Artificial Polarization in American Politics

Sometimes, large parts of reality get missed for lack of a word to describe them. As a naturalist, I watch this happen over and over when I teach people to identify a new plant. If it is a common weed, once they learn to recognize it, they will suddenly start seeing it everywhere. Before they learned the plant's leaf shape and appearance, it had simply blended into the sea of green, seen yet unseen. People feel empowered when they can identify a plant and give it a name. The same can happen in politics, where people can feel demoralized, awash in a sea of polarization. But not all polarization is the same.

One of the most useful terms for understanding politics in the U.S. and elsewhere is one you've probably never heard before. Do an internet search for "artificial polarization", and you'll be presented with esoteric articles about the artificial polarization of light in photography and lasers. My father, an astronomer, discovered the polarization of light in space. But most of us are more earthbound, and associate polarization with politics. We live in a highly polarized time, people say, and shake their heads.

The question needs to be asked, however: How much of that polarization is real--that is, growing out of genuine disagreement about policy--and how much of it is artificially produced? If someone lies, an artificial polarization between truth and assertion is immediately created. If someone doubles down on a lie, artificial polarization is sustained. Denial of human-caused climate change is an example of sustained artificial polarization, as is the claim that tax cuts pay for themselves. False claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen are another example of creating polarization where there need be none.

What purpose does artificial polarization play in political life? It is politically expedient, of course, to ignore the overwhelming evidence and pretend that burning fossil fuels and cutting taxes have no downside. Weaning ourselves of fossil fuels, and paying the full cost of government services, would require sacrifice. Denying these problems lets voters off the hook. But that doesn't explain the demonization of vaccines that could save the lives of your supporters. 

Beyond the opportunism of willful wishful thinking, the creation of artificial polarization achieves two goals. The first goal achieved through artificial polarization is a sense of identity. Consensus is dangerous for politicians. The road to anonymity is paved with agreement. Identity is built on difference. From this perspective, unifying forces like truth become a threat to political identity. Climate change is perhaps the most potentially unifying threat we face. Each one of us, regardless of political or national affiliation, is part of the problem and part of the solution. Rallying to save ourselves and nature would require acknowledging common interest and working together towards a common goal. 

The second goal of artificial polariation is the maintenance of a despised Other, that is, an enemy that can be used to rally and sustain a loyal following. People feel lifted up if they can look down on something or somebody. An outside threat, real or imaginary, can give people a sense of purpose, and help them forget their own problems and inadequacies. Make people feel victimized by some outside entity and you can fuel a movement. Often, the despised Other is of another race or religion. The federal government, too, became a despised Other in the 1960s and 70s when it was forcibly drafting young men to risk their lives in Vietnam. In contrast, today's anti-government protest, evolving from the Reagan and Gingrich eras in the 1980s and '90s, is fueled by such things as stoked resentment of vaccines that can save lives.

An Other cannot be fully and satisfyingly despised if the Other is sometimes right. It must, therefore, be always wrong, and sometimes this means creating lies that suggest the Other is wrong even when they are right.

The aim here is to encourage journalists and others to avoid generalized, generic laments about political polarization, and rather make clear distinctions between politicians who are generating polarization artificially through lies and denial, and those who are sticking closer to truth. 

Afterword:

Just to show how rarely this highly useful term is used in political discourse, below are the results of googling "artificial polarization" (with the quotes) in Sept 2025. A related post of mine from five years ago is the only politically oriented webpage that shows up.

To get results related to politics, try googling "artificial polarization" politics. 

Can Trump Be Effectively Portrayed as Weak?

Perceptions of strength are critical in elections, so it's surprising that strength and weakness in politicians is written around more than about. At this moment in history, Trump is newly elected to a second term, ascendant, wielding powers no previous president dared claim. His opponents are in disarray, largely helpless to stop him. To suggest that he is weak in any way must deal with the reality that the entire Republican Party now cowers in fear before him. and as he dismantles government agencies and slashes funding for scientific research, that fear of his wrath is quickly spreading beyond Party, beyond government, penetrating deep into the fabric of the nation. He wields his disruptive powers on the world stage as well, using tariffs and whatever threats he has at his disposal to bend other nations to his will. 

Amidst this aggressive wielding of power, how can Trump be portrayed as weak? While he forcefully imposes his will on his Party, the government, and even the arts, seeking revenge upon his enemies wherever they may be, this wielding of power hides a man who is on the run, from truth, from tough issues like climate change and fiscal responsibility, from consequence for his criminal actions. Merciless towards others, he claims himself exempt from basic standards of conduct and comity. Though seemingly thick-skinned, unfazed by fierce criticism and public mockery few of us could bear or survive, he has no tolerance for contrary opinion that might test his intellect, firing anyone who dares question his actions. His strength depends on making others weaker. As with other members of his Party, he stands only because he is coddled and propped up by a rightwing propaganda machine that is hard on others, soft on self. In these ways, he and his Party are decidedly weak and insecure.

Strength, then, is a matter of perception. A Democratic Party seeking to shift the public's perception of strength would repeatedly cast Trump's actions as those of a weak man. Otherwise, come the next election, people who run from tough issues and are propped up by propaganda, who stridently demand accountability in others but not themselves, will again be falsely viewed by the electorate as strong.

In researching this topic, I encountered a few other takes on strength and weakness.

Various angles have been used in the past to portray Trump as weak. Back in 2020, one commentator at Politico declared Trump an "authoritarian weakman" because he didn't exploit the pandemic to consolidate his power. Four years plotting his comback while gaining more experience with stymying the judicial system, certainly renders that critique obsolete.

The 2024 Democratic National Convention touched on perceptions of strength. Republican former Rep. Adma Kinzinger characterized Trump as a "weak man pretending to be strong." Another speaker described Kamala Harris's empathy as her strength. 

Another commentator, Ezra Klein, said in February that "Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president," meaning that a stronger leader would achieve his ends through legislation rather than executive orders. Time has shown that he can get the legislation he wants, to back up his executive orders.

Kamala Harris offered this attempt to make the word stick, in a facebook post:

Donald Trump is weak.
He seeks flattery from dictators: Weak.
He has demeaned America's military: Weak.
He has called for terminating the Constitution: Weak.

In each election, Democrats have seemed to me to be swimming upstream. The political current flowing against them has long taken the form of misperceptions of foundational values like strength, economic vitality, freedom, and opportunity. Values typically associated with Democrats, like justice, fairness, and compassion are important, but the Democratic Party also needs to take ownership of values falsely claimed by Republicans.

How to change the current? From what I remember of Obama's presidency, he periodically delivered long, thoughtful speeches on this or that pressing topic, and then seemed to think his job was done. A political tide is not shifted by saying something only once, no matter how well. Weakening the Republican false claim to foundational values requires repetitive messaging, taking each Republican action or inaction as additional proof of unworthiness--as an opportunity to say "There they go again." Only then does the drum beat begin to be heard and perceptions begin to shift.

So much is changing in the political landscape, as a democracy's battle of ideas becomes eclipsed by a battle for raw power. The expanding bubble of misinformation into which many voters are being drawn brings into question the extent to which good messaging can reach those it seeks to sway. But as increasingly aggressive gerrymandering threatens to further tip the scales against Democrats, the importance of reclaiming foundational values like strength become all the more important.

Related Posts:

When Political Cowardice Poses as Strength

False Representations of Conservatives as Tough

Beyond Nazis: Comparing Trump to Authoritarians of the Past

Since the Nazis have always been the all-too-predictable go-to for an evil wielding of power, I thought I'd explore beyond them, in order to broaden the palette of potential comparisons for what is currently playing out in the United States. Who else in human history has moved so quickly to centralize power, gut whole agencies, and bring proud institutions to heal, intimidating anyone who dares stand in his way? 

The first realization is how many potential comparisons there are. Mussolini to the Present, a book by Ruth Ben-Ghiat, explores a long list of authoritarians past and present, among them Mussolini, Hitler, Augusto Pinochet, Francisco Franco, Muammar Qaddafi, Silvio Berlusconi, Mobutu Sese Seko, Viktor Orban, Rodrigo Duterte, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi. Unfortunately, according to a New York Times review, the author "provides no conceptual framework for distinguishing between different types of strongmen." 

And in distinguishing one authoritarian from another, what to call them? The word "strongman" excludes women, though they might be happily excluded, and confuses power with strength. (In many ways--running from tough issues like climate change, propped up by propaganda, hard on others, soft on self--Trump is a very weak man.) On my list of potential labels thus far are demagogue, authoritarian, totalitarian, dictator, autocrat, despot, tyrant, and fascist. Though each of these terms has its own history, the distinction is most clear between the first and all the others.

Demagogues vs. Fascists

During the 2024 presidential campaign, it became common to call Trump a fascist. Washington Post opinion writer Eli Merritt explained why "demagogue" is a better term.

The wikipedia description of a demagogue matches the Trump we've seen thus far:

"... a political leader in a democracy who gains popularity by arousing the common people against elites, especially through oratory that whips up the passions of crowds, appealing to emotion by scapegoating out-groups, exaggerating dangers to stoke fears, lying for emotional effect, or other rhetoric that tends to drown out reasoned deliberation and encourage fanatical popularity.[4] Demagogues overturn established norms of political conduct ..."

As Alexander Hamilton pointed out at our country's founding, those who begin as demagogues can end as tyrants. Though Merritt makes the case that Trump is not as yet a fascist, he acknowledges some fascist qualities in Trump's behavior and inclinations. Fascism, founded by Mussolini, is defined in wikipedia this way:

Fascism's extreme authoritarianism and nationalism can manifest as a belief in Manifest Destiny or a revival of historical greatness (like Mussolini seeking to restore the Roman Empire). It may also centre around an ingroup-outgroup opposition. In the case of Nazism, this involved racial purity and a master race which blended with a variant of racism and discrimination against a demonized "Other", such as Jews and other groups. Other marginalized groups such as homosexuals, transgender people, ethnic minorities, or immigrants have been targeted. Such bigotry has motivated fascist regimes to commit massacres, forced sterilizations, deportations, and genocides.[17][18]

 Some of these qualities can be seen in Trump's "make America great again" theme, the demonized "Other" of immigrants, and attacks on homosexuals and other marginalized groups. Mussolini's pro-natalism can be seen in vice president JD Vance's call for more babies. There are echoes of Mussolini's and Hitler's nationalistic appetite for expansion (spazio vitale and lebensraum) in Trump's quest to acquire Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. 

Musolini and Hugo Chavez

I took a closer look at Italy's Mussolini and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Mussolini proved a big surprise. Later to become a brutal dictator, he began as a socialist and journalist, an avid reader and intellectual with a nuanced understanding of and admiration for Marxism. This is about as far as one could imagine from Trump, whose capacity to read is extremely limited. Mussolini grew disillusioned with the socialist party, however, and went through a radical transformation, ultimately founding what we know as fascism. Mussolini also distinguishes himself from Chavez and Trump due to his having achieved power on his first try, when he marched on Rome with 30,000 Fascist blackshirts in 1922. 

Though Chavez was a leftist, his ascent in 1998 has parallels to Trump's in 2024. For both, success began as failure and prosecution for crimes. Chavez's attempt to overthrow President Carlos Andres Perez in 1992 failed, followed by conviction and jail time. Trump, too, attempted a coup of sorts, unleashing a mob on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, followed by years of trials. Having failed to take or hold onto power by illegal means, both achieved success legally and electorally years later. 

Like Trump, Chavez proved charismatic even in failure. According to one account, having surrendered after his botched coup attempt, Chavez "appears on national television to inform rebel detachments to cease fighting, and is subsequently imprisoned. The brief speech—in which he jokes that he has only failed "for now"—establishes a connection with viewers that makes him a political star." Chavez's "for now" sounds eerily like Trump's "stand back and stand by."

Learning from Failure -- Hitler, Chavez, Orban, and Trump

The importance of that stretch of years between failed coup and successful election cannot be overstated. For Trump, those four years inbetween, spent in litigation but also in planning his return, provided the crucible for a far more radicalized second term. Through four years of stalling and impeding justice, he was able to further probe the weaknesses and limitations of the courts and gain confidence in avoiding accountability while living outside the law.

Hitler's success also began with failure. In 1923, inspired by Mussolini's success a year earlier, Hitler attempted a coup. He was arrested and spent a year in jail, during which time he wrote much of Mein Kampf. After ten years marked by banishment and regrouping, electoral success led to his taking power in 1933.

Though Victor Orban, prime minister of Hungary, did not attempt a coup, his trajectory shares a great deal with Trump's. Orban was prime minister from 1998 to 2002, then lost power until regaining it eight years later, in 2010. Clearly having learned from his first experience as prime minister, with eight years to plan and scheme, Orban returned to power a changed man, ready and willing to undermine democracy and consolidate his control.

Thus far, as of March, 2025, Trump has taken over the Republican Party, cowed Congress, intimidated and defied the judiciary, fired inspectors general, and launched a lawless gutting of government. He certainly looks to be headed down that road Hamilton described, from demagogue to tyrant--a road all too well trodden elsewhere in the world. 

Update 10.01.25: A prescient opinion piece from March, 2020 compares Trump's autocratic legalism, in its early stages at that time, to that of Chavez, Orban, and Putin.