Unraveling the causes of political polarization in America is no easy task. But some of them are well documented, among them:
- the increased role of money in politics following the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC
- audience fragmentation resulting from:
- cable news
- social media’s use by citizens and political operatives
- political messaging that casts the other side as not only wrong but untrustworthy or even evil
- declining “social capital” resulting from abandoning group memberships and commitments
- rising inequality
Now renowned writer and sometimes political commentator Marilynne Robinson is urging us to expand this list by adding–and perhaps prioritizing–one more item: austerity.
For Robinson, austerity isn’t a factual condition (she notes that “America is the most powerful economy in history”) but rather a way of thinking–one which has profound and deplorable consequences. According to Robinson, contrary to both our interests as individual citizens and against our shared humanity, too many of us have allowed ourselves to buy into a myth of scarcity. The result is a pervasive dog-eat-dog view of the world that makes any notion of community or the collective good seem quaint or perverse.
In Robinson’s own words:
All the talk of national wealth, which is presented as the meaning and vindication of America, has been simultaneous with a coercive atmosphere of scarcity. […] The belief has been general and urgent that the mass of people and their children can look forward to a future in which they must scramble for employment, a life-engrossing struggle in which success will depend on their making themselves useful to whatever industries emerge, contingent on their being competitive in the global labor market. Polarization is the inevitable consequence of all this. (from “What Kind of Country Do We Want?”, The New York Review; June 11, 2020; p. 44).
Robinson’s thesis is difficult to evaluate. It rings true. And she offers plenty of compelling evidence to support it. But it’s ultimately difficult to know how powerful a grip “austerity” might have on our culture. Still, Robinson’s message is as much a warning as an empirical claim–one to which we should listen carefully.
