Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

David Brooks’ column today is based on a flawed premise, a premise whose power over the imaginations of the public is a tribute to the power of the media. The premise is that there is such a a marked difference between the political parties that something he calls “Partyism” exists…. and the fact that he can substantiate the existence of “partyism” is proof that the media can create an illusion that the general populous will believe is true. It is also a premise that someone like  Chris Hedges would see as further evidence that the free press is dead.

There are differences between the parties, but they tend to be substantially unimportant and tend to be exaggerated. A case in point is this section of Brooks’s article, which summarizes the findings of researchers who measured the level of discrimination shown based on political affiliations:

Politics is obviously a passionate activity, in which moral values clash. Debates over Obamacare, charter schools or whether the United States should intervene in Syria stir serious disagreement. But these studies are measuring something different. People’s essential worth is being measured by a political label: whether they should be hired, married, trusted or discriminated against.

The broad social phenomenon is that as personal life is being de-moralized, political life is being hyper-moralized. People are less judgmental about different lifestyles, but they are more judgmental about policy labels.

The three items Brooks flags as differences between parties are in fact examples of where the parties are on the same sheet but the media have emphasized differences that are more nuanced than substantive. Obamacare is based on a model that came from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and a model that a Republican governor, Mitt Romney, put in place in Massachusetts. It is a model that progressives find clunky and needlessly privatized but one that both parties ultimately adopted. There is NO debate over charter schools or public education policy. BOTH parties advocate the use of standardized tests to determine the “success” of schools and BOTH parties advocate the closure of “failing” public schools and accept the notion that for profit charter schools are an acceptable replacement for public non-profit schools. What to do in Syria is not a partisan divide: neither party has presented a unified stance on the issue and both seem to agree that foreign policy should be based on American exceptionalism.

Not only are the the parties NOT substantially different on these policy issues, they are completely unified on the notion that unregulated capitalism is superior to any form of redistribution of resources and unified on the notion that there is no nee to address global warming in any way shape or form. In effect, by perpetuating the notion that the parties ARE different from each other by exaggerating small discrepancies they have been successful in avoiding the BIG questions facing our country: what to do about economic injustice nationally and globally and taking steps to stop the destruction of the planet. While the economic divide widens and the planet deteriorates we’re debating over how much profit pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies should make to provide medical care, how many for-profit charter schools there should be, and who we should give weapons to in a conflict thousands of miles away…. and concepts like “Partyism” reinforce the public perception that there is a REAL difference between the direction either party wants to lead us.