What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies

But that immune system is built on long-standing norms and a shared understanding of reality. Periods of upheaval shake up those structures, weakening the immune system and creating a soft spot that low-rung giants can exploit.

The subjective emotional stresses and temptations to which we are exposed in our attempts to deal with this domestic problem … represent a danger within ourselves—a danger that something may occur in our own minds and souls which will make us no longer like the persons by whose efforts this republic was founded and held together, but rather like th

see the same kind of rigid allegiance when we look at how Americans feel about different political issues. In the past, a voter could tell you their stance on guns and it wouldn’t tell you much about their stances on abortion or immigration or climate change. Today, the views of

Politicians who act like children are great TV, which incentivizes the media to give them more airtime, which helps those politicians win elections, which encourages more of the same behavior.

And as the media’s political coverage has morphed into a reality TV show, it has created an incentive system that rewards politicians who use inflammatory rhetoric.

As political tribalism has ramped up, the number of undecided votes has dwindled.⬥31 It makes less sense than it used to for candidates to try to persuade moderate voters and more sense to run hyperpartisan, negative campaigns that fire up their base and increase turnout.32

A similar feedback loop has taken place between voters and politicians. Increasingly partisan politicians draw constituents deeper into Political Disney World, and a lower-rung electorate is more likely to reward politicians who cater to the low-rung mindset and snub the politicians who act like grown-ups.

Geographic sorting and political junk food make a lethal combo, ripe for disgust. It’s hard to feel dehumanizing disgust for people you know personally. Less hard when you rarely see your enemies in person. Less hard still when destructive cherry-picking teaches you only the worst about them. As affective polarization has risen, political opponents

Disgust fills our mind with a special kind of primitive fog—one that turns ordinary humans into psychopaths who can commit or condone unthinkable harm without remorse. Scary shit.