RETURN WITH us now to those idyllic days of yore (say, before 1990), when it was not only possible but quite normal for neighbors and coworkers with wildly divergent political views to get along perfectly well. Even (gasp) be friends.
That blissful beforetime was ended by something that SiriusXM radio personality and CNN television host Michael Smerconish calls “self-sorting,” a kind of group isolation in which people tend to surround themselves with only like-minded friends and associates. “It started with polarization in the media in the late ’80s and early ’90s,” he says. The first symptoms flared when far right radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh found homes on formerly dying AM radio stations, which got a new lease on life by broadcasting a barrage of ultra-conservative talk shows 24/7. The format spread to television and then the internet, inoculating audiences with extreme, intolerant political views and—even more dangerously—extreme, intolerant views toward any friends, neighbors, or coworkers who didn’t agree with them.
Which brings us to today’s media hellscape, featuring entire television networks and internet services with tunnel vision, each pushing one particular set of far-right or far-left opinions rife with confirmation bias and media consumers only interacting with outlets (and people) who hold the same biases as them.
With everyone sorted into insular camps, media and politicians compete to appeal to one of several sects of hypothetical (for the most part) bunker dwellers, to the general detriment of society at large.
But it doesn’t have to be this way, Smerconish believes. “This witches’ brew, or perfect storm, has come together and driven us to our polar extremes,” he says. “But I maintain that the vast majority of the country isn’t at the far ends of the political spectrum but rather somewhere just to the left or right of center.”
Smerconish has made it his personal mission to throw a spotlight on America’s bunker mentality and offer ways to stop it. On November 14, he’ll talk about this conundrum at the Indiana Roof Ballroom as part of the 2024 Presidential Speaker Series, staged by the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site. Smerconish has some interesting street cred on this topic. In an age defined by polarization, he describes himself as an “independent and passionate centrist” who not only works for CNN and formerly contributed to MSNBC but also served as a guest host for both Hardball with Chris Matthews and Bill O’Reilly’s The Radio Factor.
His personal quest to, in effect, get the average American to come outdoors and touch grass is what attracted the attention of the Harrison home’s president and CEO Charles A. Hyde. “With the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site, we’re avidly nonpartisan and nonpolitical,” Hyde says. “And I think many would agree that we’re in something of a civics crisis at the moment and that there’s a profound need to better understand and model civil public discourse. Michael has done a great job in understanding or articulating this increase in polarization and putting forward solutions for how we might fight against that tide.”
Smerconish says he first noticed the country’s widening division in 2012, when he was invited to the Oval Office to interview President Barack Obama. “It was a very big deal,” he recalls. “I was in syndication on a hundred radio stations across the country, and I thought this was a real feather in my cap.”
Then he got wind of a memo circulating among his syndication company’s staff expressing concern over how an interview with the sitting president of the United States might be received by some of the affiliate stations broadcasting Smerconish’s show. “There was a largely conservative lineup on a number of the stations that were taking my program, and they were worried that there would be some kind of revolt,” he recalls. “For me it was one of those, ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ moments. I had a presidential sit-down, and instead of being welcome and well-received, it was causing consternation.”
What drives him nuts about the current state of affairs is that he believes the vast majority of Americans just aren’t that polarized. Smerconish states that numerous studies done in recent years show that the hyperpolarization that’s being peddled as the zeitgeist of 21st-century America just isn’t happening. Or, at least, it’s not happening on anythingapproaching the scale that one might imagine after spending a day scrolling X (formerly Twitter), reading HuffPost, watching MSNBC, or glued to Fox News. “We really haven’t changed where we were in the 1970s,” he says. “What’s changed is the amplification of the loudest voices in the room, creating a perception that there’s a divide in the country that I don’t think really exists.”
While TV and radio helped to amplify fringe opinions, the internet, somewhat perversely, both connected likeminded folks and then isolated them within distinct thought bubbles. They’re traps—easy to fall into but increasingly difficult to escape. “We have begun to congregate among our own,” Smerconish says. “If you have a hobby, it makes it easy to find people who share your passion. But the same thing applies to the political world. The bottom line is that the internet makes it easier for you to avoid people with dissimilar interests and congregate among your own.”
Which is how echo chambers are made. And echo chambers are where extremism metastasizes. Extremism and, especially among children, loneliness. “Our kids are following parents who are not joiners, and so they spend too much time behind closed bedroom doors, and they’ve become isolated,” he says. “The mental health crisis in this country is directly tied to all of these factors.”
The way out of this pickle, Smerconish believes, is as simple to explain as it is difficult to execute. He’s repeated it ad infinitum, both during his speaking engagements and via The Mingle Project, his effort to help the average person, and children in particular, spend more time in the real world, rather than closeted away. “What’s needed, in a nutshell, is more common experience,” he says.
Smerconish’s solution sounds not unlike a grandfather grousing about how much better things were back in “his day,” when people went outside more often, kids played all evening unsupervised, and pretty much everybody belonged to a club of some kind. But that’s exactly the change he thinks must happen in order to shake off the malignant consequences of self-sorting.
“Go to church, whatever that church may be. Volunteer in your community. Join an affinity group of some type,” he advises. “Those are the sorts of community ties that provide opportunities not just for socialization but for extending a hand to the less fortunate.”
The idea that fixing such a huge problem simply by having everybody join clubs and civic organizations may sound far-fetched, but Smerconish is optimistic it can work. Or rather, he is optimistic in a very qualified way.
“I’m optimistic that there’s a solution,” he says. “But I don’t know if we’re optimistic that we’re going to seize it. I take telephone calls every day from people all over the country who are really distraught and don’t know if there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. And I think a large part of that is because this particular election cycle has got them down.”
At least the Harrison home is making an effort. Hyde says that back in 2014, when he first took control of the organization, he started casting around for ways that it could advance participation in civic matters. The organization decided to offer its services as an election polling site. But when it reached out to local officials with the offer, it received a very interesting response.
“They asked if we were trying to get out of being a polling site,” Hyde recalls. When he explained that the organization was volunteering to become one, he was told that no one, ever, volunteers to host a polling site. “To their credit, they certified us, and we’ve served in that capacity ever since,” Hyde says. “But it really caused us to question what else was not being done in the public sphere.”
