Two questions to break the boredom of which some are complaining:
1) Why do people develop the political views which they develop?
2) Why do ideologies form around specific beliefs on seemingly unrelated issues, such as abortion and the debt? Is there something inherent in beliefs about abortion and the debt that causes the vast majority of Americans to believe either in left-wing economic policy combined with legal abortion or right-wing economic policy combined with illegal abortion instead of a different match of opinions on the issues? That's just one example.
Discuss.
For me, I started coming of political age in my midteens during the end of the Sixties and during the Watergate and My Lai hearings, so my political/life views skewed both idealistically and cynically, a kind of split personality. I have vacillated between the two and sometimes formed an uncomfortable marriage between them.
I tried basically to determine what I thought was fair and focused on that. But I’ve been influenced by my friends, the courses I studied, the newspapers I read, the people I admired. I did most often go toward sources that shared my viewpoint, though not to those that shared it obnoxiously and indiscriminately. I did go to sources I thought gave a balanced view when I could. I go to the New York Times as my primary news source although I don’t look at it uncritically.
I think when you begin to define yourself as a liberal/progressive or a conservative or a libertarian, there is often an almost unconscious desire to belong to that club and to fall in line without totally thinking it through. I’ve been guilty of that. I think people will tend to spout the approved line with less vetting when it is about subjects they are not personally involved in, but will be much more in depth and passionate about things they truly care about and things that involve them and those they love and there will be much more nuance and much more of their own language and their own words in their arguments as opposed rehash and repeating of pundits/etc talking points.
I think people become wed to an ideology. For some reason, any deviation from the ideology is ceding points to the other side. The media, the consultants, the experts often have a financial interest in polarization and nurture it and elevate the petty to a big issue. They make it not just a point of view, but a moral view—divide the sides into demons and uniformed naives vs. saints and informed sophisticates. Peer pressure, polarization, limited sources of information, identification with pundits or other admired people who hold a view, repetitive arguments feed into that narrow viewpoint. I also think that a lot of ideology is defensiveness.
Both sides look for information that only supports their side, making them not very good debaters. Good debaters know the best arguments of their opponents, don’t just prey on the weak ones. A good debater knows how to cede a point without weakening their own argument.
I also think Americans particularly seem to have a need to be part of something bigger than they are. I think it’s a little like identifying sometimes overly strongly with your ethnicity. We don’t really have a definition as Americans. We are sometimes desperately looking for definition, a place we belong. And we are trained to see things in black and white. We are raised on political myth on both sides. Neither side has the patience to listen to the other side. They jump on a few statements a person makes and label that person, limit that person, marginalize them. I don’t have the contempt I think many people do toward someone who does not agree with them. I don’t think they are necessarily illogical when they come to a different conclusion than I do.
But I don’t really find most people that I know to be be ideologues. I see movement back and forth between positions. I find a lot of people that I know to be pragmatic, to weigh between different solutions and viewpoints. I don’t necessarily see what I see in the media reflected in real life especially when people shed their political skins.