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 “Going forward, while people will still be able to demonstrate pride in their ethnic heritage,

 we will not tolerate praise or support for white nationalism and separatism.” 

Facebook Post, March 27^th.

 Can Americans ever get along again?

Trying to understand the underpinnings of the conservative-liberal schism tearing our nation apart is beyond complex. For those who place their assumption that Republicans are more gullible and bent towards accepting “conspiracy theories,” think again. “A [recent] study found the extent to which conspiratorial thinking and partisan reasoning inspire beliefs in election-related conspiracy theories... The researchers analyzed a survey of 1,230 Americans taken before and after the 2012 Presidential Election to see why some people believed conspiracy theories about fraud affecting the results… As far as who is more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, the study found no particular difference between the groups, meaning that both Republicans and Democrats are likely to have conspiracists in their midst.” BigThink.com, 9/27/17 

Education and age are significant variables. Pew Research tracks party affiliation on an ongoing basis, but their pre-Trump analysis (April 2015) is quite valuable. “Education. Democrats lead by 22 points (57%-35%) in leaned party identification among adults with post-graduate degrees. The Democrats’ edge is narrower among those with college degrees or some post-graduate experience (49%-42%), and those with less education (47%-39%).  Across all educational categories, women are more likely than men to affiliate with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic. The Democrats’ advantage is 35 points (64%-29%) among women with post-graduate degrees, but only eight points (50%-42%) among post-grad men.

“Generations. Millennials continue to be the most Democratic age cohort; 51% identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, compared with 35% who identify with the GOP or lean Republican. There are only slight differences in partisan affiliation between older and younger millennials. Republicans have a four-point lead among the Silent Generation (47%-43%), the most Republican age cohort.”

But what really polarizes voters is their underlying value system, particularly rural vs urban. Born of a dependency on unpredictable weather patterns and decimation from natural disasters, almost by definition, the farming roots of rural values are anchored in religion. Over the years, scientific achievements have accelerated agricultural productivity, but dependence on God’s blessings continues to dominate. Likewise, there is a very different perception of guns in rural areas vs the close quarters of too many people in crowded cities, where mass killings are so much more easily effected.

“There's a spreading revolt against city-spawned restrictions on self-defense rights by the residents of sparsely settled counties and the officials who represent them. The issue ‘has largely underscored the rift between rural and urban areas,’ the Wall Street Journal noted over the weekend. [A March 10th WSJ piece captioned: Rural Sheriffs Defy New Gun Measures ‘Second Amendment sanctuary’ counties say they won’t enforce background checks, other gun-control proposals.] It's a rift that's widening as the political divide in the United States takes on a strongly geographical character—less along state or regional lines than at the borders between dense populations and open country.

“With hostile people from divergent cultures and political affiliations glaring at each other across the nation's city limits, it's time to reconsider the tendency towards centralization of power in our country that leaves so many people groaning under laws and policies they find abhorrent. If we really want to defuse tensions, we should devolve decision-making as far down the political food chain as possible—preferably all the way to individuals.

“‘Virtually every major city (100,000-plus population) in the United States of America has a different outlook from the less populous areas that are closest to it,’ Josh Kron marveled 

in The Atlantic after the 2012 election demonstrated divisions that have only deepened since… Six years later, the 2018 mid-term election ‘results exacerbate a divide between booming urban centers and struggling rural communities that has been growing since the recession a decade ago,’ The Hill reported. Democrats are increasingly urban in terms of their support, while Republicans have come to rely on rural voters. The parties seem to battle only over the suburbs.

“Values and policy preferences, not just party affiliation, break down along geographic lines. ‘Americans in urban and rural communities have widely different views when it comes to social and political issues, including their assessments of President Donald Trump and opinions about race, immigration, same-sex marriage, abortion and the role of government,’ the Pew Research Center found in 2018.” Reason.com, March 13th. These are the same irreconcilable differences that pushed the United States into the Civil War in April of 1861. 

Will these differences die off as the educated younger generations supplant their elders, as the urban tsunami skews increasingly where the vast majority of Americans live? Or will the remaining minorities become even more desperate, digging in and squaring off. The rural adherents have a whole lot more guns than their urban counterparts. A June 22, 2017 Pew Social Trends report tells us: “Among those who live in rural areas, 46% say they are gun owners, compared with 28% of those who live in the suburbs and 19% in urban areas.”

The battle lines are everywhere, and while social media is the land of conspiracy theorists and presidential tweets, there is a tendency from those on the right to believe that search engines and, excepting platforms like Fox News and Breitbart, online news media skew left. Left-leaning proponents respond that “facts” tend to refute too many right-wing claims and that the perceived “skew” is nothing more than an aversion to facts. Left and right have drawn lines in the sand over the “biases” they see in search engines.

“The idea that Google is subtly pushing masses of voters to the left has the ring of conspiracy, and thus the work of Robert Epstein is warmly embraced by conservative lawmakers — as well as a president — convinced that Big Tech is plotting against them… Yet even some scholars who think the San Diego-based psychologist is wrong about the political impact of search engines — he believes bias built into Google’s processes could have cost Republicans three California congressional districts in the last election — have started paying attention to his detailed work on how voters respond to tens of thousands of search results.

“At a moment when misinformation about search engines and social media bias is rampant, with both the left and the right amplifying unsupported claims, Epstein is asking the right questions, they say, about the unseen power of algorithms and how little most Americans understand about the way they work… The saga of the persistent San Diego psychologist versus the tech giant is a long-running one, full of twists. As Big Data shapes our opinions in ways scholars are only beginning to comprehend, his work has increasingly caught attention.

“‘The larger issue he is looking at is extremely important,’ said Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor of information studies at UCLA who focuses on the relationships between technology and politics. Srinivasan is not convinced by the claims from conservatives that the GOP is being victimized, but he argues scholars need to look more deeply at how search engines can shape the views of those who use them.

“‘We turn to these efficient technologies,’ he said, ‘to do almost everything these days without knowing why we see what we see from them or what data is collected about us and how it is being used.’… Epstein, a former Psychology Today editor in chief who runs a nonprofit institute in California, calls the phenomenon he has explored the search engine manipulation effect…. ‘These are new forms of manipulation people can’t see,’ he said. The technologies ‘can have an enormous impact on voters who are undecided. ... People have no awareness the influence is being exerted.’

“Google dismisses his research as the work of a misguided amateur. Company Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said at a House Judiciary Committee hearing in December that Google had investigated Epstein’s findings and found his methodology flawed…

“In his latest study, which he and a co-author plan to present in April at the 99th annual meeting of the Western Psychological Assn., in Pasadena, Epstein tracked 47,300 searches by dozens of undecided voters in the districts of newly elected California Democratic Reps. Katie Porter, Harley Rouda and Mike Levin.

“Mainstream outlets, including the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, dominated the Google search results. By contrast, searches conducted on Yahoo and Bing more often showcased links from deeply conservative outfits such as Breitbart.

“Using a model he has developed to gauge the subliminal effect of what he sees as tilted search results, Epstein projected that 35,455 voters who’d been on the fence were persuaded to vote for a Democrat entirely because of the sources Google fed them.

“That conclusion is subject to much dispute… Srinivasan questions how many undecided voters use Google to help decide how to cast ballots… Safiya Noble, a UCLA professor and author of ‘Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism,’ is troubled by what she sees as an argument that search engines ought to counterbalance the content of large, well-resourced and highly trained newsrooms with ‘disinformation sites’ and ‘propaganda outlets.’” Evan Halper writing for the March 27th Los Angeles Times. Today, no one seems willing to agree to disagree.

With many pending state and federal investigations of potential Trump empire financial irregularities, many possibly criminal, Trump is doubling down (the GOP is celebrating) based on his now regularly-repeated refrain that he is totally vindicated by the ambiguous DoJ summary of the Mueller findings. Trump and the GOP – still very much in control of Senate investigatory committees – are leaning towards a full-on attack against their critics and based on how “misinformation” was planted by Democrats. We are about to witness American polarization on steroids. Despite a few scattered “wishes” to the contrary, those lines in the sand between left and right not only confuse and squeeze the once-dominant middle, they are increasingly unmovable walls that make Trump’s Mexican vanity wall look incredibly thin and penetrable.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and we seem to be living in historically seminal times, building up to a severe fractionalization of what was once known as the United States of America.