polemitics- (noun) The art or science of using controversy and polarization in the governing of a political entity, such as a nation, and the administration and control of its internal and external affairs.
Since the 1850s there have been two dominant parties in United States federal government: Democrats and Republicans. In contrast, other English-speaking nations like the United Kingdom and Canada have a multi-party system thanks to differences in their election procedures. The driving force behind our two-party system is explained by Duverger's Law: in systems with single member districts and winner-takes-all elections, two parties will inevitably emerge.
The theory behind Duverger’s Law is that independents and their third-party supporters can never get enough traction on a national level to gain an advantage over the dominant parties. Many have tried and all have lost, despite the fact that about a third of voters are not registered (D) or (R). Thus, the American political landscape requires two important concessions: voters and candidates must align with a party to be relevant and parties must homogenize their platform in order to successfully broadcast it.
We have seen an increase of polarization in national politics since the 1930s when the government of the New Deal characterized the Democrats as the party of progressive economic reform. Then the Civil Rights movement and anti-war sentiment of the 1960s and 70s secured the them as the party of progressive social and governmental reform as well. This put the Republicans in stark contrast as the party of conservative economics, traditional values, and state’s rights.
In the early 20th century Republicans became associated with rich elitism and were blamed for the country’s economic collapse during the Great Depression. WWII and the prolonged struggle with the USSR did a great deal to distract the public from the changes that were happening inside of the parties, and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 they quickly became manifest.
The changes that occurred in 1990s and early 2000s radically polarized the landscape of American politics in five crucial ways:
1) The widespread reach of the internet has democratized information but in doing so decreased its reliability and sped up its evolution as radical actors could quickly create conflict and deny the validity of facts.
2) In-group thinking has become the norm as people more easily sort themselves, in person and on the internet, into homogeneous communities that serve as echo chambers for ideas and values.
3) Ideas and political positions have become more and more absolutized, meaning that moderate positions are less and less popular, and babies are routinely thrown out with the bath water.
4) The rise of group-identity has irrevocably labeled the Right as racist, patriarchal, and capitalistic and the Left as woke, censorial, and socialist, separating the population into a false binary.
5) The infiltration of corporate interests into politics has reached an all time high, with profits driving the bus instead of people.
We can now witness the resulting mess in which we, the American public, are being forced to uphold values and leaders that are antithetical to what most people consider sane. We have been sucked into the drama of “us versus them” and have forfeited our ability to think independently in favor of fitting in and simultaneously profiting from the conflict. If anything is to change in American politics, it must first change in the American people. Despite who is in office, we must first be able to agree to disagree and seek constitutionally supported compromise.
Just like a battery needs two poles to produce current, a government needs differing opinions to continue to evolve. The checks and balances of the two party system have created a back and forth passing of power over the past 200 years and will, in all probability, continue that way. The biggest question is whether or not we as a people have the maturity to guide it towards a more moderate and holistic vision of the future and away from the polemic and anti-humanistic one that we are currently headed towards. We have seen the enemy and it is us.
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