The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded American is Tearing Us Apart

The Big Sort, by Bill Bishop, is an ambitious and really interesting book that presents a compelling argument that there’s been a major re-sorting of the American populace over the past 50 years driven by social, economic, political and cultural forces. This great sorting-migration has resulted in a nation of clustered regions of like-minded citizens living in ever more idealized communities, both urban and exurban, right leaning and left.In 1965, we were a nation of 195,000,000 citizens, Democratics and Republicans evenly distributed across counties nationwide, of relative common mind, work, goals, politics and prosperity. By 2016 we’ve become a nation of 320,000,000, less individually prosperous, far less equally prosperous, all tightly sequestered in geographic, cultural and economic clusters. Politically polarized with a federal government frozen in perpetual stale mate.The author cites numerous social science studies demonstrating the pernicious power of group-think and its ability to amplify ideologies, belief systems and behaviors while stoking extreme thinking. Mixed company moderates, like-minded company polarizes. And like-mindedness breeds isolationism, isolationism breeds extremist thinking. Because we’ve been sorting ourselves into like-minded clusters, we’ve lost the need for moderation, compromise and tolerance because we rarely interact with people with opposing views. Isolationism breeds extremism!Bishop examines the culture wars of the 70s, 80s and 90s and reveals the links between generation, race, religion, tradition, abortion, birth control, guns, gays, identity rights, individualism, the environment and where you live and how you vote. He shows how GW Bush exploited this psychographic finding in his 2004 re-election campaign when his chief strategist Matt Dowd discovered there was no more “center” in the electorate. Dowd realized the middle was now just shallow water and wasting energy trying to persuade an undecided swing voter was folly, better to put all your energy into increasing turnout inside your deep base. And the partisan sentiment of the base was organically getting deeper by virtue of the Big Sort and its echo chambers. It was easier to build on an already rabid base than to convince a moderate swing voter to join your team. And it just so happens that right-leaning traditionalists were concentrating themselves inside electoral college battle ground states, making them easy to target.Other interesting facts and observations Bishop presents include:- Rural America defected en masse from the Democratic party in 2000- Between Clinton ‘96 and Bush 2000, 856 counties switched from Democrat to Republican- Republicans in 2007 were more religious than they were 20 years earlier. Democrats, less so.- Republicans are “strict fathers” and Democrats are “nurturant parents.” (Everybody gets a trophy)- Before the 1960s there was little difference in how Americans raised their children.- After 2004, answers about child rearing became a better indicator of party than income- Democrats moved to cities while Republicans moved to where there’s more grass to mow- Reversing a trend, Democrats are now pro states-rights advocates whereas Republicans are shifting to support Federal mandates.Other wedge issues Bishop cites behind the culture wars are school textbook censorship in the 70s and the 90s, busing in Boston in the ‘70s, prayer in schools, mainline churches preaching “social good” over “personal salvation” (saving society vs saving souls), spotted owls and old growth forests, gun control, birth control, abortion, sexual revolution, the rise of individualism and feminism.Economic factors behind the Big Sort were globalization, technology, automation and the resulting disappearance of blue collar jobs, especially in the mid west and rural regions. This Corporate-Wall Street-Globalist grand bargain gave us cheap imported goods and low inflation (and a soaring stock market) but sacrificed jobs, livelihoods and a sense of meaning and direction for millions. (Globalization helped pull 150 million people out of poverty in China but plunged 10s of millions of the U.S. middle class into chaos and anxiety towards an uncertain future.)Other changes Bishop notes includes the loss in faith in government and institutions beginning in the mid sixties with Vietnam and accelerating after Watergate. In 1955 80% of the population trusted government, by 1976 only 33% did. Civil rights was another seismic event, causing the Democrats to lose the south after 1964. The anti-science movement also came out of a slow burn of anti-trust in establishment and institutions, stoked by conspiracy theorists on both the right and left.Bishop’s research also shows that higher education is another differentiator and has been a key sorting mechanism in the Big Sort. Today, the clearest indicators of Democrat vs Republican are education, age, parenting style, religion and geography (urban vs exurban - not necessarily sub-urban). The higher the education, the more progressive or liberal the voter, but not necessarily the less dogmatic.Overall, The Big Sort is an interesting look at how certain monumental social and economic shifts have been quietly, and not so quietly, taking place in our society over the past 50 years causing ever larger chasms between the left and right. This new clustering of people, culture, economics, politics and ideas, all force-multiplied by social media and echo chambers, may help explain how this great country of ours has just elected a bellicose, ignorant, fear-mongering, Reality TV demagogue as its president - a primal scream from a fearful, displaced, white, rural middle class.May God Save America!

I thorougly enjoyed this book and I feel the author made a strong case for his proposition.The basic point seems to be this:1). Americans are segregating themselves into communities of people who live and think alike.2). In such homogeneous communities, people become increasingly more intensely committed to the values they hold and increasingly intolerant of anyone who does not share those same values.3). This phenomenon could seriously jeopardize the ability of our society to constructively address the issues it faces.As to the first point, the strongest critique I think could be thrown at it would be to claim it is self-evident. Surprisingly, I don't see a lot of reviews here that make that assertion.It is a point I think I have been vaguely aware of already, but the book really put it into focus.The second point is a disturbing one and to me a very convincing one. Aside from everything that is covered in the book, from my own experience, I get a strong feeling in political discourse in recent years that most people have become rigid adherents to the entire agenda of either the Republican or Democratic party. As someone who agrees with the R's on some issues and with the D's on others, when I am contemplating expressing my opinion about a particular issue, I have the strong feeling that nearly everyone who hears my opinion will immediately assume that I support the entire agenda of whichever party that stance on that particular issue is associated with.Something not really mentioned in the book that I think is also indicative of this, there are a lot of people who are so politically polarized that if you don't agree with them on a particular issue, it is not just an honest difference opinion, your position on the issue makes you a sociopath, unlike they who are on the side of moral virtue.It stands to reason when someone is absolutist in supporting a particular political agenda, that it is not grounded in reason but rather in a quasi-religious moral certitude, hence for me to not share any of that agenda makes me a sociopath.The author does at at least one point do a good job in pointing out that the intellectual inbreeding associated with self-segregation tends to stifle any genuine critical thinking about issues.If there is anything in the book I can take issue with I would say that the degree to which the views of Americans have become solidified into a binary pair of opposite ideological agendas is probably somewhat overstated. There are some factions of the political right that have some very fundamental disagreements. The most obvious would probably be the foreign policy views of Neocons versus Libertarians. And there is still a substantial faction among Republicans who do not agree with the prevailing stance of the party on the conservative side of social issues, i.e. abortion and gay rights. However, the author does make a good case that those who are liberal or agnostic on social issues are facing a lot more conflict from the conservative establishment.As to the Democratic Party, I would say there is a similar situation regarding diversity of views. There is a dominant "progressive" wing that is very monolithic in its ideological agenda, and is increasingly intolerant of accepting anyone as a "Democrat" who holds contrary views such as fiscal conservatism or a pro-life stance on abortion.-----I found the historical material in the book fascinating, some reviewers have found it superfluous and perhaps if I were more versed in sociology some of it would already be familiar to me, but since it was new to me, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was not really familiar with the fact that the current split in the Christian religion in America of left wing and right wing denominations actually has a hundred years of history behind it. Other historical material that I found interesting was that on the textbook wars, the techniques the evangelical movement developed to grow their churches, the evolution of advertising philosophy (including political advertising). And some bizarre stories I found of particular interest were the Oxycontin problem in Kentucky and the big subdivision (in California?) that was divided into an enclave for right wingers and another for left wingers.All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I feel like I learned something from it.

This book suggests that like minded people will choose to live close to each other. Not that earth shattering if one thinks about it, but his point is that Republicans will choose to live close to other Republicans and Democrats will choose to live close to other Democrats. The end result will be a severe polarization of American society. This is something that has been going on for decades now and will probably only get worse. The final result is that you will have the same political outlook as your immediate neighbors and diametrically opposed views to those to whom you do not live near. Unless of course you live on a boundary line and the people to your left are Democrats and the ones on your right are Republicans. I guess that would make you a centrist, or perhaps referee when the shooting starts.

In this interesting book Bill Bishop describes the polarization of American politics from 1965 onwards. He is fairly obviously a Democrat but goes out of his way to speak to new millennium Republicans and appreciate their world view.He describes the "Big Sort" very convincingly, particularly the way that Republicans and Democrats drift towards their respective majority states, or at least the majority Republican or Democratic areas within each state, and the way that this seems to happen almost unconsciously by what "feels right and comfortable" about the surroundings.One way or another Americans seem to gravitate towards two very different lifestyles; A) the city / anonymous / environmental / minority-rights / European / intellectual/ state-interventionist, or B) the country / community / traditional / religious / Constitutional / nationalist / self-reliant with Democratic and Republican loyalists dividing neatly along these lines.He shows the result as a separation and hardening of positions generating the familiar American Gridlock politics of the new millennium, and as he says, "Democracy has become so balky that the normal processes of representative government are being replaced by systems of issue brokering that are only quasi-representative"......" public policy is often negotiated among interest groups". This would have been a great lead in to look at where the power went and who these interest groups are but he doesn't follow it.Maybe they're not particularly Democratic or Republican and they just want the money and the influence, but the author doesn't really go into this interesting question.The author seems to be more concerned with establishing the reality of the "Big Sort" rather than evaluating it in a historical context. He refers to the early 1970's research of Robert Inglehart at the University of Michigan, suggesting that a young generation growing up in abundance will esteem self expression more than economic growth as they seek "higher values", but he doesn't refer to the more recent and much richer version of this idea available in for example William Strauss and Neil Howes'  The Fourth Turning: an American Prophecy .The book doesn't consider that the opposing factors of the "Sort" seem to coexist quite happily in some countries. Japan can be very respectful of tradition and community while developing leading high technologies with the same going for Germany and northern Europe in general.The author doesn't look at the fairly obvious divide between Original Americans (OAs) and Newcomers (N's). OA's were in American prior to 1900, they mostly originated from European countries and now regard themselves as Americans first and have strong links to the Constitution and American history and also provided most of the troops and leadership in the two world wars. N's arrived after 1900 and are now mostly non-European hyphenated Americans with weak links to American traditions and a preference for identity politics, non-integration and minority rights and they predictably find their natural home in the Democratic party.Equally, Bishop doesn't consider the 1965+ rise to power of the Jews as a prime example of an American special interest insider group. He does talk about the rise of advocacy groups that aren't broad based or democratically controlled but he could have shown Jewish tribal self-selection producing for example the present (2013) strange situation where the eight leading candidates for the post of Federal Reserve chairman are all Jewish or married to Jews (apart from Geithner who was mentored by Rubin and Summers), or Jewish students being selected to occupy 30% of Ivy League university places. This is a major shift of power to a non-European, non-Christian newcomer minority group (3% of the population) which is also firmly on the Democratic left.The author could also have usefully looked at the way in which the growing demands of the Democratic left generate a more extreme reaction from the traditionalist Republican right. For example he could have shown how the gay rights idea has progressed from 1965 onwards through illegality > ignoring > acceptance > protection > coming out > legal rights > marriage equality and adoption > to school teaching which is fine in a minority rights environment but is seen as provocative when legally applied to traditional Americans.In general I think that the "Big Sort" was a missed opportunity but it certainly provides indisputable evidence for the post 1965 polarization of the Republican and Democratic parties. The Fourth Turning: an American Prophecy

An anthropology of our contemporary culture. One gets the impression that the cultural experiment described will have an important bearing on our ability to take stock of the data from the economic and environmental experiments that are running in parallel.