[Ulala]

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.

[Mongoose]

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.

[swashmebuckle]

Also slavery 'n genocide 'n stuff

[Aardwolf]

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

[Ulala]

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. 

[Mongoose]

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.

[InsaneBaron]

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?

[Akalabeth Angel]

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.

[InsaneBaron]

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.

[Aardwolf]

Well, getting people to [voluntarily] stop listening to Rush Limbaugh (or whoever else has taken his place nowadays) would be a good start.

[Mikes]

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