'Recently, political tribes have become historically coherent, research showing that voter attitudes are more unidimensional and ideological primes increase conformity with norms. Aside from making contemporary politics more bitter, this bodes ill for the future. If authoritarian politics returns with tightly organized tribes, a condition absent from previous eras, it could be more vicious than ever.'
What I want to know is, why didn't we see this before?
Ideological coherence is a sound political strategy. Elections have single winners. Since elections are multi-dimensional, you need to form a coalition to be that winner. But the tighter you make that coalition, the less you have to compromise while still winning.
Sure, it's intellectually bankrupt, but what would you rather do: be right, or win elections? The latter choice always gets you nothing -- at least when faced with somebody else who would rather win.
It seems like this tradeoff was just sitting there for decades or centuries, but we only started implementing it in the last 40-50 years or so. I wonder why it took so long.
The straightforward answers would seem to be something like "intellectual honesty" or "human decency", but I really can't imagine a time when that was widespread.
