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

Most of your points belong on other threads but again, Trump's election reflects the divide, it didn't create it.

 

Oh well.

There's always PragerU and Ben Shapiro.

 

Perhaps the time has come to transfer/return more powers and responsibilities to the States, such as;

Health Care
Education
Minimum Wage
Welfare
and a whole lot more

I'm a Jeffersonian.

 

Of course it’s about one party. We’ve been told as nauseam that the indoctrination is liberal indoctrination. Somehow all of the educators across the nation got together and came up with this idea that they will “control information flow”. My lord listening to you guys go on about this whole thing is beyond comical.
And no, economics course weren’t designed to be boring. Economics was boring to ME. There were others in classes I took who loved it and thought it was fascinating. Just as people think history is boring but I found it fascinating and loved the history classes I took.
Anyway, thanks for the laughs.

 

You mock the idea of a liberal educator conspiracy to turn little children into liberal clones of themselves

But the lib teachers are not content with teaching the Three R’s

Academics do want to graduate snowflakes who think just like they do

Its not a conspiracy but rather just libs being libs

 

No, that would be you Trumpsters.

After all, who else would keep cheering when their fuhrer lies to them every single day!

 

Its no good trying to divert attention to trump

The subject is the embarrassingly stupid young people the liberal education system is inflicting on America

 

I went to college in the 1960's. I didn't take any courses from the political science department but I never once heard anything political in the classrooms. My classes were all focused on the subject of the class. I have no idea about the political bent of the professors because they never shared them. I can't even recall having a political conversation with a professor outside the classroom. I don't think I attended a unique school.

Obviously none of that is true today. There is no reason a college can't operate successfully without political intolerance. There is no reason they can't operate within the concept of free speech. There is no rule that says teaching intolerance is important to an effective education. It seems like a strange corruption to me and I can't explain it.

 

Yes, we mock the idea.

We heard the same trash out of the mouths of John Birchers 60 years ago.

Anti intellectualism has been a bugaboo with the reactionary far right wing for 180 years.

They called the first major reactionary movement the "No Nothings", for a reason.

Deliberate and calculated ignorance, is a common thread of Trumpsterism.

 

Liberals - particularly the brainless snowflakes on campus today - are the fartherest thing from intellectuals

They are just parrots repeating what they were taught

 

This does suggest a parity of extremism between right and left that I don't think exists. I argued with a guy on line that the MAGA hat is the new Nazi Swastika. From posts we've seen, this is not some fringe idea. Sure, you may find some with such fringe ideas on the right: but they are the fringe. Not so what is happening on the left. AOC is not the opposite number on the left to Trump, for instance. She is a whole derangement syndrome away from anything mainstream American.

 

Was it a memo that went out to all these liberals educators about how to control the flow of information or do they have an annual meeting where they all get together to discuss?

 

You have nothing to base that on, other than the anti intellectual rants in the right wing media.

 

No

Its what they are

Just as they teach children to all think alike thats how they were taught

 

I don't subscribe to that notion. Not all Trumpsters are bigots, but all white bigots are Trumpsters.(Trumpsters are 90 plus percent white, so don't bother). And the association with Nazis is something much beloved by the white supremacist and skinhead crowd, all of whom worship Trump.

You can say that this is "not some fringe idea", and you'd have a point. Neo Nazi talk has been part of the Trumpster creed since Trump rode the escalator. The cult of personality, persecution of minorities, jingoism and appeals to ignorance and attacking the insitutions of government and society.

They were all part of the Nazi playbook.

And they're all part of the Trump and right wing playbook. (you Trumpsters have one of your anti intellectual threads going on this forum right now, fed by a tweet from a Trump activist.

Does this suggest that Trump is another Hitler?

No. He's not skilled enough and he does not understand political power and could care less about it. He ran for the job to prove something. He has never been particularly interested in doing the job itself, preferring to spend his time watching how Fox covers him.

Trump is too lazy and too weak to be another Hitler.

But his reckless and irresponsible behavior, and the GOP's unwillingness to check him, will made it far easier for the next demogogue .

 

The media thrives on division, but there needs to be a seed to launch the divisiveness for the media to nurture. The seed was the decision by Democrats to divide the country along racial lines. The seed was announced by the NY Times, here:

The Future of the Obama Coalition
By Thomas B. Edsall
November 27, 2011 11:34 pm

November 27, 2011 11:34 pm

For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class.

All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up, on the one hand, of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African-American and Hispanic.

https://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/the-future-of-the-obama-coalition/

I live in Cuyahoga County, a Democrat stronghold. Cleveland because of the black population, and the burbs because of union workers --- for race hatred purposes, the white working class. I watched as the burbs became less and less energized in support of Democrats. Before the conscious decision to supplant politics with race hustling, every other house in my city had Obama signs in their yards. By 2016, the race hustling was completed, and I could only find 1 Hillary sign, 1 Hillary for prison sign, 1 Jill sign and 0 Trump signs on a common path I take.

Don't be fooled. The Smollett hoax was not for money. It was a race hustling conspiracy designed to smear Trump, his supporters and whites in general. The hate monger aimed the camera away from the staged attack so his mercenaries could be heard but no one could see they were black Africans. It was a hate crime.

Smollett, the Democrat Candidates, and the media were gunning for a replay of the Rodney King riots.

 

You made that up, of course.

Which is the Trumpster substitute for thinking. If you have a handy stereotype to parrot, facts never matter.

 

Ok

I wont accuse you of making stuff up because most liberals are incapable of thinking for themselves

 

Riiiiight....which is why everyone in the US thinks alike based on liberal teachings. That's how Trump got voted in, right? That's why we all think alike on issues like abortion, immigration, death penalty, gay marriage, etc. All these liberal teachers teach children to think alike and now we have this harmonious US society. Got it.

 

Says the guy parroting right-wing talking points. Oh the irony.

 

Only the weak minds that are most easily influenced

 

Wrong

I express my own thoughts in my own words

Libs are the ones who most often have to cut and paste or post childish cartoons to express themselves

 

Ah...so the weak minds would be those who are turned liberal and the strong minds are the ones who resist and become conservative? So then this indoctrination thing has been going on since the beginning of time, right? Because there have always been conservative and liberal people all throughout the history of the world. Orrrrrrr it could be that there always have been and always will be people who just think differently and view the world differently from each other.

 

Oh please. Utter nonsense. Both sides have there sheep just as both sides have their free thinkers. Your bias is showing.

 

Check him from doing what exactly? Protecting the border with barriers? Democrats in the 1990s were right there with him. Improve the employment numbers and wages of non-white people? Horrible? I disagree. Condemning and starting efforts to stop anti-gay societies from throwing gay men off of buildings to their deaths?

Worst things I'd write: he had 2 years of complete government control to build the wall and he didn't. I worry that this great economy was brought about by exacerbating the boom bust cycle that BHO may have been trying to flatten.

The rest of your accusations sound a lot like the hysteria we keep reading about and hearing from the MSM. It is that sort of hysteria that is mainstream, not extreme, and far more related to the polarization we are seeing.