Media bias specialist Vanessa Otero, founder of Ad Fontes Media, talks to me (Zach Elwood) about my books aimed at reducing toxic political polarization in America. Topics discussed include: common objections to and skepticism about this work (for example, views that those working on depolarization are “helping the bad guys”; why overcoming objections is so important; how conflict makes people behave in ways that amplify the toxicity of the conflict (often without knowing it); our distorted views of each other; how our contempt can help create the very things we’re upset about; and more.
Episode links:
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TRANSCRIPT
(Note that the transcript may contain errors.)
Zachary Elwood: Hello and welcome to the People Who Read People podcast with me, Zachary Elwood. This is a podcast aimed at improving understanding of human behavior; you can learn more about it at PeopleWhoReadPeople.com.
As you may know, I work on reducing toxic political polarization. I’ve been working full time on this problem for the past 9 months or so, and part-time on it for years before that. I recently released a book aimed at a liberal audience about the problem of polarization; it was titled How Contempt Destroys Democracy, with the subtitle An American Liberal’s Guide to Toxic Polarization. A Kirkus Reviews review said that it makes quote “compelling arguments, based on astute observations and backed by solid research” end quote.
As you probably know, there are a lot of objections to this work; a lot of skepticism about this work. I and others doing this work are regularly insulted by both conservatives and liberals; I regularly see pessimistic and paranoid messages where people think I and others in this space are secretly working for the quote “other side,” or that I or others have a secret liberal or a conservative agenda. More commonly, people just call us stupid and naive.
Many of the objections and skepticisms are based on misunderstandings of various sorts; misunderstandings about what the “other side” really wants and what they’re like; misunderstandings about what the goals of reducing toxic polarization really are; and more.
In my book I have a section toward the beginning that talks about common objections. I’ll read a little bit from that section:
Objection #1: The word “polarization” implies a both-sides problem but liberals don’t contribute to this problem in a significant way. Our problem is simply that the “other side” has become so wrong and dangerous.
Objection #2: It’s morally correct to be polarized when you’re fighting bad, dangerous people (for example, like Trump).
Objection #3: Trying to reduce people’s animosity at Trump and Trump voters helps Trumpism. We need our animosity to defeat them.
Objection #4: If you’re trying to reduce polarization, you’re wrongly and naively valuing civility and unity more than morality and justice.
These objections are phrased in liberal-leaning language but there are similar objections from the right; they use different language and terms but the underlying objection is the same: the core underlying objection is “they’re bad and we’re good, so it’s naive to ask us to reduce our animosity toward them”
And I do understand these objections; Before I got into this work, I would’ve had a lot of the same kinds of objections. Trump is just so bad, my thinking would’ve go, so we need to shame these people and make them see the light of day. Or I might have thought that people seeking to reduce animosity did have some secret, underhanded agenda. These are stressful times, so I do get the objections and why rational people have them.
It’s my hope people who are skeptical about this work are willing to listen to resources like this, or similar ones, like my book. No matter your political views, we can probably agree that America is in a tough spot right now, with our divides: it’s a situation that I think requires more people to carefully consider our situation: how we got here, and how we might get out.
If you like this episode, I hope you share it with others who may have some of the objections we address. One of the big themes in my polarization books is that it’s very important that we spread the word throughout society and help overcome all these various objections to this work that reside in so many people’s minds. Sharing this talk is one easy way you can help with that.
This is a talk I had with Vanessa Otero, for her audience. Vanessa is the founder of Ad Fontes Media, which is a media bias analysis company. You can learn more about it at AdFontesMedia.com; that’s AD FONTES media. You may have seen her media bias charts making the rounds; she’s gotten a lot of respect for that work. If you’re curious about that work, I interviewed her for my podcast a few months ago; we talked about her interest in reducing polarization and how she saw her media bias analysis as relating to that goal.
I think Vanessa asks some very good questions and structures the talk very well. It’s the best talk I think I’ve given on this topic — which is why I put it on the home page of my polarization website: american-anger.com.
Also want to say: if you’re listening to this via audio, this talk was done via a video call, so if you want to see that, you can find it on the People Who Read People youtube channel.
Okay here’s the talk I had with Vanessa Otero…
Vanessa Otero: Welcome, and thank you everyone for joining. I’m really excited to have Zachary Elwood here with me today. Zachary is a really thoughtful and wise writer about the issue of polarization. Those of you who saw our email to register for this, which is all of you, have seen the images of his books, Defusing American Anger, and his most recent one, How Contempt Destroys Democracy. The reason I was so drawn to Zachary’s books is because there’s so many overlaps between what we do at Ad Fontes Media and the way that Zachary approaches the concept of polarization. I’m going to jump right into the good stuff.
I want to talk about objections. Objections to even framing the issues that we face in our country politically as an issue of polarization. Because I’ve run into this so much with promoting our work at Ad Fontes. One of the reasons we put out the media bias chart is so folks can see how different other sides’ media is for the purposes of understanding others’ media consumption and for purposes of understanding why we’re so polarized. The thing I always get as a response is, “Well, it’s not that we’re polarized. That’s not the problem. The problem is that the other side is just wrong. And if they would just simply be right and agree with me, we wouldn’t be so polarized.” I know you get that a lot yourself. What do you say to folks who frame that objection that way?
Zachary Elwood: Yeah. First, I just wanted to throw in, thanks so much for having me on. It’s a big honor and I’m always humbled when people want to talk to me about it, because I haven’t been in this space that long and I mainly see my efforts as trying to draw attention to other people’s ideas and research and stuff in a more accessible and easy to understand way. It always means a lot when people think I did a good job. So, thanks for that. Yeah, the objections. There’s quite a few objections but I think the core objection boils down to that, you know, “The other side is just bad.” Right? And there’s various forms of that, that that can take on the right and the left. It can be phrased in different ways. But I think the core thing it misses is what Daniel Stone called our undue hate. It’s our exaggerated ideas and worst-case interpretations of what drives the other side or our political opponents. It’s the worst-case interpretations of so many things they do, and often it’s just not seeing that what drives them largely is the fear of the more extreme people on our side and these kinds of things.
So I think it boils down to the exaggerated fear and contempt and animosity that we have for each other, and seeing that we can vehemently strongly disagree with each other without bringing in all of this overstated contempt and fear and such. And when those things enter the equation, they drive the conflict cycle and end up creating the very things that we’re scared of and upset by. Right? And that’s what I focus on a lot, is the way that those negative emotions about each other aren’t just about emotions, that those things actually skew people’s beliefs and help create the more extreme and divisive and hardened and non-negotiable stances that people have because a lot of that stuff is driven by fear, and anger, and animosity, and such.
Vanessa: I find that when I invite folks to create a greater understanding of folks on the other side, that’s viewed as sometimes a non-starter. I posted a couple of weeks ago on LinkedIn, there was a– I don’t even remember what big political event it was, but… Oh, Trump was convicted of 34 felonies. You know, big news story, everybody’s covering it. And I invited folks to take 30 minutes or an hour, if they could stand it, to watch the cable news from the side they disagree with most for the purposes of understanding that other people’s media consumption is really different. And I got a lot of visceral, “No! I’m not going to do that.” And it seemed to come from a couple of things. One, fear that I was trying to encourage them to adopt the other side’s views. There was a lot of resistance to that. So when you talk about having a lot of contempt for the other side and just being so resistant to that, I think that’s one aspect of it. But two, people didn’t realize I was asking them not to change their opinions. I was asking them merely to understand what other people are viewing. I was not saying please abandon all your beliefs and believe somebody else’s beliefs, but people thought that I was asking them that. So, get into that kind of contempt. Please, do.
Zach: Yeah, I think that’s a key part of this thing because we have a hard time distinguishing between a call to understand and empathize with other people and agree with those people, right? Like so often in my books, I’m making cases for how you can understand someone else’s view and see the better versions of it. And I think so often we easily conflate that as like I’m defending that view or I have that view. But for so many things we could go through, I feel like I understand by and large what drives a lot of the narratives on both sides of the political aisle. It doesn’t mean I agree with any particular stance necessarily, it just means I think there’s an important thing there about trying our best to understand those better points, as opposed to so often our instinct when we’re in conflict is to assume the worst about everything that happens, right? Any rhetoric or any behavior conflict makes us jump to the worst interpretations. I think we need more people to try to understand the better reasons, you know, what they call the steelman kind of things. I think a lot of times those things are pretty banal and easy to understand if we try. Yeah.
Vanessa: Yeah. Why is it important to understand other people’s, like you said, steelman, as opposed to strawman? Talk about– for those who might not be familiar– what’s a steelman kind of argument?
Zach: Yeah, the steelman and the strawman thing. The steelman refers to thinking about the better, strongest versions of our opponent’s arguments versus the strawman is the weakest versions, or in practice, it’s just the most pessimistic versions of what the other side thinks. But I think for people who say why is that important— like if I’m still going to end up disagreeing with them, why is it important? And I think it’s important for the reasons just stated because if we see the deranging nature of toxic conflict and how it drives people to more extreme and more divisive behaviors, it creates support for more divisive and more extreme and non-negotiable leaders and ideas. If we can see that, then we can see the value of trying to engage— for our own sake and even for our own political goals sake— for trying to engage in more respectful and more honest and true ways, as opposed to the more pessimistic and worst case possible imagining ways of engaging. And that’s another thing I emphasize in my book. Because I try to make an argument to politically passionate people for why they should want to embrace these ideas, which I think is hugely important for getting— as many of us are politically passionate people— for getting people to embrace these ideas, even for their own sake, and not just for the sake of being nice or something. Right?
Vanessa: Right, let’s dive into that. That relates to one of the questions that we have. The last part of the question is, “Liberals need to agree that the conservative side is right. It’s a conservative invitation, it challenges that the next revolution will be bloodless if the liberals allow it. That’s paraphrased from something that Kevin Roberts, the leader of Heritage Foundation, said on an interview in reference to Project 2025. Do liberals need to agree that the conservative side is right? Is that what you’re calling for?
Zach: No, not at all. No, that’s not what I or anyone else in this space is calling for.
Vanessa: Or conversely, that conservatives need to agree that liberals are right.
Zach: No. See, that is a common misunderstanding. Yeah. But I think it’s related to the idea… I guess it’s related to the misunderstanding of what this work is about. There’s so many misunderstandings about this work. For example, an organization— Starts With Us— that I work with, we often see the criticism, “Oh, you’re working with the other side. You’re with the bad guys.” We get that from people on the Left and the right, which I think is kind of the fundamental nature of what conflict does to us. And in any conflict, people trying to resolve the conflict are seen as the enemy or traitors or what have you. I would say it’s just a fundamental misunderstanding because, like I said, we’re trying to get people not to avoid disagreement. You know, there’s going to be strong disagreement, even strong moral judgment, or even anger. There’s nothing wrong with anger. But it’s being willing to examine what really drives your political opponents. It doesn’t mean you can’t judge specific leaders or specific people on the other side that you see as divisive, as extreme, whatever it may be. But it’s trying to understand what drives the support for those people. If you think the people on the other side are supporting more extreme people, it’s being curious about what are the underlying dynamics of the conflict. Obviously, these things are really hard to talk about in an off-the-cuff way, but that’s the things that I and other people try to get across in our work is seeing the underlying pieces of the conflict and how that bubbles up to more extreme people, statements, behaviors, and what have you. And if you can see how that dynamic works, then you’d be interested in tamping down the unnecessary and unreasonable amounts of contempt and fear in these kinds of things. Yeah.
Vanessa: Yeah, you talk really specifically about contempt, and you talk early in your book about how contempt and anger are different things. You didn’t say contempt and anger. You can be angry and you can disagree about a position really strongly and want to convince somebody about why you disagree and why you’re correct, you know? But contempt and how contempt destroys democracy is that it’s about contempt being a thing that undermines you trying to achieve your aims. There’s so many places we can go with this, but let’s move to a concept that you spend a good amount of time on in your book. You’ve alluded to it a little bit already, but outgroup homogeneity. What is it?
Zach: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking of when you asked that question. Because it’s like I’m angry a lot. Many people are angry about specific things a lot, right? I might be angry at things Trump has done or angry at various things, but I think it’s very important to distinguish between our feelings, our views of specific people– say it’s Trump, Biden, whoever– and our views of our fellow citizens who are willing to support those people or those ideas or whatever. Because even though I’m very open that I think Trump is a bad and even dangerous leader, but I can still understand what drives rational and good people to support him. That is a key distinction. But your point about the outgroup homogeneity thing… The outgroup homogeneity effect is in research when they show that in conflict or in a situation where there’s an in-group and an outgroup, we have the tendency to view the outgroup as basically being all the same. Which means, in practice, we often view them as being like their worst members. Right? And you can find examples like this all over social media very easily. You open up Twitter, you’ll see it. It’s like all Republicans are racist and fascist and authoritarian, all Liberals want to kill babies after birth or whatever the extreme Antifa communists, groomers, what have you. So there’s just this tendency to see the other side in simplistic ways while at the same time seeing our own group as very complex and human and often much more divided than the other group which seems like a monolith. Right?
Which makes the other side even more scary because we see everything they do is connecting to other things and it’s this huge, scary group. Right?
Vanessa: You bring up some quotes in your book from both Democrats and Republicans saying, “Aargh, if we could…” Democrats saying, “Oh, if we could only get our stuff together like the Republicans where they just agree with each other and they’re all in lockstep…” and then basically Republicans saying the exact same thing about Democrats.
Zach: Right. Yeah, that’s an interesting phenomenon too. When I first encountered that, I was surprised because this Republican pundit told me behind the scenes off the record. She’s like, “The Democrats are just so aligned. The liberals are so aligned. I just wish we could be like them.” When I shared that with liberal people, they’re like, “What is she talking about? It’s obviously the reverse.” But that’s what the homogeneity effect and similar group dynamics do to us. They make the other side seem this completely aligned monolith who’s all trying to accomplish the same thing. But to get back to your point, I think it’s important to distinguish our anger at certain people or ideas we think are wrong or harmful from our understanding of why people are willing to support those ideas. And those can be quite different. For example, some people vote for Trump just because. They may not even like him. They may even think he’s quite bad, but they see it as a lesser of two evil things and they’re scared of what they see as extreme or dangerous behaviors on the Left. And so the group of Trump voters or the group of Biden voters are not monolithic, there’s all different spectrum of different concerns and reasons. Sometimes it’s just one issue. Some people are just one-issue voters and they’re like, “I’m just voting because I believe X on this very important issue.” Right?
So I think it’s important to see that nuance about groups in general, about our own group, about another group, and I think that helps explain the distinction between anger and contempt too because contempt really plays a role when it is applied to an entire large swath of people. That’s when it really becomes dangerous. It’s one thing to have anger or contempt for a few specific people or something, but it really becomes toxic when it spreads to whole entire groups. And then it impacts how politicians and pundits and journalists or whoever talk about these things and they create more between-group animosity in the way they talk and so on and so on.
Vanessa: The folks that are on this webinar are familiar with Ad Fontes Media and should have quite a bit of familiarity with distinguishing levels of things. On our very chart itself, it skews Left and Right— strong Left and right hyper-partisan, left and right most extreme. It’s not just one side is all one thing and one side is all another thing. But we do that a lot with the outgroup homogeneity effect. And it’s really exacerbated in our entrenched two-party political system as polarization has grown. Because as you mentioned, our distribution of the kind of beliefs people hold in the United States is… Sorry, I’m conscious of my hands and the blurriness here. It’s bimodal, you know? Like Left and Right, there’s a lot of folks that will— in that middle, if you think about the chart, that line between strong Left and hyper-partisan Left, and strong Right and hyper-partisan Right, there are a lot of folks that hold those views. And then in the middle, I don’t think it’s another mode or I don’t think it’s another spike, but I think there’s a big group here. It’s not all the way down. It’s not like there’s zero people that are in the middle. Only there’s a ton of people right in the middle, but I think if you added up all these people right here, it would be a fairly large mound in the middle. But most people are not dead in the middle on a lot of issues because there isn’t necessarily a flat middle on issues, you know? With guns or abortion, tending to land as a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right is common as is landing strongly to the Left and strongly to the Right. So if you’re landing closer to one side than the other, because we’re so polarized, if you’re on the right, you’re closer to Trump. If you’re on the Left, you’re closer to Biden. You don’t have a middle choice in the United States. Your vote is one or the other essentially.
It’s really rough for people who feel like they have nuanced views and then they get categorized in that outgroup homogeneity effect. If they just lean a little left or lean a little right, and if they lean a little right and they’re called… Or even if they’re strong Right and are called racist, fascist, destroyers of democracy, or Antifa communist groomers, then that’s clearly incorrect. They can’t believe the other side because they know that to not be true of themselves.
Zach: And it drives them farther into that path of polarization. On both sides, it is understandably angering to be told what you believe based on things that you don’t think are applicable to be told, “You are X, Y, Z.” It can just be very deranging in ways that I think we’re only in the beginning stage of understanding how deranging these various insults that are thrown around can be. I think we’ll look back one day and have a better understanding of just how much… And there’s plenty of research showing how insults… There’s one study from back in the ’60s maybe that was like, you know, insulting people has a boomerang effect of making you double down on the things you’re being insulted for and these kinds of things. There’s just all this human psychology at work that drives us deeper into channels.
Vanessa: Talk about that vicious cycle of more contempt causing the very problem that you are fighting against.
Zach: Yeah, that was a big thing I wanted to focus on for the book because I think it helps make a scalable argument to people, no matter their political views of why they should care about these things. Many people have written about the cycle of conflict, how it’s… Well, one person– can’t remember his name offhand– but he wrote about the mutual radicalization process of conflict. Both sides become increasingly fearful of each other and the actions that one group may make in defensive ways to what they see as defensive ways to the other side is perceived as the provocations and aggressions to the other side and vice versa. So things just keep going in this vicious cycle. And I think the thing that’s important there is our emotions, our fear, and our anger can distort our beliefs. For example, no matter what you believe about election distrust or election denial, I think everybody would agree that toxic polarization leads to more and more people distrusting elections. And no matter if you think one side is worse than the other or what have you, it’s a natural progression to find reasons to say that election is unfair. That’s an outcome of high suspicion, high anger, et cetera, et cetera. Again, even if we think specific people have done bad things on that front, the underlying dynamic is there and the emotions are there. That’s just an example of how our emotions can really derange our thinking on all sorts of things; on issues, on stances on specific events, stances on issues. There’s so many factors there, but I think one factor is when we see the bad guys as believing something. Nobody wants to be like the bad guys, so we kind of subconsciously can find our stances shifting in an opposite direction. It’s like, “Well, if Trump voters believe this, then I don’t want to be like them and I want to make a stand against that. So, maybe my beliefs will shift a little bit more to the Left and vice versa on the other side.” There’s all these various psychological reasons why we can find ourselves drifting to the edges on stances.
That’s why I think it’s important to notice that the more contemptuously we engage with each other, we’re contributing to that dynamic. And it’s entirely possible– like I emphasize in my book to politically passionate people– it’s entirely possible to embrace these ideas while pursuing whatever political goals you want. And I would say embracing these ideas actually helps you because it means you’re trying to speak in more persuasive ways that speak to a broader range of people. You’re not alienating people. So I think it’s very important to see that these are not… I think a lot of people’s instinct about this work is that political passion or political activism is mutually exclusive with depolarization ideas. And I think that’s just completely wrong. To me, those two things are aligned and depolarization ideas help political persuasion and political activism. But I think our instincts when in conflict lead us to see that as completely opposed, right? Because we feel like, “Well, we have to make our contempt known. That’s how we’ll beat the bad guys.” Right? But in my mind and in many people’s mind, that’s actually what creates the very pushback you’re working against because nobody wants to be told they’re pieces of shit, basically. It helps build the cycle of conflict.
Vanessa: Yeah. We dance around the subject a little bit around language, around calling people certain names, but it’s a really key component about persuasion and contempt. I view it as a hierarchy of… There’s a hierarchy of verbal persuasion. Ideally, you’d use lots of facts to… If you’re going to make an argument, you’d use as many facts as possible to make that argument and your conclusion that you’re supporting really strong. The fewer facts you use and the more conclusions you use, the more easily it’s categorized as opinion. But on our very chart, there’s a couple of sections. There’s the opinion section, and above that is an analysis section, and above that is fact reporting sections. The difference between that fact reporting analysis and opinion is truly the density of facts to conclusions. But then there’s this line, and below that, we call it our problematic section but it contains a lot of things. There’s a lot of reasons that things are not merely opinion, they’re problematic. But the biggest thing is dehumanization, insults, and vilifying language. And I really want to dive into those distinctions because what we mean by dehumanizing language is language that specifically calls out somebody for being not human. Like they’re animals, they’re monsters, they’re less than human, they’re aliens. They’re not even people. Insults is a little bit more straightforward. Vilifying. Words that have vil, like V-I-L is a root word, they’re evil or they’re villains. Those particular words are really strong and they’re on the lower end of the persuasion hierarchy. But people use them for a couple of reasons.
One, it’s easier. It’s just easier to name-call than to make a really factually supported argument, especially in 240 characters. And people get a lot of pats on the back and engagement and thumbs up from their side for calling people ‘the orange Satan’ or something. I literally got that in an email when I was promoting this webinar. Yeah, talk about contempt, how that plays a role.
Zach: Yeah, totally. There’s so many of these things, as I write out in the books. There’s so many of these things that just have this self-reinforcing aspect. And it’s like the more polarized a society becomes, the more incentives there are to be polarizing. The more polarized a society becomes, the more power is granted to more polarizing people in polarizing language. And I think that’s part of seeing the need to tone down the contempt, too, is because the system is such that it rewards more polarizing behavior. But yeah, I think there’s so many… I actually had a good interview on my podcast with Karina Korostelina who wrote a book about the role of insults in international or national conflicts and such. And that was a good talk. One of her points or one of the things that stood out to me about that talk was I’m a big believer that the internet and social media is a big amplifier of these things because when you think about the internet, the internet is a place where it’s easy to store and retrieve all sorts of insults. There’s insults everywhere. It’s easy to make insults, it’s easy to have our insults viewed, right? So you can think of the internet as basically an insult creation and amplification place. And all the insults from the past don’t fade from my memory, they’re all there for us to dredge up at a moment’s notice. I’m a big believer in that.
When it comes to the dehumanizing language, I think often there’s these shades of it too. There’s some less direct things. For example, I was thinking today about the whole real American’s language on the Right. That’s an indirectly dehumanizing thing because you’re basically saying, “Well, you’re not real Americans. You’re almost like not real people because you don’t believe what we believe.” That’s just one example. I could pull others. You see lots of things on the Left and the Right. But I think there’s all these shades of things that are, you know? I think we often think of dehumanizing literally like saying you’re not a human or you’re a cockroach or whatever, but there’s all these shades of things that are insulting up to dehumanizing and I think that all plays a role. Including, I would say— I actually wanted to write a piece about this where there’s… Another way we can be dehumanizing or at least insulting is treating others’ narratives in the worst possible way, as if saying the reason you vote for Trump is for the worst possible reasons. That is a, if not dehumanizing, is a very insulting and demeaning thing depending on how it’s phrased. But just to say when we disrespect each other’s narratives and treat their narratives as basically entirely malicious or entirely founded on horrible things, that can have a very insulting and understandably anger-producing reaction.
Vanessa: Yeah. An example you talk about in your book is saying the reason Trump voters vote for Trump is because they’re racist. And you gave a counterexample of like, “Here’s examples of other reasons folks would vote for Trump.” Can you talk about that example?
Zach: Yeah. Well, one key way to see that it’s not just about racism, if anyone needs to hear that, is those kinds of narratives don’t help explain why racial minority support for Trump has increased substantially between 2016 and 2020. And if anybody wants to look into that, I wrote about it in my book, of course, but Musa al-Gharbi has a great paper called “Race and the Race for the White House” which really kind of breaks down some of those most pessimistic narratives on that front or most pessimistic interpretations of research and those kinds of things. But maybe you had mentioned a specific example, I’m not sure.
Vanessa: Yeah. You talked about, you know, it doesn’t account for somebody who just may be a low engagement or a low-information voter, maybe a younger voter who hasn’t really given a lot of thought about the history of racism in our country or whatever.
Zach: Right. Yeah. I think the nature of conflict makes many people reach for these really elaborate, as I see them, explanations that delve into the past to help explain why racism or segregation or whatever it may be played a role in forming the bad ideas of Republicans. Or on the Left, some Conservatives will paint these elaborate pictures about the dark Marxist underpinnings of far Left thought and such. The thing is we’re such good storytellers. Humans are just such good storytellers. We can easily create these very convincing and persuasive arguments about the long history of the badness of our opponents, right? And they’re creeping inclinations or malicious motives and tie it into past things. But at the end of the day, the nature of polarization and conflict is you could easily place someone down in the middle of that polarized situation who knew nothing about any of that past stuff, and they would be like, “Oh, well, I see arguments for why this makes more sense or I’m more afraid of these things over here,” and they would start to go on one polarized track or another, right? It doesn’t require a lot of these elaborate— which I find are often just our ways in practice of trying to build excuses for why the other side is so bad. We’re drawn to those narratives because it makes us feel like we understand their badness. But I think oftentimes we’re just fooling ourselves because it is tempting for us to feel like we understand this huge complex thing and we understand the bad guys. But I think we’re just drawn to very simplistic narratives that make us feel good and make us feel superior in our contempt and such.
Vanessa: Yeah, that’s excellent. I feel bad that I’m letting all these questions build up and people have a lot of questions. Thank you for your engagement. We’re only going to take the questions through the Q&A, we’re not going to… So if you’ve got your hand raised, please type in your question in the Q&A. We have a couple of related questions so I’ll read the first one that addresses this.
How do I talk with someone who holds me and my views in contempt?
Zach: Yeah, that’s obviously a tough one because I think at some level you have to question whether that’s even worth it if someone’s engaging with you in that way. But then sometimes you have to, right? You feel like you have to in some situations. I have a few thoughts on that in the book at the very end, but I think one of the things that stands out to me is especially if your conversation is being viewed by other people, say it’s on social media or say it’s in a public context where say you’re a politician interacting with someone who you feel is contemptuous towards you. I think it’s very important to keep in mind the other people that are listening and observing that because the dynamic that often happens is people get stuck in this mutual insult back and forth, which if we’re talking about publicly viewed things, it just has the impact of driving away the people and further polarizing the people that are watching because they’re just going to filter for the insulting things that they find in that interaction that offend them and their group.
So I think it’s very important to keep in mind how can I talk in a persuasive way, not necessarily to this person who’s disrespecting me or treating me with the intent, but how can I speak in ways that are persuasive to people that may be listening that may actually care to be reached or care to have a more nuanced view or have their minds shifted. And I think otherwise, if it’s a private conversation, you’d probably just be best to walk away. But I think about that in terms of all of these online and public interactions that happen where someone’s saying, “They’re treating me with contempt, I’m going to return fire with fire.” And I just think that’s often just falling into the trap of the hate-bait kind of trap where we just get caught. And then the animosity becomes the focus as opposed to talking about the actual issues. I will say also I’ve interacted, you know, I’ve done my fair share of going into very polarized places like really angry pro-Trump groups, for example, where I had some pretty nuanced conversations just by refusing to return fire with fire and being vulnerable too and being like, “Hey, you made a good point there for X, Y, Z, but here’s why I think what I think.” I’ve even had people apologize where they were like, “Sorry, I came off so mean at first, but I’ve been having a tough time in my life.” That kind of stuff happens, especially online where online we’re often talking to people who we don’t know what they’re going through and their online interactions bring out the worst in people and so on and so on. It’s a very tough thing to do, obviously, but I think taking the patient or the more neutral approach and vulnerable approach often is the stronger… It’s a harder thing, but I think it takes strength and I think it pays off a lot of times.
Vanessa: I have the exact same experience. Refusing to insult, refusing to go to that level, and even refusing to respond to the anger, it’s tough. Especially when you identify a disagreement. And we’re sort of primed to when somebody responds to us on social media, you’re like, “What are they saying against me?” And you sort of view it as an attack or something you have to rebut, but it’s not always. Sometimes it’s a legitimate point if you can slow down and listen to it and refuse it. It’s harder when somebody starts out with an insult or some anger or some contempt towards you. But it really does diffuse it when you say, “Okay, yeah, I hear that you…” Repeat back their concern and explain it using your own words, non-insulting words. And it really tones down the rhetoric. I had a great exchange… I do this all the time on social media and I know you do it all the time on social media. I see it. The tough part is you don’t get as many pats on the back from people who agree with you than you do if you’re doubling down on the insults. That gets a lot more engagement. Social media just wires us to be like, “Ooh, if I say this thing and a bunch of people like it, that means it’s right.” I kind of like to go into the echo chamber threads where people are like, “Yeah, high five. I agree with you.” And I’m like, “Actually, this is harmful.”
Zach: I used to get so many more shares when I would put out really good zingers of people, but I don’t really do that anymore.
Vanessa: Well, yeah. I wanted you to share about that. How did you… You weren’t always the high-minded, above-insults personality on social media that you are today. Tell us about pre-2016.
Zach: Yeah, don’t go through my old tweets, please. You’ll find some doozies. But yeah, I talk about that in the books about my path of when Trump got elected, I was insulting Trump voters and putting all these righteous screeds online. Then I started getting curious about conflict dynamics and started thinking maybe I’m part of the problem. And then that got me curious about well, what are the angry narratives that people on both sides have and how did they form and how did polarization increase over the last few decades? So yeah, that was kind of my journey into it. I even had instances of insulting and driving away people I knew that I was close to and these kinds of things.
Vanessa: Yeah. Let’s pick away at some of these questions. We’ve got so many great ones. Thank you all. Yeah, do you think that extreme polarization causes less politically engaged citizens, more or less in the middle to further separate themselves from the process?
Zach: It’s complex, I think. I think it results in some people tuning out because they’re exhausted. Some people have called it an exhausted mindset of being exhausted with the fighting and the animosity, especially for people that can’t identify as much with a Left or Right label, which I think there’s a lot of people with the increasing polarization can make people tune out and just not care, which I think is also for politically passionate people. That’s another reason you should not like high contempt and toxic polarization because it does make a lot of people tune out and makes them less susceptible to listen to your stances on things you care about. But I’d also say, obviously at the same time, it creates a lot of people who are hyper-tuned in. Right? And I agreed with Ezra Klein’s synopsis at the end of his book where we pay way too much attention to things we can’t control like national politics where it’s almost like creating a magnifying glass of everyone’s attention and focusing on these things that they can’t change and can’t really affect and that they’re really angry about also. I think that helps explain a lot of the impotent rage a lot of people feel on such things. I liked his recommendation of focusing on more local issues, things you can actually change, things you’re passionate about.
And also just questioning. I feel like a lot of us, especially obviously the more online people spend a lot of time just venting online. How many hours are people spending on those things? I feel like a lot of people think that that’s actually accomplishing something but I think we should question, “Is that accomplishing something, or is a lot of that stuff just building the contempt and animosity and helping create some of the dynamics that we’re upset by?” So I think it’s helpful to question how we spend our time and consider if I am passionate and if I am angry about things, can I devote my time and effort to something that’s more constructive and useful in my community or something like that? Things that I can actually feel good about and feel good that I’m actually doing something concrete.
Vanessa: Yeah, like civic engagement, especially on the local politics level. Or even engaging with people one-to-one. I have a few questions about one of the topics, which is, you allude to a difference between online conversations and in-person conversations. And I think approaching those requires different sets. There’s different circumstances that attend each one of them and different approaches that can work. We spend so much of our time at Ad Fontes with our analysts left, right, and center in pods with each other writing articles. Each of them will spend two hours at a time with people from their political opposites discussing political things. And they can do so without contempt, not just because of training and practice and an internal commitment to it, which are really important.
Zach: Not just because they’re getting paid.
Vanessa: Yeah, exactly. Whenever we put out a call for analysts, we get a lot of applications. It’s truly fun. We do feel like we’re doing something. I was really frustrated before I had this company trying to have a conversation online with people on Facebook. I’m like, I’m in this one conversation, it is so much work to get somebody to tamp down the level and get them to agree on some facts, and then have a persuasive argument. Meanwhile, millions of memes are just floating around and I’m like, “What difference am I making?” It was very frustrating. And so when you feel like you are actually doing something about it, it relieves a lot of that angst, first of all. And I think a lot of the relief of the angst is likelier to come in these offline conversations, these in-person conversations. So it gets to one of these common questions that you can have in person, which is: How do you have a discussion with somebody where you don’t agree on basic facts?
Zach: Yeah, that’s obviously tough. And first, I just want to throw out I’m a huge fan of your work and also other people like Isaac Saul’s Tangle News. I think you and Isaac and other people have been examples of people trying to do something concrete to tackle these issues so I just want to say I think that’s great. I think part of the solution is just getting more people to do these various projects and endeavors of various sorts to tackle it.
Yeah, not agreeing on basic facts is obviously really hard, which is in some sense a big part of our divergent narratives in the first place, like polarization results in us not agreeing on a lot of basic facts because our narratives are so divergent. Obviously, there’s only so much you can do in those spots, but I do think getting back to the idea that even if you can’t agree on some basic facts, can you try to understand how they’ve come to those views? And even if you can’t convince them on specific facts, if you’re trying to persuade them trying to have a nuanced argument, can you at least help them see— if you can understand their view, maybe you can help them see what your concerns are. I think a big part of that is even just understanding the basic underlying things that they’re concerned about, whether it’s… And often they may have real things, not just fake things that those concerns are based on. Usually, for the most part, people’s concerns are not entirely built on false things, even though we often see them as we’ll focus on like, “Well, they must be idiots. They believe X, Y, Z, that is false.” But a lot of times they have other things that are real in those areas that their concerns are built on. So I think focusing as much as you can on the things that you can agree with or can understand about their concerns, and not so much on if you can’t convince them on X, Y, Z specific facts or something. Yeah.
Vanessa: Yeah. I can think of a couple of examples on the Left and the Right that maybe have different factual underpinnings and understand things. Let me give you an example. People on the Right raising concerns about immigration, like too many immigrants coming across the Southern border and crimes committed by those immigrants. I’ll find that folks on the Left will tend to dismiss those concerns, even though there are some factual underpinnings. The disagreement on the extent of the problem often has a lot to do with the media sources you consume and how much you think it is a problem. MSNBC versus Fox News will present different statistics to users that might be true, but will– to MSNBC viewers– it just might not seem like that big of a problem. Whereas to Fox viewers, it seems like a much of a big problem. And to get to an ultimate like, “All right, you and I, we decided to talk about this issue of immigration and we agree exactly this many immigrants came over and this many crimes or whatever,” it’s really hard to get to. A flip side example is Democrats talking about women being in danger and their lives being in danger because of a lack of access to abortions, and telling stories of women who had medical emergencies or died because of them. That’s the same thing where folks on the Right might dismiss that like, “Ah, it doesn’t really happen that much.” Because again, the same kind of factual underpinnings of the rate at which it happens or whatever, it’s sort of hard to like, “All right, we’re going to go sit down, we’re going to go do a bunch of research together from factual sources and find out the exact number.” Finding the underlying concern there and acknowledging somebody else has a valid concern. Don’t just dismiss because you don’t think it happens that much on one side or the other. Dismissing those facts can be as big of a problem as not agreeing on the facts.
Zach: Yeah. No, I think that’s a hugely important point. And actually, that’s probably the thing I would emphasize more in my book if I was going to go back. The fact that it’s just so easy for humans to build entirely different narratives of harm, like who’s doing harm, right? For example, the immigration crime thing. Right? Clearly, some illegal immigrants do commit crime or even murder. Right? That can be scary. That can build a logical defensible narrative in the same way that to make an analogy, the Left is angry about shootings and killings by police, even as Conservatives might think in context, that’s not as big a deal as you’re making it out to be. So just to say, we can build all sorts of narratives depending… Because harm is harm, right? If we perceive harm, even if it’s a little bit of harm, we can say this is too much harm. The idea of what harm is normal and expected is entirely subjective depending on, oftentimes, where our attention is drawn and sometimes even where our allegiances are and what we pay attention to, et cetera. I just think it’s very important to see that perceptions of harm can be very subjective. And like you’re saying, it’s very good to– for people that want to tone down the contempt– it’s acknowledging like, yes, it’s possible for Liberals to see the perspective that even a few too many crimes or murders is too much if we believe that those people shouldn’t have been in the country in the first place. That’s how they frame it. And each side has their narratives of why harm is excessive or why it’s okay in context. I think that’s very important to see. And it’s getting to that central idea, which I quoted from Kevin Dorst who’s done some good work in examining the rational ways that we can reach polarized perspectives. I think we have a tendency to be like, “Look at how stupid these people’s perspectives are.” But if we care about reducing contempt, it’s worth examining the very rational ways that we can pick and choose information to build these narratives. And those narratives, even if we disagree with them, we can see the shreds of rationality in there.
Vanessa: I am going to take one voice question. So, Joy Thomas, if you want to get ready. You’ve been patiently waiting with your hand up, but I just want to be cognizant if there’s any issues like getting your question into the chat. I know we’re not always going to get that question, but I’m going to allow you to talk here in a second if you’re there. Joy, you want to go ahead and say your question? [silence] I might’ve left her on mute for too long. [chuckles] All right, you’d have to unmute, Joy. [silence] All right.
Zach: I think she’s unmuted.
Vanessa: Oh, there you are. Joy? [silence] We can’t hear you. All right. Sorry, I tried. All right. Anne also had her hand up, so I’m going to… Anne, you put in the chat that you’re a part of Braver Angels, a great organization. Zach and I are both familiar with it. You want to share?
Anne: Yes, I just want to give a plug to Braver Angels. I want to start off by saying I never go on social media. Just for the reasons that you all have said, I can’t find anything that makes me feel good there. I prefer a face-to-face discussion. We have a small group– I’m from Longmont, Colorado– we have a small group of eight people. One of the rules is that the group has to be balanced, so there are four Reds and four Blues who come. And we give time, we give dedicated time to each person to express their beliefs about whatever topic we’ve chosen. Actually, our topic in a couple of weeks is Project 2025. So, everybody’s encouraged to read it, find something in there that touches them, and just bring it forward. Not to defend it, not to put it down, just to bring it forward. And then each of us has a chance to comment on that. After we make a comment, then that’s limited to– I think I’m going to do four minutes– then there’ll be two minutes of questions from everybody else. So it’s safe, there are guardrails on the conversation, and I find it very helpful.
Zach: I think getting involved in Braver Angels or checking out what Starts With Us is doing, or even to pitch my own stuff, buying and promoting my books if you like my books, I think there’s all these different ways but I think checking out Braver Angels, I love what they do. I was going to throw all that stuff in there for people who wanted to know more about what concrete things they could do.
Vanessa: Yeah, that’s excellent, Anne. Yeah, let’s talk about things we can actually do. I’m going to turn to that. One of the big takeaways I’ve gotten from doing this kind of work and engaging with folks is that the kind of work that we’re doing is not widespread. And it’s hard to scale the conversations where there’s these rules of engagement. You know, not everybody is an analyst for Ad Fontes Media and has these really respectful conversations. A lot of times it’s like you’re going out in the wild, especially with these online conversations, you can feel like you’re getting beat up and you’re the only person that’s trying to talk in a sane way. So yes, let me give the big plug for your books. They’re excellent— How Contempt Destroys Democracy and Defusing American Anger on Zach Elwood’s website. You can Google it. They’re really easy to find, good reads, and they specifically have a lot of links to other books and academic work in this field. What else do you want to add to close this out?
Zach: Yeah. I think to me, there’s often a debate about whether making systemic changes are the most important things to reduce toxic polarization or cultural change, you know, convincing more people of the importance of this. And I focused on convincing the cultural change aspect because I think we just need more and more people talking about it and more and more demand for it if we’re going to change something bigger. Because I just think sometimes the systemic change talk avoids the fact that we are so polarized that probably making systemic changes would be really hard. So I think we just need more demand amongst the population for these things, which is kind of what I focus on. And I think we need, not to say we just need my book, but I think we need more resources that are persuasive to convince people of the importance of this work. That’s what I focused on with my book. I’m trying to make something that’s short but persuasive and that people can share with other people. Whether it’s my book or other resources, I just think we need more people to spread the word and to have those tough conversations, and even to say, “I know that you’re politically passionate, but here’s why I think you should care about these ideas and not see them as something opposed to your ideas.” But yeah, I think just spreading the word is important. And hopefully, if we did spark some curiosity about these ideas for people that were previously skeptical, I just hope that they’ll look into it a little bit more and answer some of the objections. Yeah.
Vanessa: I think the crux of this work is really summed up in a Martin Luther Jr. King quote that somebody dropped in the chat about how hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. That’s exactly the point here. So, thank you so much for joining. The hour flew by. I really love talking about this with you. Thank you for your work, thank you for joining us today, and thank you everyone online. We’ll see you next time.
Zach: Thanks, Vanessa.