I will try to do Lilliana Mason justice are her work on identity politics... She wrote a book about and it is published... Humans have many identities but they full inti three groups cross-identities, stocked identities, and the mega identity. The threat to democracy is stacked identities for they will become a mega identity which is bad... The problem in America is our society is becoming divided by the emergents of stacked identities...
Here is one review:
https://mobilizingideas.wordpress.c...nt-how-politics-became-our-identity-a-review/
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Liliana Mason’s Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, is a new and compelling entry in our ever-unfolding understanding of identity and politics. …Drawing on voluminous statistical data, Mason’s key argument is that our democracy is threatened by the “stacking” of identities. By this, she means that our identities are increasingly “socially sorted.” Historically, people used to have a variety of “cross-cutting” identities. The average person belonged to many different social groups that may have divergent material and ideological interests. For example, region, class, and ideology did not map neatly onto partisanship at mid-century. Upper-class southerners tended to be Democrats, while upper-class Northerners were Republican.
Similarly, both parties had internal wings that were liberal and conservative. Ultimately, this led to people whose partisanship was mediated by the nuance of their connections to others both inside and outside of their party. A rich Southerner might feel socially connected to other Democrats from the South, while sharing economic interests with Republicans from the North. Put simply, sharing a pew or a street or a board room with people who belonged to a different political party than you mitigated any temptation to venture into the extremes of partisanship.
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For a variety of reasons, though, most of which are well documented, the parties “sorted.” The socio-political realignment of the parties after the civil rights movement, increasing geographic segregation of ideologically polarized people, and changes in the religious landscape have all contributed to what Mason calls “mega-identities.” Rather than identities that cut across partisanship, contemporary individuals are more likely to have their identities stacked vertically. Evangelical Christians, rural folk, Southerners, conservatives, and people in the business world are increasingly Republican. Nonwhites, the secular, urbanites, and liberals are increasingly Democrats. This ultimately deepens the ideological, social, and cultural differences between the political parties.
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She also provides a hard look at the potential negative consequences of a society with partisans so thoroughly sorted. The norms of our democracy, she suggests, require people who are willing to view their opponents as human beings rather than enemies or obstacles. And yet our stacked mega-identities make this increasingly difficult.
Additionally, Mason demonstrates people who deeply identify with a party, rather than people who feel particularly strongly about issues, are more likely to engage in partisan activism. Social identity theory, she notes, predicts this. When one identifies strongly with a particular group, an insult to that group is deeply personal. And, as Mason suggests, when one identifies with a number of groups stacked into a “mega-identity,” winning at all costs and humiliating your opponent become profoundly important to one’s sense of self.
Nonetheless, Mason’s wide-ranging analysis, showing the exhausting preference for victory over policy, the growing extremism of partisans, and the importance of stacked identities for understanding contemporary politics, is one of the most compelling and sobering books I have recently read. If you care about the state of our political system, Mason’s book should absolutely be on your summer reading list.
My point is watching these videos you can see the people South and the people North were becoming stacked identities and the mega identity as the war became...