The Art of Manliness - Overdoing Democracy

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.680 when kate was growing up her grandfather often told her that when he was serving on a navy ship

00:00:15.140 during world war ii there were two things he and his fellow sailors never talked about

00:00:19.140 religion and politics in the present age we're apt to think that leaving politics off the table

00:00:24.420 like that is inauthentic or worse a sign of being an insufficiently engaged citizen we're apt to

00:00:29.800 think the more we do politics the better the health of our politics my guess would say the

00:00:34.120 opposite is true his name is robert talise and he's a professor of political philosophy and the

00:00:38.320 author of overdoing democracy why we must put politics in its place today on the show bob and

00:00:43.120 i discuss how democracy isn't just a system of government but a moral ideal how the fact that

00:00:47.740 it's an ideal gives it a tendency to extend its reach and how the particular circumstances of

00:00:51.920 modern times have extended that reach into all of our lifestyle choices from the car we drive to

00:00:56.920 where we shop but bob argues there can be too much of a good thing he says the way politics

00:01:01.960 has saturated everything in our lives creates some negative effects turning politics into something

00:01:05.880 that parties can market like toothpaste and making each individual's views more extreme so that we

00:01:10.400 ultimately get to the point that we can't see our political opponents as people who have an equal

00:01:14.260 say in our democracy the solution bob says is not to build bridges of dialogue with our political

00:01:19.020 opponents as is so often advised but to engage with people in spaces places and activities where doing

00:01:24.920 politics isn't the point and you don't even know the political views of the people with whom you

00:01:29.080 interact after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash overdoing democracy

00:01:33.720 all right robert talise welcome to the show thank you for having me brett i'm really happy to be

00:01:51.320 talking to you so a few years ago you published a book called overdoing democracy and this book

00:01:57.000 started from a conversation you had with a friend a few years ago about dreading thanksgiving dinner

00:02:02.220 with their family so how did that conversation about dreading thanksgiving led to a book called

00:02:07.180 overdoing democracy well so you know she was hosting her first thanksgiving dinner at her home for her

00:02:14.860 family her family her family is politically divided and so she just mentioned that she was experiencing

00:02:22.560 all of this anxiety about thanksgiving because the various people who would be coming over you know

00:02:28.480 were likely to get into arguments about at the time you know hillary clinton and donald trump and that

00:02:34.280 kind of thing and she was wondering how she was going to navigate the sort of hostilities that were

00:02:40.320 likely to emerge over thanksgiving dinner and she alerted me to this fact before this conversation i

00:02:48.240 just hadn't realized that major news outlets and magazines regularly publish around this time of the

00:02:55.760 year you know october early november op-eds and columns about how to survive thanksgiving given that

00:03:04.340 family members get into you know political disagreements and that can often get pretty hostile and she

00:03:12.180 described this general genre of advice giving to me and she said you know all of these columns you know

00:03:20.700 recommend all this obvious stuff like try to change the conversation topic don't yell don't be

00:03:26.500 condescending remain calm you know be pleasant and she said you know it's so obvious it just doesn't

00:03:34.260 seem to me like these strategies can really work and i recommended to her i said well does any columnist

00:03:40.140 in this you know genre just recommend that you know maybe just send an email to everybody you're

00:03:46.200 inviting for thanksgiving telling them reminding them even that thanksgiving is a time when family and

00:03:53.040 friends get together that may not see each other regularly to talk about you know reconnect after a

00:03:59.700 year where they might not have even seen each other or interacted much and that that's the

00:04:04.060 purpose of the gathering and the purpose of the gathering is not to try to convince one another

00:04:09.040 about who to vote for about which politician is better than the other i said why don't you just

00:04:13.880 send an email saying you know remember what thanksgiving's about it's not for politics you don't have to

00:04:18.220 pretend that you don't disagree but you know just remember that we're we're getting together for

00:04:22.060 something else and she said oh that'll never work

00:04:25.880 and i thought to myself i you know i said wow the idea that there could be a gathering of adults

00:04:39.160 for the purpose let's face it of just eating good food that there couldn't be a gathering of adults

00:04:45.280 that wasn't if not organized around politics at least inviting political interaction or interactions

00:04:53.980 organized around politics that's a strange thought that there couldn't just be a family gathering where

00:05:01.440 everybody understood that the point of the activity was something else and so i got the idea of you know

00:05:10.180 i started thinking more seriously as a philosopher about this that you know the idea that politics

00:05:15.940 and the wrangles of politics and the divisions of politics and differences among our partisan

00:05:21.580 affiliations and identities you know it struck me it started to strike me as i started thinking about it

00:05:26.800 sort of saturated the entirety of social life such that nearly every social interaction is in some way

00:05:34.720 coded with or expressive of partisan conflicts or allegiances or political friendships or opposition

00:05:43.000 and the more i thought about it the more it struck me that although some might see the inescapability

00:05:50.920 of the political dimension of our interactions they might see that inescapability as sort of a sign

00:05:57.020 of the health of democracy it's people taking politics seriously after all the more i thought about it the

00:06:03.460 where it struck me is like no this is democratically very unhealthy that we see everything as implicated

00:06:09.280 in our politics that it's bad for our politics to see everything as everything we do as an expression of our

00:06:17.640 political commitments that makes us worse at democracy so that's what the book is about it's called

00:06:22.820 overdoing democracy why we must put politics in its place the thought and it runs in opposition the

00:06:28.160 argument of the book is just that if we want to do democratic politics well we can't lose

00:06:33.420 sight of the fact that there's a time and a place for politics and there's an error in thinking that

00:06:40.500 the way to serve democratic politics the way to be a a responsible citizen is to see your political

00:06:47.900 allegiance as expressed in everything that you do how does that sound to you by the way some people

00:06:55.140 find this very counterintuitive it is it's very counterintuitive i think when people talk about well

00:06:59.840 what's causing the the rancor and the divisiveness and the gridlock and the polarization in our

00:07:04.260 politics they never say well we just we've let democratic politics consume our life they never say

00:07:10.700 that what are the common reasons that people give for the issue and why do you think why do you think

00:07:14.980 those reasons fall short most typically and i think this is rather telling actually and ultimately

00:07:21.180 works in favor of my hypothesis but you know on whatever end of the political spectrum or whatever

00:07:28.000 region of the political spectrum you occupy i'm willing to bet that your diagnosis of the toxicity of

00:07:37.820 contemporary politics in america involves some claim about the depravity of your political foes

00:07:46.960 right so that we tend to well let me put it this way across the political spectrum americans seem to agree

00:07:55.940 that politics has become too toxic and divisive and filled with animosity and anxiety and anger so we all

00:08:07.280 agree politics is too angry but then in the polling at least when you ask people how has politics become so

00:08:15.700 toxic they almost always point to their political opponents as the perpetrators as the causes of the

00:08:23.660 toxicity and so people will say well the reason why politics has gotten so toxic is because fill in

00:08:32.200 you know the name of the party you oppose or the the name of the coalition you oppose because so and so

00:08:39.500 those people over there those people on the other side those people across the aisle have become so

00:08:45.280 depraved and that's the standard explanation now it strikes me that garden variety

00:08:53.660 political disagreement and even political rancor is not new to democratic politics certainly not new to

00:09:02.560 democratic politics in the united states something else is happening here that the toxicity and the

00:09:08.860 rancor is increasingly being driven i argue by something other than actual disagreements over policy

00:09:20.320 let me put it this way the data show the following surprising thing well it's surprising to people

00:09:25.980 when they first hear it and then you think a little bit about it and maybe it doesn't seem so surprising

00:09:29.640 anymore forgetting about for the moment political leaders major office holders highly visible

00:09:36.820 spokespersons for the two major parties in the u.s holding aside party documents and agendas and all the

00:09:43.680 terrorists let's you know put the elites to the side for a second american citizens rank and file partisan

00:09:51.180 affiliates the republican voter the democratic voter across the country we're as a citizenry no more

00:09:59.320 divided over policy questions than we were in the 1990s in fact rank and file republicans and democrats

00:10:07.200 have actually agree more about policy than they did in the 80s and 90s so a lot of the actual divisions

00:10:16.540 over questions about what the government should be doing those divides are no more severe than they were

00:10:23.700 30 years ago and in fact with respect to certain kinds of policy questions the division among democratic

00:10:31.520 and republican voters over certain kinds of policy questions has actually shrunk what's expanded though

00:10:38.960 at the same time is the impression among rank and file voters that the divisions have gotten more severe

00:10:46.400 that's the thing that needs explaining it's not the rancor it's the escalation of the rancor in the

00:10:53.480 absence of any similar or commensurate escalation of the divisions over policy okay i want to flesh

00:11:02.840 that out what's going the process is going on but before we do like you said that this idea that we're

00:11:07.840 overdoing democracy is counterintuitive because people think well democracy is a good thing how can

00:11:13.240 you overdo a good thing but before we get to that argument i think it's important to note how you're

00:11:17.920 defining democracy because you you make the case that when most people think of democracy they're

00:11:23.560 thinking of things like elections campaigns rules offices institutions you know like the mechanics of

00:11:31.400 government but you're talking about democracy as an ideal and you make the case that we emphasize the

00:11:37.800 mechanisms of government like elections as an attempt to realize this moral ideal and i think what the

00:11:44.900 argument you make is because democratic politics isn't just institutions or voting it's instead an

00:11:51.460 ideal because it's this ideal that leads to democratic politics to sort of expanding its reach because we

00:11:58.840 think it's an ideal it's like a good right right right right right so yeah and i'm a proponent of the

00:12:05.120 idea that democracy isn't just elections and democracy isn't just a form of government it's a mode of

00:12:12.200 society it's a it's an ideal for a certain kind of community among our fellow citizens and as you put

00:12:21.480 it it seems to me that you put it well there's a hazard we might say a tendency once you adopt that

00:12:28.520 more expanded view of what democracy is not just a form of government but a kind of ideal for a mode of

00:12:36.260 society a way of organizing society then you know once you adopt that ideal then it looks like

00:12:42.580 democracy is going to be not just the thing that happens on election day but democracy is a way of life

00:12:51.060 right it's the ethos of the society is that we are perpetually 24 7 citizens and so the tendency is to think

00:13:02.560 that because we're co-equal citizens of a self-governing community and because self-government is a real

00:13:11.140 important good again i accept that that therefore everything we do together is an act of citizenship

00:13:21.480 is an expression of our commitment to self-government is itself to put it this way that everything we do

00:13:31.060 together is itself politics that's what i think is a dangerous thought for democracy the thought that

00:13:38.520 everything is politics is i think a thought that might be promoted by the idea that democracy is a

00:13:45.700 way of life and not merely a form of government but i think that ultimately the idea that everything is

00:13:50.320 politics is dangerous for democracy i think it's degenerative for democracy well you do a good job of

00:13:57.020 fleshing this out how democracy can expand in scope sight and reach right in our lives and so i think

00:14:03.580 like the scope is you know it's it's beyond institutions beyond voting right the scope can

00:14:09.020 also be like you're doing democracy when you're reading the news because like well i got to be

00:14:13.180 in order for me to be a good voter i got to know what's going on in the news and that you pay attention

00:14:17.740 to that the site of democracy can expand you know used to be well it's just like if you hold elective

00:14:22.640 office or you go to the voting booth that's where democracy happens but now it's like well

00:14:26.640 i can also express or take part in democracy at work and there's a period where like no that wasn't

00:14:32.900 good you couldn't do that sort of like you know a faux pas but now you're saying that that expansion

00:14:37.400 is continuing to take over yeah yeah so you know one of the things that we've seen occur in the u.s

00:14:45.160 but not only in the u.s this is it's prevalent perhaps most prevalent in the u.s but other democracies

00:14:50.160 as well is you know what i say in the book is the expanding the reach right so i think that we can

00:14:56.500 think of views about democracy or theories of democracy as composed of a sort of a view about

00:15:02.220 the scope of democracy which is a view about the duties of the citizen what kinds of thing are

00:15:06.920 citizens required to do as citizens and brett you just said you know they they have to be informed they

00:15:12.220 have to follow the news they've got to pay attention they have to you know read newspapers or you

00:15:16.980 know think a little bit about foreign policy these kinds of things in addition a theory of democracy

00:15:23.480 establishes views about where the office of citizen is exercised right where we as citizens are acting

00:15:32.020 as citizens and i think that you're right that the voting booth on election day or the town hall when

00:15:39.260 there's a a meeting of the city council these are sort of stock and trade places of where democracy

00:15:46.100 happens and i think that you know you can categorize different conceptions of democracy by thinking of

00:15:53.660 democracy's reach as the kind of combination of that right the more extensive a view of democracy's

00:16:00.040 reach is the more stuff gets built into the duties of citizenship right and the more places

00:16:09.180 count as sites for enacting democratic citizenship now what we've seen happen since the 90s late 80s 90s

00:16:19.820 is that in the united states and elsewhere the reach of democracy has been expanding which is to say

00:16:26.840 we today see more and more of what we do as an act of citizenship and we see more and more of the

00:16:36.040 spaces we inhabit in our day-to-day lives as places for political activity one way this manifests is with

00:16:46.160 what i call in the book political saturation here's a staggering statistic since the late 80s the united

00:16:53.960 states demographically has become a much more diverse society along a range of demographic metrics

00:17:02.440 ethnicity languages spoken at home religious racial diversity we've become a much more diverse society

00:17:10.140 in the past 40 50 years however the spaces the environments the atmospheres that we inhabit in our

00:17:19.780 day-to-day lives have become more politically homogeneous in that same period so we've got this

00:17:28.400 macro level diversity but in our day-to-day lives the chances of us having a chance unplanned interaction

00:17:39.540 with somebody who's politically unlike ourselves has been dwindling so one way to think about this

00:17:48.440 is just to note the following kinds of trends which again you know when i talk about this stuff you know

00:17:53.460 people initially say wow is that true and then the more you think about it the more it seems like

00:17:58.100 oh yeah that is true right so you know grocery stores are are heavily partisan segregated if you live

00:18:04.220 in a place where there's whole foods if you shop at a whole food store if that's where you get your

00:18:08.240 groceries the chance of the chance that the person standing behind you to check out on the grocery

00:18:14.520 line at whole foods the chance of that person being conservative or voting conservative is vanishingly

00:18:20.820 small it's tiny liberals get groceries at whole foods if you buy coffee if you're a coffee drinker as i am

00:18:29.280 and if you have the choice between buying your coffee at starbucks or dunkin donuts if you go to dunkin

00:18:37.980 donuts for your coffee the chances that the other people in the dunkin donuts coffee shop are liberal

00:18:44.380 they're really slight dunkin donuts skews heavily conservative starbucks on the other hand skews heavily

00:18:51.480 liberal and by the way you can see this even in the construction of the interior of the shops

00:18:56.480 starbucks is selling coffee to people who think of themselves as cosmopolitan world traveling folks who

00:19:04.980 like to imagine themselves being able to speak in many different foreign languages and that's why the names of

00:19:11.480 the drinks sound like they're italian and french right whereas dunkin donuts is not trying to give

00:19:18.600 you the momentary illusion of being somewhere else in the world the dunkin donuts about maybe brett you

00:19:24.200 know what's the dunkin donuts advertising slogan america drives on duncan or something like that

00:19:29.160 american run america runs on duncan now no just think about the difference in that just sort of

00:19:36.140 marketing strategy right starbucks is a it's a world thing it's a cosmopolitan thing dunkin donuts is

00:19:44.760 they're not selling the illusion of cosmopolitanism they're selling coffee and carbohydrates to people

00:19:50.680 who are on their way to work so i can go on like this but what's happened in the u.s over the past 30

00:19:57.680 40 years is that ordinary spaces that we inhabit have become more politically homogeneous and because

00:20:06.140 of that what happens in those spaces buying organic rather than just you know going to uh the shop

00:20:14.160 right and just buying you know the the vegetables that happen to happen to be on the shelf going to a

00:20:19.380 place that specializes in organic vegetables is not only a way of enacting your values that maybe your

00:20:29.540 liberal values or your environmental values environmentalist values it's become a way of

00:20:34.800 signaling to others what your values are this is also one trend in the u.s at least is the number of

00:20:42.000 tote bags you own positively correlates with how liberal your politics are the more tote bags the more

00:20:47.700 likely you vote you vote liberal and note tote bags often have political messaging on them tote bags are

00:20:53.840 a way of showing to others who might be strangers where your political allegiances lie roughly in the same

00:21:00.940 way i live in tennessee maybe things aren't different where you live brett wearing camouflage

00:21:05.780 attire is also a way of signaling to others where your political allegiances lie driving a hybrid car

00:21:13.600 is a signal to others of what your politics are like driving a ford f-150 highly correlates with being a

00:21:21.760 conservative voter we can go on like this the point is that we're living in a social context now in which

00:21:29.380 everything that we do the products that we buy the way we dress the kinds of activities we engage in on

00:21:37.340 the weekends how we vacation turns out that our social spaces are segregated according to our

00:21:43.300 partisan allegiances now that means two things one is that more and more of what we do has become a way

00:21:50.820 of expressing and communicating and signaling our partisan allegiances but secondly and i think this is

00:21:58.800 more obviously where the problem lies more and more of our conception of the reliable co-worker

00:22:07.320 the responsible parent the decent neighbor the considerate person in the parking lot more and more

00:22:16.260 of our conception of strangers and their virtues have become tethered to contexts where we can be sure

00:22:25.380 that the strangers we interact with are co-partisans so we start thinking that conscientious sincere

00:22:32.920 friendly responsible considerate people are always our political allies and that our political foes are

00:22:42.580 always the opposite have the opposite traits that's the problem we're gonna take a quick break for your

00:22:49.140 words more sponsors and now back to the show so how did it happen okay so like in the 1950s i imagine

00:22:58.600 democracy was an idea like a social good right but people didn't like their consumer choices i don't

00:23:05.260 think i mean at least how i understand it didn't like if you hunted it didn't uh say you were democrat

00:23:10.540 or republican like a lot of people hunted right back in the 50s like i i know my grandfather you know

00:23:15.900 would hunt with people just from all it was just like something you did if you're a guy in the 1950s

00:23:20.380 so how did it go from that to where now like even our consumer choices reflect our policy like how

00:23:27.500 what what process were going on there well it's so you know this is a i guess it's no longer a hundred

00:23:33.800 thousand dollar question that's pretty cheap right this is a central question right now one thing i'll

00:23:39.280 just say to start is that you know when we're talking about complex social phenomena and especially

00:23:46.020 when we're talking about relatively recent although not instantaneous processes of social change we're

00:23:54.140 not going to be able you know easily to point to a single factor that explains the shift so let me

00:23:59.800 just talk about one factor that i think is close to the center of the explanatory story we ultimately want

00:24:07.000 to tell about how things became segregated how social space became saturated with politics and then

00:24:14.520 segregated according to partisan allegiance part of that story i think is a story about technology

00:24:19.980 now there's a certain bit of the story that that the explanatory account that i think is true that will

00:24:26.140 probably be familiar and intuitive to a lot of our listeners you know social media right that is that

00:24:33.420 one thing that happens you know in the past 20 years or so is you know we get this expansion due to some

00:24:40.180 certain kinds of technological advancement that now we are as citizens more and more able to access

00:24:49.640 and choose how we access and what we access by way of political information or just information about the

00:24:59.600 world so it's up to us now where to get at the news we don't have to rely on dan rather or walter

00:25:06.980 cronkite right now we can get all of our news from rachel maddow if we want or amy goodman if we want

00:25:14.980 or breitbart if we want right so part of the story is the story of how social media and communications and

00:25:25.340 internet technology has made it possible for us to be more selective and choosy about how we consume

00:25:36.620 when we consume political information and what kinds of information we consume but that's just i

00:25:42.280 think the tight end of the wedge i think there's a much broader story to be told along those same

00:25:50.300 lines i think that the thing that's happened over the past 30 years maybe the past 40 years maybe since

00:25:56.120 the mid 80s or so is that particularly americans but not only americans and particularly because of

00:26:02.480 technology but not only computer technology we have a lot more latitude over the conditions under

00:26:09.280 which we live in our day-to-day lives than our grandparents could ever have dreamed of more and

00:26:15.940 more of how we live is up to us it's it's a matter of our selection and our choice i'll just give one

00:26:26.760 very quick example listeners might be able to tell that although i live in nashville tennessee i am not

00:26:32.220 originally from tennessee i'm originally from new jersey i grew up in northern jersey right by the

00:26:37.440 lincoln tunnel and so when my wife and i moved from new jersey to nashville in 2001 we expected nashville

00:26:46.580 to be different in all kinds of respects and it was different in a lot of the respects we expected it

00:26:52.820 wasn't as different in many cases and some of the differences were more were a lot more pleasant than

00:26:58.000 we realized they would be however just the difference between the year 2000 and 2001 and the

00:27:04.680 year 2022 in nashville which is a growing city there are four ethiopian restaurants in nashville now

00:27:12.080 when we moved to nashville in 2001 there weren't ethiopian restaurants in nashville if we wanted ethiopian

00:27:19.000 food we were out of luck we had to wait until we visited manhattan to get ethiopian food again

00:27:24.640 there's a foreign cinema independent cinema that shows foreign films in nashville my wife's a film

00:27:31.080 buff you know we first moved to nashville our view was that we weren't going to be able to see foreign

00:27:35.220 movies any longer now we can and so it looks as if one of the sociological changes due to various kinds

00:27:42.900 of technology is that we're no longer quite as constrained by contingent features of the environment

00:27:52.660 over you know in our life choices amazon can get you the ingredients to make a ethiopian food almost

00:28:00.380 anywhere you live amazon can deliver you the ingredients in a day right and so as more and more

00:28:08.800 of the conditions under which we live have become matters of choice for us and by the way i'm not

00:28:14.460 saying this is a bad thing just yet in fact this so far is all good it seems to me more and more of

00:28:20.560 the conditions under which we live have become up to us well one predictable and again not yet problematic

00:28:30.820 it seems to me upshot of that expanded latitude is that we each get to make our local environment

00:28:41.380 in our own image right we get to choose the goods that we consume the part of the city in which we live

00:28:50.840 the way we spend our weekends more and more of is up to us and we get to choose it and so more and

00:28:57.600 more of those choices reflect the kinds of preferences that we have this is all natural and should be

00:29:03.600 expected here's what's happened though that makes this politically a site of dysfunction for democracy

00:29:11.780 perhaps seizing on this cultural and technological shift political parties have come to understand

00:29:21.120 their objectives more in terms of capturing lifestyles representing lifestyles than changing anybody's mind

00:29:32.180 about what the government should be doing remember as i mentioned earlier the u.s electorate is no more

00:29:38.680 divided over the questions of what the government should be doing than it was in the late 80s

00:29:42.860 in fact it's moderated partisan divisions have become all the more toxic and hostile

00:29:49.160 why because politics has become as part of this cultural shift politics and partisan affiliation

00:29:57.740 in particular has become more and more intertwined with tethered to lifestyle choices such that now

00:30:07.240 here's another feature that is sound surprising at first but might not be surprising upon reflection

00:30:12.940 brad you know the average conservative in maryland has a lot more in common lifestyle wise with

00:30:21.220 the conservative voter in wyoming than the conservative voter in maryland has in common

00:30:26.960 with the person who lives three miles away who's a liberal think about that for a second so geographical

00:30:34.240 differences have given way to lifestyle differences and now our politics are at the center of our conception of our

00:30:45.520 conception of our lifestyles partisan affiliation has become the center of our understanding of who we are

00:30:52.360 that's what's changed i think technology is part of that i think that the idea that politics in a democracy

00:31:01.260 and especially in a technologically advanced democracy politics becomes a lot like if not identical to

00:31:08.600 marketing in the same way that you might sell peanut butter or toothpaste or a car we sell candidates and

00:31:14.780 often the same firms that sell us toothpaste and cars sell us the candidates the merging of the commercial

00:31:22.120 and the political has sort of led there to be a political advantage to parties and political candidates

00:31:27.900 in trying to brand the politics in the way that they might brand a kind of a model of a kind of car

00:31:36.620 or a brand of some commercial product okay so so let me just make sure i'm clear i'm on the same page

00:31:43.640 so what you're saying is that the reason this expansion is a hindrance to democracy like reason why overdoing

00:31:49.800 democracy is bad for democracy democracy subsumes all of our life is that instead of taking part in this i think

00:31:55.720 democratic ideal we have that in our heads that we learned in like civics class you know when you're

00:32:00.240 elementary school right where you're you go to a place and you have these you know logical debates

00:32:04.720 they're they're impassioned etc etc and then you the goal is to change people's minds instead of that

00:32:11.340 we're just like well you know if you drive this truck or shop at this thing that's your politics like

00:32:16.940 there's no more deliberation there's like no more that deliberative democracy going on

00:32:20.920 yeah and let me add one little well let me add one detail it's not little you know a huge part of

00:32:27.420 the book and a large section of my work is devoted to exploring the political and philosophical

00:32:33.220 implications of a a certain cognitive phenomenon that's not restricted to politics it's just baked

00:32:40.900 into our cognitive makeup as the kinds of creatures that we are this is what's called belief polarization

00:32:46.780 now we talk about polarization often as a certain kind of metric of the divide between opposed

00:32:53.860 political groups so when people talk about polarization they're often talking about how

00:32:59.400 republicans and democrats are so far apart they can't cooperate or communicate that might be a

00:33:05.340 polarization understood in that way might be a problem for democracy i'm talking about something

00:33:10.660 slightly different belief polarization is a cognitive phenomenon it's the phenomenon and the regularity with

00:33:18.720 which when we surround ourselves with people who think like us when we surround ourselves with people

00:33:24.720 with whom we agree we turn into more extreme versions of ourselves that is interaction among like-minded

00:33:33.960 people turns those people turns those people into more radical versions of themselves they come to believe

00:33:41.080 more radical versions of their commitments they come to be more confident in the truth of their view

00:33:47.960 and crucially they become more dismissive and distrustful of anybody who doesn't share the views of their

00:33:55.980 like-minded group that's where you start seeing the real democratic dysfunction it's not simply that because

00:34:02.440 politics is a lifestyle i now see people who don't drive the same kind of car as i do or don't shop at the same

00:34:09.780 kind of grocery store as i do as aliens it's not only that although that's part of it brett it's also that

00:34:17.080 the more and more our political worlds are isolated and segregated into like-minded enclaves the less able we are

00:34:26.480 to see those who are not members of our group as deserving of an equal political say that's the problem of belief

00:34:34.320 polarization as we become more extreme because we're hived together we're siloed together with our like-minded

00:34:41.320 group we thereby become more and more distrustful less and less able to see those outside the group as

00:34:49.540 reasonable rational intelligent people they come to look to us as incompetent irrational benighted and dangerous

00:35:01.300 democracy is again as the ideal we talked about a little while ago democracy is this fundamental commitment

00:35:08.060 to political equality the commitment to political equality is in part the commitment to seeing our

00:35:13.920 fellow citizens not merely as people who get an equal say we have to see them as people who are entitled

00:35:20.220 to an equal say that's the equality part belief polarization erodes our capacity to treat those

00:35:28.000 with whom we politically disagree as nonetheless our political equals that's the problem for democracy

00:35:34.460 that's the fundamental anti-democratic upshot of this sort of combination of partisan sorting

00:35:41.620 and the centering of politics in our lives and belief polarization it erodes our capacity to regard

00:35:50.240 our political opponents as nonetheless our fellow democratic citizens so the idea and note you know i'm a

00:35:58.720 political philosopher so maybe this irked me a little bit more than it would have otherwise maybe it

00:36:04.400 irked me more than it should have i'll even grant that but that in the last election the two major

00:36:09.420 candidates biden and trump had nearly identical campaign slogans was very troubling to me do you

00:36:16.640 remember the two slogans i don't even i mean i can't remember okay it's been i've got it is i've had

00:36:22.480 you've mentally blocked them for good reason perhaps right here are the two slogans right save america

00:36:29.780 and we're in a battle for the soul of america the first was trump's the second was biden's now think

00:36:40.040 for a moment about why i might say that those are nearly identical i mean they're not semantically

00:36:46.660 identical they're different words maybe not entirely different words they both have the word

00:36:50.740 american but they're identical in the message the message of both parties main candidates campaign

00:36:58.080 slogan is the other guy wins america's over now again wait a minute is that it can that be a democratic

00:37:09.420 message if the other guy wins democracy's done okay so what you're saying is whenever democracy becomes

00:37:17.720 saturated in our lives politics becomes basically just becomes about a competition of lifestyle choices

00:37:25.040 rather than debate over policy issues and that whenever we start separating ourselves into these

00:37:31.640 isolated political lifestyle groups we start to become more extreme versions of ourselves and then we

00:37:38.820 start to see other people on the other side of the aisle as not being worthy of our political equals

00:37:44.800 like they're we don't see them as political equals anymore and not worthy of having equal say in our

00:37:50.100 democracy and one of the results of this that you talk about in the book is that our politics just

00:37:54.740 becomes divisive and we can't get stuff done and all we get is this this rancor and then people just

00:38:01.760 defining themselves in opposition to the other side that's it that's what's sometimes called negative

00:38:07.820 partisanship it's the idea that under certain conditions like the conditions that we live

00:38:14.480 in america today where we have highly belief polarized political coalitions and a totally

00:38:21.400 saturated culture that everything is about politics and we're heavily segregated so we're heavily belief

00:38:28.160 polarized you know this condition no matter what joe biden might have said in his inaugural address

00:38:34.960 about the toxicity of politics and we need to see each other again and unity you know as good as all that

00:38:40.740 may sound you know part of me thinks that when politicians lament the polarized state of american

00:38:48.600 democracy and how toxic our politics are you know it's not entirely genuine the reason is this a heavily

00:38:58.180 belief polarized and partisan segregated electorate is strategically very very good news for any national

00:39:07.060 political candidate if you can count on your likely voter to also shop at kroger drive a pickup truck

00:39:15.440 live in a certain kind of neighborhood work a certain kind of profession a lot of strategic choices about how to

00:39:23.440 campaign become very easy to make right it's like when the electorate is more politically heterogeneous

00:39:31.880 when their partisan affiliation is not so tightly tethered tied to their lifestyles campaigning becomes much

00:39:40.540 more complicated and so as a national candidate or even a statewide candidate being able to count on your

00:39:48.580 core voter not only having a set of political ideas but be committed to a certain kind of lifestyle

00:39:56.520 it's a real benefit to campaign strategists and political operatives and that's why i don't think

00:40:03.580 that the problem of our divisive toxic politics can come from an elected official they benefit from the way

00:40:13.520 things are okay so your solution to this is we need to put democracy in its place what does that mean

00:40:20.960 does that mean you not engage in politics what what is what does putting democracy in its place look like

00:40:26.700 good so i don't think that the solution comes from the institutions or from the leaders or from the parties

00:40:33.280 you know they benefit so where can a solution or a remedy or an intervention a mitigation which is really what

00:40:41.020 i think we're talking about here because no on the analysis that i'm giving the problem of overdoing

00:40:45.980 democracy is not the problem of some anti-democratic tendency sort of taking over the population we

00:40:55.440 overdo democracy because we're concerned about being responsible citizens that is that this is an

00:41:02.080 autoimmune disorder not a malady that's sort of infiltrated from the outside overdoing democracy is a

00:41:08.780 problem that emerges because we take politics seriously so i think that the remedy the mitigation

00:41:17.100 has to come from us as citizens and what i recommend is that we need to figure out ways and reclaim spaces

00:41:27.920 for cooperative interactions with others where we just don't know what their politics are now that's different

00:41:36.280 from saying that well we need to build bridges invite the local you know if you're a liberal invite

00:41:44.220 your conservative neighbors over for coffee maybe you should do that maybe you should go join a

00:41:50.020 bipartisan softball league or something i don't know i mean maybe those things aren't bad that's not

00:41:54.900 the proposal that i'm making the proposal for putting politics in its place is finding ways to do more

00:42:00.840 things together in which we simply don't know what the other participants politics are like not because

00:42:08.040 we've agreed to suppress our political differences but rather because we've agreed that the point of the

00:42:13.980 activity we're engaging in is not politics it's something else here's the kind of thing i mean even before

00:42:22.000 sort of writing the book and thinking through the issues i like music i'm a very amateur musician and so you

00:42:28.900 know when i moved to nashville and after you know getting situated in the city or whatever i discovered

00:42:34.300 that you know there's a really interesting bluegrass venue in town called the station inn this is not a

00:42:42.100 genre that i listen to i don't know a lot about bluegrass in fact when i first started you know attending

00:42:50.460 performances at the station inn i like i had no idea really what i was getting myself into so anyway

00:42:55.860 bluegrass is not my i don't own any bluegrass records but on occasion i go to this venue to

00:43:02.900 listen to the music because it's very very high quality bluegrass music so of its kind it's really

00:43:08.120 high quality wouldn't even call myself a fan of bluegrass music however one thing that i think has

00:43:14.320 been politically impactful in going to the station inn is having conversations with other people who show

00:43:23.200 up at the open mic night at the station inn sunday nights or something and just talking to them about

00:43:28.700 the music now the political philosopher in me can predict somewhat reliably that often and when i'm

00:43:38.000 attending performances at the station inn the person sitting at the table next to me probably has

00:43:45.120 political views that don't align very closely with mine that seems to me to be likely to be true

00:43:50.960 however go to the station inn talk to the guy at the next table about the music and discover well

00:43:59.580 here's a guy who really understands this genre this is a person who's got a very keen aesthetic sense

00:44:05.960 of what's going on in this genre i'm learning things from this guy about who wrote this particular song

00:44:14.940 or about how the upright bass player is doing something interesting that's borrowing from a

00:44:22.620 different kind of you know sub-genre within bluegrass and so i can no longer see the guy at the next table

00:44:30.920 who i'm having you know sometimes extended conversation with learning a whole lot from

00:44:36.320 can no longer see this guy as a failed depraved human being i can see him as a human being who

00:44:44.900 regardless of his political affiliation undeniably has a command and an aesthetic appreciation

00:44:53.480 and a grasp of this aesthetic form that is just that i don't that he's has a sensitivity that i don't

00:45:03.080 have and that leads me to not be able i can't demonize him that i can think he's politically wrong

00:45:11.020 right if we ever do this particular person i'm thinking of if we ever do get into a political

00:45:16.120 discussion we haven't by the way in years of running into this guy occasionally at this venue

00:45:21.100 never get into a discussion about politics not because we're biting our tongues either

00:45:25.340 but because we're talking about something else it's like if we ever did get into a political

00:45:30.640 discussion i would still think perhaps if he's got the views that i suspect he may

00:45:34.720 i would still think he's wrong i would think that his political views are in a serious way

00:45:41.300 off on the wrong foot even so it's not even that i could i see him as well maybe he's got a point

00:45:46.960 or you know maybe his political views aren't as bad as i thought they were i might still see his

00:45:51.640 political views as as bad as i thought they were but i can't see him as a failed person any longer

00:45:59.700 that's the kind of venue that's the kind of interaction that's the kind of setting that i

00:46:06.940 think we have to build again for our democracy to thrive a setting in which we can see one another's

00:46:13.620 virtues outside of seeing them as partisan affiliates yeah well how do you do that because

00:46:21.540 we were just talking about like a lot of the things that we do like you know the tote bags we carry the

00:46:26.180 cars we drive the hobbies we have the places the restaurants we are tinged with politics yep so how do

00:46:32.300 you find those areas gotta build them you can't find them that's the thing you gotta build them

00:46:36.600 right so going to the bluegrass venue became for me right again i still don't count myself as a fan

00:46:43.760 of this music i mean i i can appreciate it now as somebody who understands things about music i can

00:46:49.800 appreciate i don't own any of the records right i go to the venue to have that kind of interaction

00:46:56.640 because it is a place where i can interact in a cooperative pro-social way with another person

00:47:04.680 in which i don't know what the political affiliation is i can guess i think i can guess pretty reliably

00:47:10.020 but the interaction is about this music so i think that we have to build it in the book i say look here's

00:47:16.820 something to do right take a moment to think what kind of activity could i engage in with others

00:47:24.260 that i sincerely believe won't just be another mode of expressing my partisan allegiances and then i say

00:47:33.020 try it and then i say if you find your partisan allegiance being confirmed in that activity try

00:47:42.980 something else do a different thing go someplace else figure out a different activity if on the other

00:47:50.920 hand you find in that activity some conflicting partisan affiliation or allegiance being promoted

00:47:58.640 try telling the other participants that's not what i'm here for i'm volunteering here i'm not politicking

00:48:05.760 i'm picking up litter from the park if that doesn't work do something else now let me say just in case

00:48:12.760 i've given the other impression i don't think of myself as an optimist about this right i'm perfectly

00:48:19.540 willing to say we might have crossed the rubicon here it might be that political saturation and partisan

00:48:26.040 segregation have so taken hold of our communities of our social environments that there's no turning

00:48:33.020 back that's possible but i say it's worth trying because it's not clear whether there's no turning

00:48:42.460 back the way to turn back though i think involves not merely trying to make friends with your political

00:48:51.480 opponents not everybody can do that not everybody ought to do that some people are committed to

00:48:58.600 political projects that run so antithetical to my own that there's no way of seeing them as potential

00:49:05.180 friends i accept all of that what i want to suggest is that there are certain kinds of people who might

00:49:12.600 be your political opponents with whom you can engage in some non-political cooperative activity

00:49:18.220 simply for the sake of unsticking your conception of the virtuous human being from your conception of

00:49:28.020 your political ally and i guess what this will do by doing that it helps revitalize democracy because

00:49:36.160 we're kind of mitigating or reducing the heat on that belief polarization where you just see your

00:49:41.060 guys as the good guys the other guys the bad guys that's right only by simply being able to point

00:49:47.100 as i can with this particular human being i'm thinking of right now who is such a connoisseur

00:49:52.340 of bluegrass music i don't know if he's a political ally or not but i do know that he's a decent human

00:49:58.660 being and saturation and partisan segregation obscure that thought they make that thought no longer

00:50:06.560 available to us they tether our conception of the decent human being to our conception of the partisan

00:50:12.660 ally that's the thing that needs to be broken if it can and it's worth trying because democracy is

00:50:18.660 important and what else it also does by putting democracy in its place you're reminding people

00:50:22.580 that politics democratic politics it's an it's a good but it's an instrumental good like we do this

00:50:28.140 stuff for another thing it's not it's not a good in and of itself that's right so you know one of

00:50:34.060 good let me make sure that this part of the argument gets in because you've put it very well

00:50:37.940 you know you might ask what's democracy for the answer it seems to me can't be more democracy

00:50:46.200 right the answer has to be something like look when democracy is healthy it creates the social

00:50:52.700 conditions under which we as individuals can build our lives around other kinds of valuable things

00:51:02.060 right the cultivation of valuable human relationships that aren't structured around the categories of

00:51:11.580 partisan democratic politics right lives devoted to relationships with others about nurturing and

00:51:19.980 caring and making art right and creative thinking that's not about politics projects that are not about

00:51:29.860 politics when democracy goes well our lives are free are open to building those other kinds of pursuits

00:51:39.880 now of course we are perpetually citizens so we have to care about democracy it's not that we set up

00:51:46.560 democracy so that we can go then go be musicians right it's that we have to do democracy that's true

00:51:53.820 it's just that the point of the exercise can't be more of the exercise the point of the exercise has to be

00:52:02.100 to create social conditions where we can on occasion do something else together the prevailing social

00:52:10.500 forces in our democracy have prevented that they've saturated our social lives with the idea that the point of

00:52:19.000 democracy is more democracy that just seems to me to be philosophically confused well bob this has been

00:52:26.220 a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your work so there are now two

00:52:30.740 books so let me say that so there's a book that i published in 2019 called overdoing democracy that's

00:52:36.860 largely what we've been talking about a more recent book it came out about it not quite a year ago

00:52:41.960 is called sustaining democracy they're both published by oxford university press and can be

00:52:48.060 found there or you know you can look on wherever you might buy books online or otherwise both books

00:52:53.220 should be available but you can find me online i'm at the vanderbilt university philosophy department

00:53:00.160 my email and everything is easily accessible there and i'm also on twitter at just my name robert

00:53:05.660 talise with no spaces on twitter and happy to hear from anybody who has questions all right well

00:53:10.720 robert talise thanks for your time it's been a pleasure brett thank you so much for having me

00:53:14.140 it's been really nice talking to you my guest today was robert talise he's the author of the book

00:53:18.180 overdoing democracy it's available on amazon.com check out our show notes at aom.is slash overdoing

00:53:23.180 democracy we find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:53:26.360 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

Overdoing Democracy

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