a place that suits us.. Told him we would be happy to join fellow-liberals who lived with kindness, tolerance & generosity instead of narrow-minded meanness.
.................................................................
Who on earth in this day & age even uses the term "Commie-Pinko" anymore

[TBF]

4. And they say that like it's a bad thing ...

I took one of those silly internet quizzes once about where you should be living & it told me Oregon. I had no idea how on-point that suggestion was!

[SoCalDem]

6. And. they FORBID you to pump your own gas

[TBF]

7. You've sold me. When can I move? :) nt

[former9thward]

18. It is the dumbest rule in the country.

I have to go to OR two or three times a year and whenever I go into a gas station I have to wait for an attendant to take a break from reading a magazine or watching tv and come to the car. They claim it is for "safety" reasons. Yeah, with scores of millions of people pumping their own gas every day there are just no end of accidents. But you will be safe in OR!

[SoCalDem]

24. Or, it could be that there are some people with jobs...

people who did not have a job before.. Every time we bought gas there, they were there waiting for us to get out of the car....and were very friendly and efficient.. I LOVED it

[former9thward]

25. So its not for "safety" reasons?

Fine, if you want to pay higher than average gas prices to support a jobs program so be it. Of course since you are from CA you are used to ridiculously high gas prices and OR will actually be lower.

[SoCalDem]

30. prices are lower there AND it's probably safer..and some young folks have jobs

[Warren DeMontague]

32. You get used to it.

And trust me, Oregon is not going to be sitting in a corner weeping if Californians refuse to drive their cars up here because of the annoying gas stations.

[former9thward]

34. Oh I agree you get used to it.

You get used to all sorts of inefficiencies in life. That doesn't mean its the right thing to do.

[Warren DeMontague]

36. Yes, we should be more like the South Bay, with everyone pissed off and in a giant fucking hurry.

ME ME ME ME ME ME ME all the time because I'm very important and I drive an important car to go do my important things and I have to get to my very important meeting right importantly now harumph harumph harumph fart

No thanks.

[leftynyc]

22. So does New Jersey

No self-serve there. And the gas is cheaper than NY.

[former9thward]

27. That is because of state taxes.

State tax in NJ is 33 cents a gallon, NY 70 cents a gallon. If there were self serve the gas would be even cheaper than NY.

[marmar]

11. How did he react?

[SoCalDem]

13. He didn't say anything...and then I waved at my friend & left..

[Warren DeMontague]

33. It's horrible. Awful. Really, no one in their right mind would want to move to Oregon.

You'll see. Once you get here. Under no circumstances would anyone here encourage anyone from the other 49 states to move to this wasteland of vile misery.



Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[WinkyDink]

5. Wasn't it always thus? Ward bosses and voting blocs go waaaaay back.

[el_bryanto]

10. That's true- but they were often broken down by racial/religious groups rather than ideology

It just turned out that those blocs could be reliably relied on to vote along with their fellows. The Catholics would vote one way, the Germans another way and so on.

But then that raises another question - i suspect Tea Party folks and Green Party folks who choose to live near each other are probably more affluent, and can afford to slip into a bubble.

Bryant

[LuvNewcastle]

8. It's the only way you can carry on business anymore.

RWers and liberals are further apart now than I can ever recall, so they can't work together. A divided government means nothing gets done nowadays, and everything begins to fall apart when you have a government that can't do business. People need to live in a place with a working economy, so they go and find a place with a lifestyle that suits them.

Who wants to live in a place where you have nothing in common with anybody and in fact, the people are even hostile to you and your preferences? Minorities have already been moving to more friendly places for a long time; now everybody's doing it. It's sad we can't even tolerate each other enough to live on the same street.

[JHB]

9. Part of that is switching parties rather than ideologies, and another part...

...can be attributed to the prevalence of scorched-earth demagoguery and its promotion.

For the first part: The Republicans wooed Dixiecrats and have marginalized those politicians deemed insufficiently-conservative from their ranks. "Rockefeller Republican" is a term of scorn and an accusation of quisling-hood, which pushed some into the Democratic column or independent. The Southern Strategy removed one of the historic factors that caused the intra-party mixes of ideologies.

The other part is demagoguery, most of it also fostered by conservatives. The strategies for conservatives to take control of the Republican party and to defeat the Democrats and Democratic programs was to foster and mobilize anger -- over guns, over sex (/abortion), over taxes, over social issues -- to pry apart the Democrats' New Deal coalition. They didn't necessarily create the anger, but they were adept at stoking it and encouraging it to be directed politically in certain directions.

Once you've created or enhanced the view that the "other side" is pure evil, how can you compromise. How can you work and live next to people who (you think) want to destroy the country?

[Eleanors38]

14. Agree. Wonder how much of this happens within DU?

[JHB]

23. ... And could you elaborate on what you mean by that?

[marmar]

12. k/r

[Skidmore]

15. And some are looking for single occupancy caves

As tests for ideologically driven criteria are more narrowly defined on all segments of the spectrum. This is the primary reason that I refuse to participate in making label salad on the left. We need all willing partcipants to move forward.

[Bluenorthwest]

16. I didn't read the link, because the excerpt does not bother to mention the safey that exists in

numbers. The author seems to think 'self segregation' is the right word for 'avoiding bigots with baseball bats and Bibles'. I have no reason to place my household in the midst of atavistic hate mongers.

[TransitJohn]

17. Just where are these 'strident voices' on the left?

I keep reading about this polarization in our country alluding to 'hard left' to counter the hard right, but I SEE NO POLITICAL LEFT IN THE COUNTRY.

[Fumesucker]

19. Yeah, that had me scratching my head too n/t

[Brigid]

21. This country never has had a very strong political left.

That's because of what I call the "Steinbeck Delusion": Too many Americans believe they're just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

[Brigid]

20. This is exactly why I left Terre Haute . . .

And moved back to Indy. I just got tired of feeling like an alien being.

[FarCenter]

26. There is no longer agreement on what constitute core American values

In the late 1900s, most of the old world was ruled by the British, French, German, Russian, Ottoman and Chinese empires.

America stood for freedom, both political freedom in the form of democracy and economic freedom in the form of free enterprise and markets.

Patriotism reached its peak as America fought to make the world safe for democracy and then against fascism in WW I & II. Later, America was the pillar of the free world as it fought to contain Communism.

But for the last few decades international changes have brought about democracy and free markets in the majority of nations and in most of those that have significant power.

In America, identity politics have replaced patriotism. People feel more allegiance to their racial, linguistic, gender, socioeconomic, religious, regional, etc. identity than to the United States as a whole.

[trotsky]

28. I would think it's more tied to the economic stratification and segregation in this country.

Rather than a conscious choice to live near your ideological peers. You're in the same financial situation with your neighbors, so you would tend to vote similarly.

[Dawson Leery]

29. Sandy Hook.

Last edited Fri Nov 15, 2013, 01:54 PM - Edit history (1)

I have stated many times before, upper Fairfield County and Litchfield County are ideologically out of step with much of New England.
I left.

You would be suprised at the level of passive bigotry that exists in the area.

[MisterP]

31. strident voices on the left?