America’s cold war — with itself

In the 1972 presidential race, Richard Nixon ran against Sen. George McGovern and won 49 states. McGovern couldn’t even carry his home state of South Dakota. Only Massachusetts voted for the Democrat.

In 1984, Ronald Reagan won 49 states against Walter Mondale. Mondale at least won Minnesota, his home state.

Which leads me to this question: Can you name anybody in the entire United States who could run for president and win 49 states? I don’t mean in 2024; we know that’s not going to happen. But what about beyond the next election — even way beyond the next election? If there is anybody, I can’t think of who he or she is.

So here’s another question: What the heck happened to us since Nixon and Reagan?

Well, for openers, there was no internet, no Twitter, no Instagram, no TikTok, no Facebook — and there was no MSNBC or Fox News in Nixon or Reagan’s time. CNN was just getting off the ground in 1980. Whatever good cable news and social media may have done, there’s little doubt that they’ve helped polarize America. There’s a better chance that those House hearings on what we used to call UFOs will produce irrefutable evidence that aliens are right now living among us than there is the likelihood that a presidential candidate could win 49 states anytime soon, or even not-so-soon.

And nothing these days is too small to divide us. Democrats and Republicans, for the most part, don’t like the same TV shows. Liberals and conservatives can’t even come together over “Barbie,” the movie. Everything is political. Everything is “us” versus “them.” 

“The standard explanation for this is the so-called echo-chamber effect,” is how Elizabeth Kolbert explained it in the New Yorker. “On Facebook, people ‘friend’ people with similar views — either their genuine friends or celebrities and other public figures they admire. Trump supporters tend to hear from other Trump supporters, and Trump haters from other Trump haters. A study by researchers inside Facebook showed that only about a quarter of the news content that Democrats post on the platform is viewed by Republicans, and vice versa. A study of Twitter use found similar patterns. Meanwhile, myriad studies, many dating back to before the Internet was ever dreamed of, have demonstrated that, when people confer with others who agree with them, their views become more extreme. Social scientists have dubbed this effect ‘group polarization,’ and many worry that the web has devolved into one vast group-polarization palooza.”

No one tunes into Fox News to hear what a great president Joe Biden is. And no one tunes into MSNBC or CNN to get rave reviews on Donald Trump. We tune into cable news and social media to feel comfortable about our preexisting beliefs. We feel safe in our echo chambers. “This can lead to a lack of exposure to diverse perspectives and an increased polarization between different ideological groups” — so says ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence program I reached out to in order to find out why we’re so divided in this country.

Here’s one more question: Is there anything that could bring us together? Maybe, but I don’t think so — not in the foreseeable future, anyway. A pandemic that killed more than a million Americans couldn’t bring us together — the opposite happened; it divided us. On one side Dr. Anthony Fauci was a hero, on the other he was a villain.

Even the attacks on 9/11 wound up dividing us. “We were hardly a united country on Sept. 10, 2001, but our divisions are far worse today,” is how William Galston described our disunity in a 2021 essay. “September 11 has left us with a legacy of fear — on the right, the fear of more terrorist attacks; on the left, fear that our response to this possibility will infringe civil liberties and open the door to discrimination against Muslims and other minorities.”

We can’t agree on whether the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 was an insurrection or merely a peaceful protest by patriots that got out of hand. And whether your respect the Supreme Court often depends on whether you’re a liberal or a conservative. 

Let’s remember that it wasn’t always this way. We mourned JFK’s assassination — as a unified nation. We trusted the press when it told us about Watergate. Walter Cronkite was voted the most trusted man in America. But that was a long time ago. Who trusts the media today? And what politician’s passing would we mourn now — as a unified United States of America?

All of this has led some Americans to wonder if we’re heading for a civil war. They’re not paying attention. We’re already fighting a civil war. The good news is that it’s a “cold war” — so far.

But there just may be one thing that partisans on both sides could agree on — and it’s that the “other side” doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously, because the “other side” is completely, totally, and certifiably nuts.

Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He was a correspondent with HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” for 22 years and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and as an analyst for Fox News. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page. Follow him on Twitter @BernardGoldberg.