You are what you read?

Will at Willisms has a fantastic post (what's new, huh?) about polarized reading. Inspired by Time's top 100 English novels, Will tackles the subject of political books.

He points out how many of them are obvious grabs at fast cash and that most are poorly written.

Will assesses that many folks out there don't read to expand their mind, but rather read to reinforce opinions they already hold. While I don't want this to be true, I see the obvious truth of it. However, I don't think I'll draw quite a wide swath of generalization. While people might not seek out alternative political matter, there is a lot of exposure to it through their choice of entertainment.

More importantly though, he brings up the subject of polarization and how you can see the split in Americans through politics. He sums up:

Polarization is real. In many ways, there are two Americas. And
it is evidenced by all the things people read (not just books). We could be
moving toward a country without any consensus media sources both sides of the
aisle can agree are trustworthy and fair and accurate.

However, I would argue that there are more than two Americas. Obviously there are the right and left, and the gulf is growing. But there is still a substantive middle for which these two parties fight. I would argue that there are three Americas. You have your right and left, but there is a center that is sold on the best policy, not on politcal ideology.

Fascinating post. Will is focused more on election ideology, but I found some of his supplementary POV amazing.