Ain't that America?

I was listening to the Checks and Balance podcast from The Economist. Specifically, the most recent episode, "Left Side Story." Long story short, the episode deals with the phenomenon that American liberals tend to have a more pessimistic outlook on the United States and conservatives do. The spoke to a researcher who asked people a number of questions about the United States, and their results (backed up by other polling in the area) show that more liberal Americans feel that the nation comes off worse in comparison to other countries than more conservative Americans. There was the obligatory discussion of why that might be, and while it was interesting, I feel that it missed a couple of points.

I see two potentially overlooked factors in explaining how people rate the United States, vis-a-vis other nations that could be helpful in understanding the partisan differences that people point out.

The first is: Who is one comparing to? It's one thing to ask how the United States rates on certain factors versus "the rest of the world," but the rest of the world covers a lot of territory, and I think that people often have certain places in mind when they answer questions like this. When I talk to liberal acquaintances about the topic, they tend to make direct comparisons to other "advanced democracies," which tends to limit the discussion to Western Europe and maybe Australia and Japan. But when I have the comparison conversation with conservative acquaintances, the focus is more on the "Third World" and/or authoritarian/totalitarian regimes. One could look at it as one group comparing the United States to places they'd like to live, while the other compares to nations they're glad they don't live in. I suspect that if one were to ask how the United States ranked on income inequality to say, Denmark, or on LGBT rights when compared to Russia, there would be broad agreement. But when asking about the rest of the world more broadly, which nation comes to mind first is of some importance.

The second factor is: Who else does one talk to? As more and more people in the United States find themselves within "bubbles," "echo chambers" or however else one might refer to relatively homogeneous social groups and media environments, the information on how other people live changes. If a person wants to understand the experience of being Black in the United States and what solutions there might be to the problems facing that community, reading Juan Williams will wind up providing a very different outlook than reading Ibram Kendi. Likewise, speaking to well-off Black proponents of Respectability Politics will give a different viewpoint than interacting with Black Lives Matter boosters from a poorer urban area.

There is, of course, a potential third factor, but this is one that I think people generally understand is out there, even if it's not often spoken of; namely, how people approach the question. If one seeks to make the case that the United States still has (much) more to do when it comes to living up to its stated ideals, it stands to reason that one would immediately think of those places that seem to have done a better job, and those people who have been left behind, in one way or another, by the work that's already been done. Conversely, someone who is invested in understanding the United States as the best place on Earth is going to seek to make the comparison against those places that are far behind, and to point to those people who appear to be proof of the progress made.

In the end, it becomes another instance of people talking past one another because they aren't on the same page as to the point of comparison. To be sure, there likely is a certain amount of selective distortion going on, where people's perceptions are altered when they are challenged and attempting to hold on to a fallible point. But I think that it's more important than people give it credit for to understand that just because the questions are the same, that the thinking that goes into them may vary.