Identity Crisis
How a little thing like registering party affiliation in the United States has created a toxic and dangerous political culture
I have a theory that the current madness of American politics can be traced back to a seemingly very little thing. Little things can seem inconsequential when they are normalised, but they have a tendency to spiral up into much larger things when they become institutionalised. From here they become instrumental in creating cultures, and cultures are incredibly powerful.
In 31 states and the District of Columbia when you register to vote you are asked to pick a party you wish to be affiliated with. This may seem normal in the U.S, but it’s a practice not replicated in any similar democracy. Here in Australia you register to vote solely as a citizen, not as a fan of a particularly team. For any official organisation to have a record of the party you support would undermine the ethos of the secret ballot – even if you are not compelled in the U.S to vote for the party you registered your affiliation.
My theory is that this bureaucratic detail of registering party affiliation has had an enormous influence on the strong party identity in the U.S. It’s why people who aren’t elected representatives call themselves Republicans or Democrats.1 It’s what has led to the entire framework to discuss American politics being build around a form of anthropological categorisation where people are analysed like members of an ancient tribe where we have no way of knowing their personal attributes, only collective ones. It’s what has allowed these parties to not just own the political system, but to own people souls.
It has created an absurd form of allegiance that when a political party radically alters the ideas it stands for – like the Republican Party has – people still vote for that party, because they identify with the label, and not the platform. Today you could put Joseph Stalin (R) on a ballot and almost everyone registered as a Republican would vote for him.2
This past week the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat interviewed the social scientist Alice Evans about the global decline in birth rates and its social consequences.34 This little exchange caught my attention. In the first part of this clip Evans says something incredibly revealing. What is extraordinary about it is that, as a Brit, it’s an assertion she would never make about British politics, but is one she’s comfortable making about American politics – that Republicans have more babies therefore they will win more elections.
This assertion is based on an observation about the intensity of American political culture, and the structural – and mental – hold it has on American society.
The assertion is that Americans are born into political affiliation and that this is immutable. That Americans lack the capabilities to assess ideas on their own merit, or navigate the world outside of party identity. They inherit political positions from their parents and this is almost fixed.5 But more than this, it is a belief that in the U.S a political party shapes your behaviour and beliefs – not you, the citizen, shaping political parties – and by extension, a political party shapes the very nature of who you are as a person.
What such an assertion concludes is that American politics is now sectarian. That the U.S has become Northern Ireland in the 20th Century – the only thing you are is either a Catholic or Protestant, all your descendants will be exactly the same, the only thing you believe is that you hate the other sect, and every single aspect of the society is governed by these perspectives – from the schools you go to, to where you work, to where you live. The objective of politics is to use the power of the state to advantage your group and to fuck down on the other group.
You see this sectarianism in the way Americans casually say “red states” or “blue states”. Like these are “Catholic areas” or “Protestant areas” of Belfast – with their “peace walls” built in-between. The culture of political identity is so entrenched – and this has sorted itself geographically – that most states are now one-party states.
This is being intensified by the whole nature of modern politics being built around identity groups. The politics of identity relies on outsourcing one’s brain to others. It sees the objective of life – not just politics – as being part of a group, rather than being an individual. It has insecurity at its core. People want to know what positions they should hold, or how they should behave. Rather than being confident in oneself. It’s the opposite of authenticity. And it is the vulnerability that sectarianism preys upon.
Because sectarianism is based on insecurity, it instinctively seeks emotional safety inside the in-group. However, the more it does, the more it compounds and intensifies this sectarianism. It’s a doom loop, and one with potentially violent and destabilising consequences. As we saw on 6 January 2021.
The question is whether Americans are able to transcend this thinking, or whether they are now bound to it? That once a party becomes an identity is there no escape from the spiral of sectarianism?
In her book, How Civil Wars Start UC San Diego’s political scientist Barbara Walter pinpoints two core features that create fertile ground for civil wars. The first is the classification of a country as an “anocracy”. This is a term for countries that have a mix of democratic and authoritarian features. They lack the strong impartial democratic institutions that allow people to work together to achieve acceptable compromises, but at the same time lack the authoritarian muscle to prevent violence from occurring. The U.S is now an anocracy.
The second feature Walter cites is the calcification of identity politics. Where people organise themselves in identity-based factions and are incapable of understanding the world outside of these factions. As identity is housed in people’s souls, it is far more powerful than simply different policy choices, or even economic interests. It feels existential.
I suspect that far too many incentives are built into American politics to weaken these problems – from the way both traditional and social media operate, to the way primary elections are run, to the politicisation of almost every role from dog-catcher up to Supreme Court justices, to it being very unlikely that registering a party affiliation will be removed from voter registration forms given that these forms are not created by independent commissions.
While many states include more than just the Republican and Democratic parties on their forms (to give the appearance of a broader polity), this doesn’t nullify the problem of party identity. It still incentivises people to call themselves by a party name, and therefore encourages them to understand the world through the lens of group identity.
The lesson for the rest of us, and our bureaucracies more than anyone, is be very careful about the unintended consequences of the forms you create. Especially in this Age of Identity.
By comparison, here in Australia no-one would ever call themselves a Laborite, Liberal, National, or Green, even if they always vote for one of these parties. To do so would be cringe at best, and recognisably dangerous at worst.
This is more than just a joke to illustrate a point. See my article Comrade Trump
Here, another little thing – like the invention of the iPhone – is having massive unintended consequences.
Alice’s Substack is highly recommended – The Great Gender Divergence
As someone who thinks very differently to his parents I find this idea particularly offensive.
Most interesting. Thank you.