Why are US politics so polarised and what can be done about it?

And of course the right were big Obama supporters....it's not like they thought he was a radical foreign Muslim and not a decent American.

 

I think America has always included a number of goals. I don't remember a time that wasn't the case. I'm not so sure that the collection has even changed that much.

However, there are changes.

We've done a far "better" job of gerrymandering, for example. There are far too many districts that are safe for one party, allowing the competition to be oriented to who is the more radical, not who can work with the broadest constituency. And, we have gross misrepresentation as well - with state legislatures not even slightly matching the population.

Second, there used to be a high level of concern about truth in the news and in what politicians say. We had trusted news outlets that suffered greatly if they allowed false stories to get through. Today, there is no penalty for lying. In fact, the president can make significant progress by simply repeating bald faced lies until it's not even interesting to read about it anymore. And, special interests can spend billions convincing people of abject falsehoods.

When scientific evidence (such as measurement of problems) and honesty are removed, there really is no basis for negotiation. It becomes a partisan food fight. Look at the last two years. Republicans thoroughly excluded Dems from discussing ANY significant legislative direction. And, the president even jacked his own party for reasons that had nothing at all to do with honest assessment of real problems.

I really believe voting rights/gerrymandering and fact checking/requiring the truth are the two main areas where we need to improve.

 

Really? Any resemblance between that and a reasoned answer is purely coincidental.

 

Yes but neither were so strictly along party lines.

 

Well you ignored the part that wasn't a joke...

Why is Trump president if every intelligent college educated person is a "leftist"....

who's indoctrinating all the rightists?

Rush Limbaugh?

 

You really think they are going to be that unsubtle, rants don't convince anyone of anything except possibly to be somewhere else. They may be leftist but they aren't flipping stupid.

 

Still garbage. Most of the universities are dominated by liberal professors and that is where liberals and conservatives are educated.

 

So the liberals that go there are liberals and the conservatives are sheep and become liberals?

 

Yes but things like making the country a socialist regime was relegated to rather Fringe groups like the Communist Party.

However, there are changes.

I'm not concerned in the least with gerrymandering.

I disagree. The media has been fabricating news since it's Inception it's just that now they can be fact checked and people are skeptical. Especially of legacy Media.

this is one of those issues regarding goals. Just because legacy politicians think that an issue is important doesn't make it so.

Fact-checking is something good to meet their needs to do. Or dying. Do not care one bit about gerrymandering.

The news omitting information and reporting false things is part of the people of different factions having different goals

 

We are talking about eighteen to twenty one year olds who generally are not well established in their beliefs. .You indoctrinate them this way for four years and it has an effect, just like it would if the professors are predominately conservative.

 

It’s almost as if educated people lean left. Funny how that works.

 

There was a study in 2012 that found that republicans were better informed on current political events than democrats. Funny how that worked.

 

Sorry most of us didn't require indoctrination common sense and logic work perfectly well. I was a conservative before I ever heard of Rush Limbaugh so were a lot of people my age. The Term ditto came about because so many people called the show in the early days exclaiming there joy at finally finding some one in the media that was saying what they already believed. Rush didn't have to convince anyone. There was an audience already there for him waiting on him to come along. One other thing you might wish to consider, 80% of what the Alphabet soup media tells you about conservatives is wrong. And no one is claiming that every intelligent college educated person is a leftist. A lot of people grow up after they leave college and discover in fairly short order that the stuff they learned in sociology 101 is largely nonsense.

 

Yes just like how baseball teams were ninety percent white in the late forties early fifties. And again there is a difference between education and indoctrination.

 

The left is becoming more radical. If people just accepted their destructive ideas then I suppose polarization wouldn't be an issue right?

It's the ideas and ideology that is polarizing. Not the tools we use to communicate with.

 

Trump is accused of collaborating with the Russian government. He is accused of obstruction of justice (he has fired two directors of the FBI who were investigating the Russian connection), he has surrendered to the Russian government, his foreign policy is isolating the U.S. and abandoning our leadership in the world, his foreign policy decisions are a disaster (Iran can now make a nuke, he removed the U.S. as a power broker in the Mideast, we are the only country not a member of the Paris Accords, etc., etc.), he wants to build a wall to stop crime, he has created a Constitutional crisis attacking the Separation of Powers principle of our Constitution, and he wants to set a horrible precedent of executive power.

So, according to you, this is normal. This has been going on a long time.

That is just plain nuts.

BTW, no offense taken.

 

Never heard any subtle political comments either.

 

It is much easier to talk about the theoretical than reality. Me, I prefer reality. The reality is, the current polarization is caused by the Trump administration.

Just recently he proudly shut down the federal government because he couldn't get his way with a Congress controlled by his own party. In February he declares an imaginary national emergency and creates a Constitution crisis by challenging the Separation of Powers principle of our Constitution.

Now that is reality. That is polarity.

 

I'd like to see this Heritage Foundation study.

 

Rugged individualism pulled the throne out from under the ruling elite during the renaissance. They want their thrones back and collectivism is the best means they have to do it. So they use the media and education to push the idea that we have an obligation to control eachother for 'the common good.' Social democracy, or democratic socialism is what they call it, and they sell it as equality. We can't be equal if we're all different, right, so we need to all be the same. Collectivize.

Once we accept that the group is more important than the individual, we can finally let go of all these pesky 'rights' we clamour about that prevent us from acheiving 'the common good.' And once we let go of our rights, we can finally be slaves again and they can finally be gods again.

 

You can probably find it online. It is the Fairleigh Dickinson Study on Fox News. It was supposed to show how bad Fox was. However, republicans answered every single question correctly more often than democrats.

 

Nobody. They are using their own common sense and critical thinking skills.

 

I didn't say this was "normal" but be honest.

There were millions of Republicans who opposed the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accords, thought the U.S. should move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, and supported building a wall or some kind of barrier between the U.S. and Mexico.

They believed this long before Trump came along and would've been in favor of them even if Bush, Cruz, Rubio or someone else had been elected President.

Policy wise, President Donald Trump is hardly the foreign policy disaster you make him out to be. Even the news magazine "The Economist" (which has been very even handed of political issues in the U.S.) has said that foreign policy wise the Trump Admin. hasn't been too bad.

No matter how you cut it, President Trumps policies are not the source of political polarization you like to claim and if you were being honest you would agree.

 

Surely Trump is the reflection of this rather than the cause, it was the right wing's rejection of the left that spurred his election?

 

Dude you have no idea how indoctrination is done do you? Indoctrination in a democracy is about controlling information flow. It's not about overt political posturing. These days it starts with the elementary school. By the time you get to high school a person with an above room temperature IQ has become a very good little parrot and the only answers to non mathematical questions he knows are pretty much leftist answers because that's all he/or she has ever been given/experienced. Political indoctrination done right isn't about this party or that party its about a mind set. And those oh so boring Economics classes? They were intended to be that way. Why two reasons, first it weeds out every body but the absolute junkies, and second it makes sure that you never go back and look at the subject again if you can help it.