Is America Polarized or Just Majority Fundamentalist?
This article has two aims: To engage in the question of whether America is not polarized, but just majority fundamentalist, and to establish new goals for a category that goes beyond leftism or liberalism, which I am calling ‘the new minority’. We will also cover the role of empathy and what empathy needs to be effective in both paradigms.
In the chilling wake of this nightmare election, many of us are left releasing the held remnants of what we’d hoped might bring us together, closer to progress, to some moment of American coherence towards the equality of flourishing. But, apparently, not enough of us.
Instead, the distance feels greater than before, the gulfs deeper. The chasms between identities that were never simply red or blue, left or right, feels unbridgeable. We are scattered into factions that seek wildly different versions of the same land, with unbending defensiveness about who and what should have a place in the world we call home.
Since 2010, the use of the term polarization has surged. It sounds almost routine. But the ferocity in our discourse, our ways of seeing others as enemies, the complete inability to hear someone else’s truth, goes beyond two distant sides in a tone-deaf debate. Polarization suggests two ideas held at a distance; what we’re witnessing is the triumph of ideology over flexibility, of conviction over compassion.
So, I think it’s worth asking ourselves at this juncture: is America polarized—or are we just majority fundamentalist? Our perception of ourselves under these two paradigms may require a different approach to healing this clearly broken idea of democracy and representation. While many scholars, such as Audre Lorde, Chris Hedges, Sarah Posner, Anand Giridharadas, Robert P. Jones, and Andrew Sullivan help us see America’s strains of fundamentalism, the less prominent idea that America is majority fundamentalist is one that may need to be entertained.
What’s more, after years of political discourse favoring polarization as our nation’s truth, I feel compelled to think with you through the suggestion that we are ‘majority fundamentalist’ in order to begin considering what kind of different strategy dealing with this might require. If we are to achieve the equality goals of a new minority that may be better described as non-fundamentalist’, we need to rethink the standard, smaller, polarization-centered category of those who are liberal.
To make this suggestion that we are majority fundamentalist, let’s begin with our history.
A Legacy of Certainty
America was born on the idea of certainties. The Puritans and early settlers didn’t come to negotiate with this land. They came to build their version of paradise, not through humility, but through the conviction that they alone knew best. “Manifest destiny” was never about gentle expansion; it was conquest justified by scripture. To believe, as they did, that some lives mattered more than others was essential to establishing the structures we grapple with today and our military/economic role on the world-stage. So when we wonder why “polarization” in America feels particularly unmovable, it’s because we are still contending with that first wave of fundamentalism, dressed up as patriotism and traditionalism.
This old ideology has been repackaged in modern terms, but we must question if its essence has truly changed when we look at the beliefs that guide our current political landscape. When we unpack all of the rhetoric and look at today’s landscape, it seems clear that what divides us is not two conflicting points of view but an entrenched way of thinking that brooks no opposition. Here’s what we see:
Five Fundamentalist American Beliefs Today, that Must Give Us Pause
- Religion Over Law
In the U.S., Christian conservatism has not only survived but thrived as a framework for laws governing our bodies, our families, our schools. The way that courts decide certain beliefs are “above” the law, mirror systems in Saudi Arabia and Iran, where religious authority trumps personal autonomy. Our rhetoric may be more polished, but the result is the same: some freedoms become privileges reserved for those who fit a narrow religious mold. - Control Over Women’s Bodies
Rights over reproductive health are eroding in a way that’s chillingly familiar. Like the constraints placed on women in Afghanistan or Sudan, American policies are crafted not to protect but to control. Fundamentalism of any kind sees autonomy as a threat to order. And so, bit by bit, we retreat from the principle that a person’s body is their own. - Intolerance of Queer and Minority Identities
LGBTQ+ rights and minority protections are being actively rolled back. Laws crafted to limit the visibility and freedom of queer individuals are strikingly reminiscent of Russia’s laws that criminalize “gay propaganda.” It’s not a debate, it’s a systematic erasure – a way to write people out of the public narrative if they don’t align with a certain version of America. - Nationalism as Cultural Identity
Fundamentalist societies thrive on a fixed idea of what the “real” citizen looks like and believes. The way some Americans embrace a fervent nationalism is not so different from Israel, or Turkey’s pursuit of ethnic homogeneity or India’s struggles with religious and ethnic purity. The message here, as there, is clear: loyalty to one identity. Those who do not belong — immigrants, dissenters — are threats to the core. - Science as the Enemy
In fundamentalist societies, secular science is often seen as a gateway to dissent. In the U.S., the same holds. Climate change is disputed, evolution is sidelined, and alternative education is fought for with zeal. The push to avoid the “corruption” of secularism mirrors countries where science is treated as dangerous, a threat to the status quo.
If We Are Majority Fundamentalist…
If this is about majority fundamentalism, then you could have given a crystal ball to Trump voters that showed Harris producing far better outcomes in four years than Trump. These outcomes could have clearly benefited their own personal, economic, health, and social lives: and the majority still would have voted for Donald, even if they fully believed he would make their lives worse than Kamala.
In a majority fundamentalist paradigm, democrats who bet on the American people to listen to reason will continue to lose. Reason is not what our current national level of education is able to process against the backdrop of a generation’s misplaced frustration. What is behind the frustration, the anger, the sense of being reduced, taken advantage of, and not seen? The tools do not exist to consider choices with the intellectual humility and emotional education that underpin reason. Democrats thought such voters cared about topics, but the danger that we did not put into words quickly enough, was that frustration, misogyny, and fury do not always look like anger on people’s faces. They look like pride, patriotism, and apathetic pushback. The modal norm or hidden belief beneath these topics is not about the concept of abortion, or immigration. It’s what these topics emotionally represent: a sectarian comradery of anger from those who do not even see themselves as angry. In other words, a revenge to belong (again).
As social scientist, Dr. Sa-Kiera Hudson might say, schadenfreude, or the pleasure derived from another’s misfortune, is as socially impactful an emotion as empathy, because it too plays a crucial role in intensifying intergroup conflicts, especially in “us versus them” situations. This is especially emergent under competitive and divisive social conditions in which groups are in conflict or feel threatened by each other.
In other words, when revenge carries a dagger, the conversation about the economy becomes banal to obscurity. For democrats to have championed an agenda that the working class would have listened to, they needed to better emotionally mirror the pent up quality of vengeance that a majority of Americans are grappling with. This unfortunately goes hand in hand with fundamentalism.
If “majority fundamentalist,” we may have to accept a bigger truth that the biggest topic on the agenda is going to be – pessimistically – meeting us in our emotional stuntedness or – optimistically – in our ever-growing emotional intelligence, albeit in infancy. Reporter Nina Martin, who has followed Harris for over 20 years, affirms that possessing and communicating with empathy has been her most throughgoing trait. That’s also what we witnessed in her campaign as a nation. The irony of this trait failing is that it might have been the best solution we could have asked for if polarized, but if fundamentalist, then her train of empathy may be solving a problem we weren’t mature enough to have.
When exit polls show that the majority of voters in swing states under age 45 would have given Harris the popular vote, it stares us in the face that the need to advance our emotional education is the greatest meta-challenge of our time. If we place a lack of emotional education at the core of the American tragedy, we can collaborate to make the advancement of emotional intelligence the salve. This might enable the new minority of non-fundamentalists in power to actually treat fundamentalist struggles that are not only or even primarily political but deeply psychological. Politics likes talking about both sides needing empathy, but in the 2024 election it was not democrat or republican, but the level of emotional education where we stood divided.
To be clear, I say emotional education and not just education because when college graduates already voted majority non-fundamentalist, this was not enough. Also, in looking at a half century of academic advancement, there’s no doubt progress has been made. Our academically focused education system has swelled, equipping more people with information, degrees, and critical thinking skills. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, we’ve gone from ~55% of Americans age 25 obtaining a highschool diploma in 1979 to ~90% today. Yet the impact of these outcomes has increased our emotional intelligence to a far lesser degree. IT does not adequately heal our fears and give us the national patience to improve social and economic equality as we hoped we might back when Obama was first elected.
Simply put, what has not been created in the standardization of our education system is a significant and geographically wide enough growth in emotional education. This election has shown us that the capacity to understand, process, and empathize with others’ experiences remains absent in most families, schools, and communities. Without it, the human brain and collective rhetoric will continue to cling to black-and-white thinking, seeing difference as a threat. A lack of emotional education that drives a fundamentalist mindset, one in which any challenge to one’s worldview feels not just uncomfortable but intolerable.
Without the ability to process emotions, develop empathy, and handle ambiguity, we cannot break out of the fundamentalist mindset. This ability to speak with emotional intelligence that the losing side of this election displayed. This is not just a luxury. It’s essential to our change.
Forget about our leaders for a moment. When the people in your community lack it, they cling to certainties and cannot tolerate differences. This is why we are where we are today – not because we are hateful, but because we lack knowledge. Remember that the electoral college was once invented because the founders of the American experiment realized that a lack of national news meant that someone in South Carolina could not be expected to be knowledgeable about and vote on the beliefs of anonymous candidates running in Virginia. Technology has brought us the national news, but not the emotional education to have the ability to hear facts as facts and knowledge as power.
…What Now?
Here’s where politicians would say we need to begin, but I’d argue that very few of us in our broken democracy are capable of feeling or having much agency in these suggestions.
- Help Build Coalitions
True progress means amplifying voices that fundamentalism has silenced or marginalized. We must empower those who speak for LGBTQ+ rights, women’s autonomy, science, immigrants, and religious pluralism. A lone voice is easily dismissed; a coalition can create unstoppable momentum. - Start Local, Go Statewide
Federal laws will be slow to change, so we must focus on building progressive protections locally and at the state level. Let cities and states be examples for the country, enacting policies that demonstrate what a pluralistic society looks like in practice.
What Now, Actually?
Here are the three things that I believe not only outspoken changemakers, but truly each one of us as non-fundamentalist individuals can do every day to increase a sense of cultural growth and increasingly live in a world we can get behind. I also think these three essential actions are necessary if we are to use emotional education to significantly move away from the psychological, social and emotional contagion that fundamentalism embodies.
Each one of us in our choice-making can:
- Champion Pluralism as Essential to Democracy
Fundamentalism relies on conformity; true democracy thrives in diversity. Promote and protect individuals and spaces at your jobs, in your family dialogues, and with your neighbors where different beliefs, identities, and values are not only accepted but celebrated. Remember that the ripple effect of acknowledging a pluralism of beliefs is key to improving the American experiment. This is a value you can practice every week. It’s in your power to do so. - Reclaim Emotional Education As an Individual
Fundamentalism flourishes where people lack awareness and we are those people too, so practicing emotional intelligence may speed up our collective growth by years. If not for us, then for our children. You hold the power to regularly assess the values you practice in your actions, and to stay aware of what drives your emotions. Learning to distinguish between feelings (like “disappointed” versus “hurt”, “angry” versus “ashamed”) can help us and our communities express emotions more accurately and process them better. It can remove some of the need that the some of the very liberal left feels in castigating those who have practiced less than ideal values. In a time where cancel-culture is removing some of the potential allies that are actually part of the new minority of non-fundamentalists, we can instead learn to engage in dialogues where others learn through your example of admittance to your emotions, and growth to better values.Being motivated to make a commitment to reflect on your core beliefs and values with greater emotional granularity than thus far in life is in your power. In doing so, you will better see if your choices align with your current actions and relationships, which can reduce unnecessary emotional friction and promote growth.
- Invest in Radical Empathy
Fundamentalism feeds on fear and insularity. We must educate not through facts alone but through shared experience, immersion, and empathy. Empathy can do what data cannot: it opens people up to understand the lives of those they’ve been taught to fear. Doing so also keeps the door open to the idea that we are two polarized halves, and provides the opportunity to fight fundamentalism while healing polarization through bridged divides.
If you think America’s path forward is murky, you know you’re not alone. But the strategies we adopt today will shape not only this generation but the generations that follow.
If the polls that say otherwise about American beliefs are inaccurate and if the US is composed of a majority of fundamentalists, then we have hard work ahead. But we can move forward by building on pluralism, empathy, and a renewed understanding of what it truly means to be free. We can practice being emotionally educated every day, and it will also help us better cope with what seems like a dismal road ahead.
At Empathable, we believe that empathy is the cornerstone of any meaningful change. This isn’t a business proposition so much as it’s a pathway to an evolved social future. And perhaps that is where the journey away from fundamentalism begins — with the willingness to see each other, fully and without fear, and to build bridges where once there were only walls.
I’ll leave you with one final thought. We cannot change our nation today, but if you’re reading this, you’re probably part of the great minority. By this, I don’t mean marginalized, or a minority of race, gender, or sexual orientation. I mean the great minority who believe that we are better than the fundamentalist ideals of the majority. The great minority of non-fundamentalists.
So to you I say that when all else has clearly failed, now is a time to work on yourself, and in doing so, work on ourselves as a non-fundamentalist minority. We, as this new minority, make choices and actions on a daily basis which are hypocritical to our non-fundamentalist deeper beliefs. Hope lives in the one who works to improve themselves and stands witness to their own growth, which in turn grows our social emotional awareness.
To become greater, some of this new minority will still see themselves as liberal, anti-facist, or rebellious. But those at the bleeding edge must learn that we can no longer rest in simply being seen as liberal any longer, but need to grow to bring in the middle of the bell-curve who, regardless of how they voted, also align with a possibility of being a non-fundamentalist majority.
For this minority to ever become a majority, we will need more than ever to help emotionally educate ourselves to see the greater us. This goes for me, you, and all of those who are almost ready to be the non-fundamentalist change that they want to believe in.
This way, even in loss, there is growth and hope. In her concession speech, Harris said, ‘To the young people out there, it is okay to feel sad and disappointed.’ This is not only a consoling message, but a step forward in emotional education.