Chicken Scratch: This is (not) Sparta! by Elizabeth Beggins

It’s Wednesday, November 6th, 2:00 AM. By the time you read this, polls for the 2024 American elections will have closed and results will be coming in. Some will be decisive, others not, but the expected outcome is that, eventually, a new president and numerous state-level officials will be determined.

Much as I considered holding off on this until after the dust settles, I decided against it. Nothing here is going to change because of this election. Tomorrow, and the day after, next week, and the week after, this message remains, as does my faith in our ability to make it happen.

_________________________

Agitated by a fresh litter of baby demons chewing at my insides, I make the unfortunate decision, a grave lapse in judgment to be sure, to give myself unbridled access to social media. I score a juicy political nugget in no time, comments ranging from solidaric to scurrilous that take the original post to a whole other level. Moments later, to virtual strangers, I’m winging verbal insults that start with f*ck and end with face.

What the hell? I take a breath, put the phone down, check myself. Where did that come from? This isn’t who I am. Or, at least, it isn’t who I want to be.

Socially, and metaphorically, this is Newton’s Third Law. Somebody shoves, I shove back. (Work with me, physicists; I know it’s not that simple.) We first test the theory as two-year-olds, hone it as teenagers, perfect it as adults–principally in politics, particularly in American politics.

This is us against them. This is Sparta!

As a pernicious wave of political polarization threatens, though not for the first time in this country, to unravel what we have spent almost 250 years holding together, we want to know what’s driving it, where it’s coming from, and who or what to blame.

– Social media algorithms herd us into isolating bubbles that shimmer only from the inside.
– Cable news creates enduring political silos.
– Confirmation bias keeps us tethered to what we already believe, regardless of conflicting information.
– The two-party system forces us to separate into two camps.
– Our behavior is modeled after what we hear from our elected officials.
– The 1% want us divided so we are less focused on our massive economic disparities.
– All news, everywhere, is biased.
– Our country was built on the backs of displaced and enslaved people, and we’ve never fully addressed that.
– Wars rage and lives are shattered. Lives. Are shattered.
– Who can distinguish truth from lies anymore? Who bothers to try? 

Now is a good time to emphasize, in case there’s any residual confusion, that this is, in fact, not Sparta, and any attempt at parallels should be cautionary, at best. Spartans lived in perpetual fear of being overtaken by the much larger, oppressed class of Helots. Only about 15% of the population were considered citizens, because to count as a Spartan citizen, you had to have a certain amount of wealth. The society practiced eugenics, kept and hunted slaves, was run by two kings and a handful of rich people.

So, there’s that.

Now back to assigning blame for the political mess we’re in, it seems no matter which direction we point our fingers, or which finger we point, we’ve been unable to diagnose the primary cause of our antipathy. But there is one abiding theme: We all think we are at risk of losing what is important to us. We all believe we are playing a zero-sum game against a perceived enemy.

Think. Believe. Perceive. Notice those words. They are important. And it is with that in mind that I want to make something eminently clear: Americans are not as polarized as we imagine ourselves to be.

Yes, there are extreme factions. Yes, some of our democratic functions have been incapacitated by division. Yes, our election process needs an overhaul to address things like pervasive gerrymandering and controversial campaign financing.  But study, after study, after study, after study, after study shows that the vast majority of We the People want very much the same things for ourselves and our futures.

We believe in the right to vote, the right to equal protection under the law, the right to privacy, and the right to practice the religion of our choosing. The problem is not that our values don’t align, rather it is that we think they don’t. And why would we think otherwise, when so much of what we hear coming across our airwaves, see printed in our publications, and repeat on our social sites, tells us who we are, or aren’t?

Whether or not you ascribe to the notion that we are tribal by nature, there is no denying that we are prone to sort, cluster and categorize to make it easier for our brains to process and recall information. Neurologically, we appreciate these simplifications. When patterns recur and our expectations are substantiated, our reward centers ping, which further encourages the behavior.

Simplification sounds harmless, but it leads to stereotyping and othering. Attributing blanket traits to those who are different from us reinforces our own identity at the expense of someone else’s.

Fueled by news that tells us we are hopelessly divided, from entities that know if it bleeds it leads and for which attracting readers is a matter of survival, we find evidence of our disunion at every turn. In fact, we expect to find it, and it confirms what we already believe.

Conservative. Liberal. Gay. Straight. Old. Young. Female. Male. Black. White. The mere mention of the words brings to mind concepts, images, and assumptions for how a person in one group thinks, what another wants, and how they differ from or align with our own core values.

If you’re getting the idea that we are our own enemies here, good. Because unlike what happens on Capitol Hill, our own behavior is within our control. This is not a problem that is ours alone to solve, neither is the government the only form of power we can exercise. The more of us who train ourselves away from tribal psychology, the more capable we will be of healing our wounds. To put a finer point on it, we’re working to depose the f*ckface mentality.

The person who seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge the wisdom of our well-reasoned explanations for why their candidate is the wrong choice for the country: Not a f*ckface.

The person we were sure was well-studied enough to not be a single-issue voter: Not a f*ckface.

The person who voted for a third-party candidate because they didn’t want to support the status quo: Not a f*ckface.

We may have different backgrounds, belief-systems, and visions for what we want from our government. But our fears are likely very similar.

These are the people who file in with us to vote, the ones who sit behind the tables and make sure we are given the right ballot. These are the people who let us go before them in line, when we’ve got three items and they’ve got 30, the people who cheer next to us at the ballgame. They’re the ones who leave persimmons on our steps while we’re out, the ones we went to school with, the ones who pass us the green bean casserole at the Thanksgiving table.

It is a difficult time to be an American. We have developed emotional attachments to our political parties which render us unable to separate our identities from our affiliations. Criticism of our beliefs feels like a personal attack. But many of us are also more engaged in politics than we’ve ever been before and driven to reconsider what we’ve been missing, who hasn’t been heard, and how we can make a difference.

Tell me I should be taking a stand for democracy, and I’ll tell you I’m looking for ways to uphold my convictions without typecasting or dehumanizing my fellow citizens. I’ll say that, best I can tell, the way we think about each other, and the words we use to talk about each other, are what ultimately play out around us. Our children learn from them. Our societies learn from them. Tell me that this is all someone else’s fault, and I’ll tell you that the only person I’ve got permission to change is myself.

Elizabeth Beggins is a communications and outreach specialist focused on regional agriculture. She is a former farmer, recovering sailor, and committed over-thinker who appreciates opportunities to kindle conversation and invite connection. On “Chicken Scratch,” a reader-supported digital publication hosted by Substack, she writes non-fiction essays rooted in optimism. To receive her weekly posts and support her work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber here.