The Filtered Life

Megan McArdle nails one of the reasons this election is so weird:

I’m wondering about an odd phenomenon that I’ve noticed: the number of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders supporters, and to a lesser extent, the supporters of Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton, who seem to genuinely believe that there is a silent majority of folks out there who agree with them. Over and over I have asked these folks what they think will happen in the general election, given their candidate’s significant handicaps: Trump’s vulgarity and sky-high unfavorables, Sanders’s huge-government agenda, Clinton’s scandals and well-at-least-they’re-better-than-Trump favorability ratings, Cruz’s unappealing style and reputation as the hardest of ideological hardliners. 

The responses I get range from surprised blinking, to an explanation that my bubble is keeping me from understanding what “real people” think, to babble about the weaknesses of the other candidates. I have been variously assured, with complete confidence, that “no one” will vote for: 

Donald Trump, because he’s a bigot 

Ted Cruz, because he’s a religious nut

Hillary Clinton, because of the Benghazi and e-mail scandals 

Bernie Sanders, because he’s a socialist 

We are apparently facing four years of the “none of the above” administration.

Fortunately, she goes on to offer an explanation:

These people are not exactly wrong about the weaknesses of their opponents. But in all cases, they vastly overestimate the strength of these objections. They seem to believe that their own personal revulsion is natural instincts, shared by all but a tiny, mad slice of the voting public...  

What creates this utter certainty among a broader and broader slice of the electorate? It's not just geographic sorting. That's been going on for a while. It certainly affects congressional districts and the red-blue divide, but it does not explain the illusion that the rest of the country agrees with you. 

The Internet creates that sense of universality, even as it is curated into an increasing personal uniqueness. You don’t see the algorithms that fill your social media feed and your search results with tidbits you will find congenial, and so it’s easy to think that your bubble is more representative of the world than it actually is.  

As more and more of our lives move onto the internet, we will get to see less and less of the world as it actually is. This is how we get four vastly different candidates, whose followers are clueless as to why anyone would support the other three.

While we careen towards the inevitable train wreck in November, just remember that we have our own preferences to blame. We don't want to read/hear/see any form of different view. As the youngsters would say, that might expose us to a "microaggression", which might upset our worldview. We limit our voting preferences to Republicrats or Democans, because we don't want to "waste our vote".

What exactly is a "wasted vote"? As far as I can tell, it means you vote for a candidate and that candidate loses. Maybe this hasn't occurred to any of you folks, but whether you vote for an R or a D, one of them will lose. If you voted for the loser, even if you agreed with their views, you will have wasted your vote.

Call me nuts, but I would rather waste my vote on a candidate with whom I agree, rather than vote for someone with whom I disagree, just so I can vote for a "winner". Returning to the "blindered voter" theory, maybe this is a good thing? Maybe we will finally vote for candidates we agree with, rather than the ones hand-picked by major party establishments?

Even more importantly, maybe some or most people will finally realize they are actually Libertarians? Think of Libertarians this way: All the social liberty ideals of the Democrats without the nanny state-isms, and all the fiscal conservative ideals of the Republicans without all the spending.

Maybe these internet filters could be good after all?

(hat tip to imgfave for the pic)