Motivated reasoning
Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized has been getting mostly good reviews, including by the kinds of conservatives I follow (who are poring over it carefully). But there’s an exception:
Mr. Klein is probably right that whites’ fear of America becoming a majority-minority nation has contributed to the GOP’s radicalization in recent years. But surely Republicans were also reacting to the Democratic Party’s own radicalization—its wanton use of race as a weapon, its quick acceptance of every new fad in sexual identity, its embrace of the self-hating ideologies prevailing on elite college campuses. Mr. Klein doesn’t mention any of this—I assume because, to him, it all sounds completely normal.
I was inclined to think “Why We’re Polarized” tells us very little about why voters are polarized. But it tells us plenty, unintentionally.
I’m inclined to think that Swaim’s account of Democrat extremism is indeed a cause of Republican extremism.
And the beat goes on.