Introduction

“Beat L-A!” “I love Tom Brady!” “My two favorite teams are the Broncos and whoever is playing the Raiders.” That is acceptable--even healthy--partisanship.

I am a Broncos fan because of an accident of history. My step-father bought 2 tickets in 1960, the first year they existed, and I have been a fan ever since. A good friend of mine in the San Francisco Bay area is a Raiders fan because his father was a 49ers fan. An opposite motivation, but still a very acceptable one.

Most of us who are loyal to favorite teams came by that loyalty in some unstudied way. There was no deep thought involved. No evidence gathering. No long-term study of character and methods of play. We just grabbed onto something and jumped in. And stayed jumped in. We shout at the other team at the games, yell at the TV, tease our friends who root for the “enemy”, and generally carry on. All good stuff.

Increasingly our choice of political parties is just as casual. And our loyalties and actions, based on that casual, unchallenged choice, are just as deep, unquestioned and unchanging.

That’s the subject of today’s 10-minute podcast.

Continuing

What typically influences our choices when it comes to teams and parties? Accidents, mostly. Our family of origin. Where we grow up. Where we wind up working. Where we choose to live. Geography is a big one. Take a look at the map of the electoral results of the 2016 Election.

Is it an accident that states like California and New York are predominantly progressive, and states like Texas and Oklahoma are not? Take a careful look at this electoral map; with four exceptions, virtually all of the states in the contiguous 48 that voted one way or the other are in connected blocks. Colorado and New Mexico share a border, and the remaining two, Minnesota and Illinois, are very nearly connected. Q. Did everyone of a like mind move to the same places, or is something else going on? A. Something else. In the absence of differing opinions from a variety of sources, people will rely on the opinions of family and friends, co-workers and their favorite news sources and social media. Outside of family, all the sources will be selected more to have one’s preconceived notions and thinking supported rather than challenged. It seems so much easier that way. Lazy might be a better word. Not surprisingly, all the selected sources will pretty much share the same opinions. Similar opinions from apparently different sources reinforce each other and can easily be seen as a valid consensus. And with some notable exceptions  families, neighbors and co-workers in the same geography tend to lean one way or the other on significant issues, adding to the sameness. Creating not a new idea generator, but an echo chamber. And echo chambers, by definition, can do nothing but reinforce thought--echoes can only repeat what has been already said.

And within parties, why does everyone have to think the same way about every issue--no matter how controversial? Strict party line votes occur all the time in federal, state and local governments. Here’s an obvious example on a huge issue: All Senate Democrats voted for Obamacare; no Senate Republicans did. Is that because not a single Democratic Senator wanted to vote against it? Could it be true that every single Republican thought Obamacare was unacceptable? I posit that it is impossible for every Democrat, voter or legislator, to agree with every other Democrat on every issue. I claim the same thing for Republicans. But that is how our elected representatives vote. On a lot of issues, both sides of the aisle vote in blocks, all while they must have differing views on at least some of the issues being brought up for discussion and voting.

Why is that? Easy answer. The head coach of the political team,