If you haven’t heard, Ivanka Trump, an assistant to President Donald Trump who just randomly doubles as his daughter, has a new book out. It’s titled Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success.
Say what you will about the book itself, and people have said a lot of very bad things, but it’s created quite the schism on Amazon ― one that works rather well as a metaphor for an incredibly polarized and hostile U.S. political climate.
As of this writing, almost literally everyone who has reviewed the book on Jeff Bezos’ money machine has has either trashed it or loved it. Seriously, 44 percent have given it five stars (the highest rating), and 53 percent have given it one star (the lowest rating). Only 3 percent of all reviews fell somewhere in the middle.
The love-it-or-hate-it views of the book ― pointed out by economist David Rothschild on Twitter ― obviously fall along partisan lines, but they also say something larger about how we consume almost everything today.
For many people, politics has become some akin to sport. A past study, published just a bit before Trump’s political rise, actually found that people care more about their political party winning than they do about what effect that victory might have on their country.
This us-versus-them mentality has led to a growing inability to engage with people who don’t hold the exact same opinions. It feels as if there are very few conversations these days that end up somewhere in the middle ― in a four-star, three-star or two-star area.
We’re a nation that sees things in terms of black or white, love or hate, good or evil, five stars or one star.
But c’mon, at least a few more people should have felt like Ivanka’s book was just “whatever,” right?
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