This past weekend, people across the United States staged the largest protest in the country’s history, with attendance estimates ranging from 3.3 million to 4.6 million. While the event was organized under the banner of a “Women’s March,” entire families turned out, and, at least at the Helena, Montana, march, the crowd was thick with men as well, including one wearing a pale pink pussy hat and holding a sign stating, “THIS is what a feminist looks like!”
While the mood at the rallies has been reported as positive, and there were no arrests, many have been questioning why people marched. Women have posted on Facebook exclaiming that they don’t feel marginalized, so what is wrong with all those other women? Another popular query is why women didn’t march in protest twenty years ago, when, like Donald Trump, Bill Clinton was shown to be a man who used his power to put pretty women where he liked them. A meme making the rounds has a photo of an empty room with the caption: “Group photo of all the women whose rights have been taken away by Trump.” The common thread is a sense that women should just – to steal another phrase common since November – “Suck it up, Buttercup!”
But the marches across the nation weren’t just for women. The ire that women felt after this election cycle at STILL being second-class citizens may have sparked the organization of the rallies, but the movement is broader. It includes a swathe of people who feel vulnerable – those without access to healthcare through their jobs, for instance – and another group who worry about the rights of minorities. A large contingent of Native Americans marched in Helena, including several squared-away veterans. Signs at the event also expressed concern about issues such as environmental degradation and education. One placard highlighted the black bear that had broken into one of Montana’s larger schools, Bozeman High, in 2015, pointing out that it has more experience with public schools than Trump’s choice for Secretary of Education.
However, the REAL point of the protests wasn’t to highlight particulars. It was to make sure that the people who were elected in November understand that they do not represent only those who voted for them. Now that they are in office, they represent everyone. And a substantial proportion of their constituency doesn’t feel like they are listening. The rallies were intended to draw attention not just to specific issues but to the broader problems of polarization and alienation.
Ours is a representative, not a direct, democracy, so these concerns threaten the perceived legitimacy of our government itself. After the rancor that accompanied the 2016 primaries and subsequent general election, it is impossible to ignore that they are problems. Part of the difficulty is that human brains prefer to avoid conflict, and so people naturally gravitate into information bubbles that reinforce their already-held beliefs, as highlighted in the MIT Electome analysis of Twitter. The result is an increasing polarization of views on both sides of the political spectrum and across a range of issues.
Since the fragmentation of the media will continue to isolate rather than unite readers, the polarization trend is unlikely to abate, particularly because combatting it takes a concerted effort on the part of each consumer of information. Human brains were built for efficiency, so most people will continue to get their news from their Facebook feeds rather than from an array of sources carefully curated to provide a spectrum of positions. While education may help raise awareness of alternate attitudes and advance the analytical thinking skills necessary to weigh them against each other, it is unrealistic to expect most people to prioritize the parsing of ideas. That is something that used to be outsourced to professional journalists at national newspapers who viewed it as their duty to provide balanced information to a broad constituency. As journalism has polarized, so have politicians, following the electorate.
The polarization of the electorate may be irrevocable, but it does not follow that we must accept the polarization of our representatives in government. Our current system of choosing candidates in the primaries is a good example of a place where changes could help give us less divergent choices in the general election. Rather than voting for a single person, each primary voter could instead rank all the available choices. (Primary voters are usually a motivated bunch, but if laziness prevailed, voting for only one and leaving the rest blank would be taken as ranking the rest equally at last place.) As outlined in an array of academic literature on voting and most recently by respected economist (it’s not an oxymoron!) Amartya Sen and Eric Maskin, this would lead to candidates in the general election that fewer people virulently hate.
While ranking choices isn’t a perfect solution – Kenneth Arrow showed that in 1951 – by ameliorating the divisiveness of electoral choices, it addresses the concern of accelerating social schism, which is paramount right now. The people who marched last weekend feel this divide acutely and believe it is imperative that our leaders not only take note but act to reassure the nation that our government truly does work for ALL of us. Those who would like to minimize the marches want to paint them as the actions of whiney children who want free government handouts. But those who marched see themselves as defenders of the American legacy, protesting a government that is not representing them, with slogans and pussy hats rather than with the destruction of tea. Democracy is a dialogue; only dictators demand a monopoly on messaging. More than three million Americans marched to ensure that the dialogue continues.
I agree with your point but the last , these marchers didn’t organize protests in support of those on the other side of the divide so I think it specious to profile the marchers with the nobless of the original Patriot. The March may be just representative of the divide rather than a protest against it. “WE, the people ” means exactly that and it seems that the meaning of that simple statement has been forgotten or usurped by groups of Me’s
Perhaps I am misreading your initial point, but the “other side” of the divide is the one in power – why would a march be needed to bring the attention of those in power to their own issues? Although you may disagree, the March was for many who participated an attempt to show that we can be divided on issues without forgetting to listen to the other side, something that was sorely lacking in the campaigns leading up to last year’s election. The March was a celebration of democracy, which as you point out, has been under threat as people increasingly peel off into like-minded, social media echo chambers rather than exercising their civic duty more broadly and in the public sphere (the topic of a future post – in which you will now get a shout-out 🙂 ). Your point is an excellent one, though, because it highlights how easy it is for the expression of democracy – even when done broadly and in public – to further polarize. The Women’s March and the recent Science March were hugely energizing for those who participated, but they also created backlash. I would argue that at least they sparked conversation, but I acknowledge that the conversation hasn’t always been collegial. Human brains are amazing but still limited, and finding a way to engage across myriad viewpoints without descending into tribalism is a constant tension in any democracy. I hope we continue to rise to the challenge, but I suspect that the rise of artificial intelligence will heighten rather than dampen the worst of our nature. In the meantime, thanks for the comment!