They say that American society is becoming more “polarized.” Many blame the media. They say The News doesn’t delve deep enough into the issues, and that media pundits have degraded political rhetoric down to name-calling and wedge issue litmus tests. Of course, both of these things are true, but I think that what’s really happening in American politics runs much deeper than that.
First, I don’t think it makes sense to call it “polarization,” because “polar” implies a pair of equal but opposite extremes. Democrats and Republicans are not opposites. They are remarkably similar, with a few modest, but notable, differences. Democrat and Republican are competing brands of essentially the same product, and neither brand is nearly extreme enough for the American people. In reality, we have dozens of brands of extremism here in the US, that both oppose and attract each other, to varying degrees, and often exchange wing-nuts. Some of them work in coalition with the major parties, and some don’t.
Second, the parties and candidates manufacture their so called “ideals” out of pure hypocrisy and gall, specifically to attract campaign contributions, but also to encourage self-motivated zealots to volunteer for their campaign. How many of the people who answered calls and knocked on doors for Trump in 2016 do you suppose would identify as white supremacists, believe the Earth is flat, or think the universe is only six or seven thousand years old. By the same token, how many black block anarchists, Occupy Movement radicals, and EarthFirster’s got behind Bernie Sanders? The boots on the ground in both parties are just as wacky as rest of America’s lunatic fringe. The only difference is that the wackos in the major parties are managed by professionals, well paid professionals who think they deserve to make even more money than they already do. That’s the real problem in American politics.
The professionals always want more money, because they hate their jobs, and they know that if they had more money, they could make money off of their money, by investing it, and then they wouldn’t have to work. At the same time, the professionals also want investors to make money off of their investments, because the professionals want to live off of their own investments one day, too. That means that investors and professionals, including the ones who run both parties, are constantly looking for new ways to suck more money out of the rest of us.
The more the professionals and the investment class press their game, the more ridiculous the story they have to tell us, to justify the extortion. The more far-fetched and unhinged from reality those stories become, the less difference there is between the major parties and anyone on the lunatic fringe. How stupid do you have to be to believe in trickle-down economics? …or democracy for that matter? Why should it be any harder to believe that the Earth is flat, or that the Moon is made of cream cheese, or that aliens are coming to take us away to a distant galaxy?
Honestly, we’ve all been force-fed a diet of aggressively misleading bullshit since the day we were born, and if you bought into any of it, by now bullshit slingers have built skyscrapers of bullshit on top of it. When it comes down to it, scientists can be just as misleading, and wrong, as religious leaders and politicians, and all they really want is your money. By now, everyone knows this. So, if you really want to believe in something, you might as well believe in something you really want to believe in.
Today, thanks to the fire-hose of bullshit we call the internet, it becomes easier for people to eschew facts and logic just as effectively as both major political parties, all major religions, and most corporations. Why should working people have to face reality when no one else does? Who can blame people for concocting their own mythology and gravitating towards others with similar fantasies?
Americans have become radicalized, not by fundamentalism or religion, but by the non-stop assault on their credulity, and a political system that designed to pull the rug out from under them. American radicalism is a lot more individualistic than the kind of religious fanaticism or populist political movements we’ve seen in the past. Right now American radicalism is a wide open field. Whether it’s a queer antifa motorcycle gang, freegan vagabonds, or militant anti-abortion activists, increasingly, Americans are thinking outside the box, outside the system, and can no longer even agree on basic facts of reality.
This shattered reality will not be remedied by better reporters and more civil debate in the media, nor will it be fixed by a populist politician with a unifying message. The disagreements run too deep. The system has failed, and the lies that we told about it have taken on lives of their own. “Polarization” is definitely not the word to use for what is happening to the American body politic. “Polarization” implies some great mass in the middle, holding it all together. Instead, we should call it the “disintegration” of American politics. What’s more, we should recognize that fact, face it, and figure out where to go from here.
First, I don’t think it makes sense to call it “polarization,” because “polar” implies a pair of equal but opposite extremes.
Response: Exactly….fug the 2 Party types…..
Second, the parties and candidates manufacture their so called “ideals” out of pure hypocrisy and gall, specifically to attract campaign contributions, but also to encourage self-motivated zealots to volunteer for their campaign.
Response: Fuggin “A”, 2 for 2……
The more the professionals and the investment class press their game, the more ridiculous the story they have to tell us, to justify the extortion.
Response: Yup, its why local judges are leaving like…..fast. Cocksuck attorneys unfortunately fester like dinosaur shit……a death squad ought to be formed…..
Americans have become radicalized, not by fundamentalism or religion, but by the non-stop assault on their credulity, and a political system that designed to pull the rug out from under them.
Response: it’s a wonder why illegal immigrants want to stay here and it’s more a wonder why immigrants continue to want to come here….. But then again immigrants don’t know shit about America but they’ll figure it out later…..
Our government still abuses people in other countries worse than it does people here. That’s why immigrants want to come here, to escape the consequences of US foreign policy.
Agree and disagree……
Agree that overall on a macro level, Americans got it better…women too, but because America set high standards as a country is no excuse too then attack your own……and on the micro, plenty of issues of abuse by gubbamint against US individuals, or other heinous crimes that occur and gubbamint drops the ball somehow, someway…..
Disagree because if the US is so evil (is and isn’t) and is attacking cultures and countries, then why would it’s global victims then decide to shack up with the attacker……as opposed to leaving because its truly a shithole country….with shithole governing…..and religion as a catalyst to the constant grass roots clashes….
Grass Roots – the root of all wrongs…….
But will submit that some % leave because their shithole country is always warring with itself and people who want families migrate to safer havens….
It’s not about choice, it’s about coercion. You can call it a choice, but people mostly do what they have to do to survive, or at least what they think they have to do to survive.
HOJ proposes It’s a combination of both and more……
Consider how you have immigration concerns with people coming from other countries to America for whatever reason good or bad that’s not the point the point is is that then consider how much effort the United States on a foreign policy level puts into military actions in those countries to offset the regimes that are creating warring factions within its own region that drives people out to America…… And yes of course the military industrial complex using whatever it can is an excuse to justify selling Armament and engaging government with sales of armament that help really only do one thing and that’s promote using that armament…..
So yes that would be coercion and choice and more….
When you think about what US foreign policy does, how can you justify the continuation of the US at all? Privilege is a product of oppression. Ending oppression means ending privilege.