Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: MP-Ryan on June 13, 2014, 09:18:25 am
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/upshot/polarization-is-dividing-american-society-not-just-politics.html?mabReward=RI%3A8&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion®ion=Footer&module=Recommendation&src=recg&pgtype=article&_r=0
Short version: It's not just dysfunction among elected representatives, there are now tangible and discrete social and lifestyle differences between supporters of the two parties that mean they are unlikely to ever vote for the other side, and independents aren't making up the gaps.
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I'm going to ask the standard question I ask whenever I hear political doomsaying: were things actually any better in the past?
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@Phantom Hoover: To tell the truth, no. As an American citizen I've seen things be this way for a decade. I'm even a mild example myself.
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way i see it the polarization seems to make it hard for politicians to get anything done. you get all this tug of war politics. changing the law to suit the beliefs of whatever party is in power at the time, and then changing it back when the other party takes over. this seems to take precedence over solving national crises as they arise.
are things getting better? whats better? and who is it better for? what makes you think it will stay that way when the other party takes over? its an oscillation. just because the current president thinks the way you do doesn't mean the next one wont turn everything in its head.
gay marriage is a good example of this. when bush was running things, states were banning gay marriage left and right. now that the democrats run the white house, states are pushing for pro lgbt legislation. imagine whats going to happen when the republicans take over again.
tldr: winter is coming
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The design of the American political system incentivizes elite polarization and legislative gridlock. It's the optimal strategy to win elections.
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The design of the American political system incentivizes elite polarization and legislative gridlock. It's the optimal strategy to win elections.
I wonder if the election situation is the cause or just the symptom?
Basically, while I don't have any problem with the study itself, it's really just giving stats and numbers to something most Americans already accept as the natural result of living with people who disagree with you over basic moral principles. Most of the "self-segregating" tendencies seem fairly natural given the significance of the disagreements.
About the only thing said here that I disagree with is the sentiment that it's something to freak out about (and I'm not entirely sure that's what MP-Ryan was getting at, so correct me if I'm wrong).
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It's not that way in other places though. The UK is pretty polarised by European standards and we have (well... had) a credible third party, and a number of regional and niche parties that regularly win positions of power. It's not an inevitable symptom of the human condition or anything.
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The US election system not only polarizes public opinion and party policy, it does so to such an extent that the US political culture could be better looked at in the frame of two separate political cultures that happen to share a single election system. That sort of extent manifests itself in terms of not only self-segregation but also enforced segregation. I'm in the ass end of nowhere, South Dakota, and there's a group of prairie dog hunters out here who have determined my political affiliation (or rather, my disaffilition with their own party) by my awkward silences when they crack jokes about assassinating the president, and make a point to take jabs at what they assume to be my beliefs whenever they walk through.
I can hear the argument already that it's just because rural South Dakota is a red state, but that in itself is the problem: we classify states and towns and neighborhoods and people by their political views above several much more meaningful designations.
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At least the UK can have more than 2 parties, in the US that is no longer possible. There is just too much money in the 2 parties that should a third ever try to rise they either squash or absorb it before it can become a threat to them. The 2 party system is nothing more than 2 titan businesses competing for control over a market, they won't tolerate a third competitor.
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relevant xkcd is relevant:
http://xkcd.com/1127/
not quite up to date bit it is a damn good infographic.
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So... this recent stuff with Cantor losing to the tea party guy despite spending ~10x as much campaigning could be good news. At least insofar as that it proves that a bigger advertising budget doesn't necessarily win elections.
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on one hand thats good news. people are getting tired of politicians who dont know how to spend money effectively. then again, he is a tea party candidate. doing the wrong thing for the right reasons i guess.
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Cantor has always been an arrogant jackass so it was only a matter of time before they got sick of him and voted him out. The winner didn't win because the people in the district like him better he won because he wasn't Cantor that is literally all there is to it.
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ah dont worry i took my faith in humanity out back and shot it years ago.
nuke all the things.
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It's not that way in other places though. The UK is pretty polarised by European standards and we have (well... had) a credible third party, and a number of regional and niche parties that regularly win positions of power. It's not an inevitable symptom of the human condition or anything.
I agree that it's not an inevitable symptom of humanity. I simply think it's an inevitable result of the extreme disagreements between Americans about matters that seem obvious and vital top both sides.
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I'm going to ask the standard question I ask whenever I hear political doomsaying: were things actually any better in the past?
Maarten van Rossum (dutch Americanologist) has stated that it has been actually steadily getting worse over the last 30 years.
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I'm going to ask the standard question I ask whenever I hear political doomsaying: were things actually any better in the past?
In some ways it would seem so. For example, it used to be you could only graduate high school (or sometimes not) and still land a decent job at a decent company and work your way up over the years, buy a house, have a family, retire...
Then you had to go to college to land a decent job at a decent company to do the same as your predecessors...
Now even going to college doesn't mean **** for a lot of people, just a lot of a debt and a lot of people telling them they shouldn't be so lazy and entitled...
Maybe not exactly political, but certainly related.
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Maybe not exactly political, but certainly related.
Not really, no. That's a symptom, not the cause, and it is only tangentially related to the issue under discussion in this topic.
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Not really, no. That's a symptom, not the cause, and it is only tangentially related to the issue under discussion in this topic.
The question wasn't about whether it was a symptom or cause, but whether things used to be better than they are now. As one example, I would argue that in terms of money and how much people make in relation to their education, things certainly used to be better (or "easier") than they are now.
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It's still one narrow field in which things have, in one interpretation, gotten worse.
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It's still one narrow field in which things have, in one interpretation, gotten worse.
Fair enough, here's another example in which things seem worse now than in the past: legislation. I'm talking NDAA, Patriot Act, and proposals like SOPA, or the FCC's refusal to classify internet as a common carrier like other utilities were many years ago, to name just a select few.
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Honestly, legislation like the Patriot Act is hardly something new. Let's not forget that 70 years ago we forced hundreds of thousands of American citizens into interment camps, and there are also lovely things like the Alien and Sedition Acts in our past.
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Also slavery 'n genocide 'n stuff
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I don't get what the whole fuss is over whether something is "new" or not. It's still bad, and we'd be better off fixing it, sooner rather than later.
Edit: the above mini-rant was not specific to "polarization", per se
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I agree. If we're going to keep going back further and further, one could even go so far as to argue that things were much much better (or worse) before the big bang. So hey because of that, everything is just fine now. :rolleyes:
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I didn't mean anything by that statement than to counter the all-too-common "man the world is falling to pieces these days." Obviously recognizing that circumstances were often the same, if not worse, in the past is no excuse for not working to improve them in the present.
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I didn't mean anything by that statement than to counter the all-too-common "man the world is falling to pieces these days." Obviously recognizing that circumstances were often the same, if not worse, in the past is no excuse for not working to improve them in the present.
I agree, but how do you propose to fix the problem?
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gay marriage is a good example of this. when bush was running things, states were banning gay marriage left and right. now that the democrats run the white house, states are pushing for pro lgbt legislation. imagine whats going to happen when the republicans take over again.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Times and laws will still change and evolve irrespective of who is in power.
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I didn't mean anything by that statement than to counter the all-too-common "man the world is falling to pieces these days." Obviously recognizing that circumstances were often the same, if not worse, in the past is no excuse for not working to improve them in the present.
I agree, but how do you propose to fix the problem?
Does anyone have an answer to this question? Because I don't.
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Well, getting people to [voluntarily] stop listening to Rush Limbaugh (or whoever else has taken his place nowadays) would be a good start.
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I'm going to ask the standard question I ask whenever I hear political doomsaying: were things actually any better in the past?
In some ways it would seem so. For example, it used to be you could only graduate high school (or sometimes not) and still land a decent job at a decent company and work your way up over the years, buy a house, have a family, retire...
Then you had to go to college to land a decent job at a decent company to do the same as your predecessors...
Now even going to college doesn't mean **** for a lot of people, just a lot of a debt and a lot of people telling them they shouldn't be so lazy and entitled...
Maybe not exactly political, but certainly related.
Those are more like systemic issues of the economic system that politics can only influence to some extent.
I frankly do not believe that those issues can be fixed either save for changing to an entirely new and better alternative to "capitalism" which has not been found yet and possibly will never be found. (Or some truly devastating war to "reboot" it like it like after the "Great Depression" lol)
That was the one great advantage of communism (or rather centrally planned economy) over capitalism btw, as a cynic would say ... i.e. that there was a better system to switch to as it failed :P