One of the banes of representative democracy is the practice of gerrymandering — drawing political districts in bizarre ways so as to concentrate the political power of a single party.
It occurs to me that the internet has been performing a bit of its own gerrymandering. It used to be that people with similar political affiliations in different parts of a country (say, New York and Seattle), had only a limited sense of shared community. In order to hang out with far flung members of your political tribe, you needed to get on an airplane and go there.
Now of course we have many and diverse electronic fora that allow us to build and fortify these political coalitions. People can spend their time “hanging out” with likeminded citizens whilst collectively tuning out the voices of those with whom they disagree. For right and left alike, political discourse starts to become ever more of an echo chamber, reflecting back one’s own preconceived ideas.
I wonder whether, in a supreme irony, the very ease of communication afforded by the internet has led to the extreme polarization we’ve recently seen in our country. By creating better bridges of communication that transcend geography, we may have enabled a new form of gerrymandering.
That’s an interesting suggestion. I wonder how one could set up an objective test of it?
I’ve been wondering if there is some kind of tendency that is pushing the U.S. political parties into precise balance, so that neither gains an upper hand– voters that always go against whatever party is in power to equalize things again, or changing positions of the political parties whenever they are out of power. You don’t get a national election depending on a few hundred voters in Florida by pure chance.
That’s a very good point. It might be a little like that trick for finding the center of balance of a smooth stick (ruler, pencil, etc): Lay the stick across the extended forefingers of each hand, then gradually bring your forefingers together. They will meet at the exact center of balance of the stick.
In that case, it’s because the finger furthest from the center will always move, since its hold on the stick has less friction. Perhaps, as you suggest, there is an analogous kind of friction principle at work here.
I suppose it’s better than the other way around. Everyone running to a single party would be a recipe for fascism.