Rod Graham

One of the major narratives about working-class white Americans - white people without college degrees - has been that they vote against their economic interests. They have shifted to the right since the mid-1990s and support policies that may preserve their cultural identity but do little to address their economic downslide. Restricting abortion is a winning issue with them, but not raising the minimum wage. Banning critical race theory is a top priority, but not universal health care.

Consider Barack Obama’s infamous 2008 remarks about Midwestern working-class voters: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

I imagine that Obama regrets the language used here. But I believe he was essentially correct. Midwestern working-class voters (implied here is that the voters are white) are struggling economically, and instead of pushing their representatives to address those economic concerns, they turn their attention to issues of culture and identity....

The gift of Ye

It’s showing us some ways in which the right understands hate speech and the calculation that goes into condemning it.

One of the easily understood and fun activities in a sociology class is the “breaching experiment.” The purpose of the breaching experiment, introduced by late sociologist Harold Garfinkel, is to illustrate the taken-for-granted informal rules that we live by in our daily lives....

Tom Nichols tweeted recently that America “is facing the greatest danger to its constitutional system since at least the 1950s, if not the 1850s, and millions of people are like: Yeah, but gas, man.”

The Atlantic’s senior editor was expressing what many on the left feel. Americans are willing to vote for GOP candidates who may change the country in disastrous ways. The government programs we rely on - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – are seen as “entitlements” by Republicans and are on their chopping block.

State legislatures have passed laws curtailing abortion rights and preventing teachers from talking about racism and gender fluidity....

President Biden’s student loan relief plan would cancel up to $20,000 in federal student loans for borrowers. Individuals making less than $125,000 per year, and married couples making less than $250,000 can have up to $10,000 in relief. If the individual received a Pell Grant, they can have an additional $10,000 in relief.

Biden’s plan has been met, predictably, with support and opposition.

Supporters are in agreement with the primary narrative used by the administration – many borrowers are struggling with either debt or default, and forgiveness would provide relief. They point out the hypocrisy of people who are opposing forgiveness but nonetheless received Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan forgiveness....

In a recent piece for The Atlantic, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that social media platforms are destroying democracy. They allow people to sort themselves into homogenous tribes, he argues.

Haidt says that they can spread disinformation more quickly. People could be attacked more easily. “It was as if the platforms had passed out a billion little dart guns, and although most users didn’t want to shoot anyone, three kinds of people began darting others with abandon: the far right, the far left and trolls,” he writes.

Haidt, an NYU professor, has been constructing this narrative for several years. He is one of a growing cadre of scholars and writers who are concerned about the heightened polarization in the United States and what it might mean for our democracy. I am one of them....