Extremely Lame

For as long as I can remember, government in the United States has been about making a lot of noise but getting pretty much nothing accomplished. Reading through history books and listening to professors in Political Science classes, apparently it wasn’t always this way. It seems that people from different political parties could actually work together and compromise for the good of everyone. I’m not saying that everything was sunshine and puppy dogs, but there does seem to be something missing from American politics today, namely civility.

How did American politics get to be so polarized? Was it the rise of twenty-four hour news stations and the need to compress thirty-seven minute speeches to five second sound bites? Is it the escalation of gerrymandering (congressional re-districting) that virtually guarantees incumbents a seat in Congress until they die or have some sort of scandal? Perhaps it’s because the Boomer generation hasn’t had any competition from either older or younger generations for twenty to thirty years because they outnumber everyone else to such an extent that they can force the status quo to be maintained to benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else?

While I’m certain that such a complex problme has multiple causes, I’d say that the near-impossibility is one of the biggest factors. There is no longer any reason to play nice with the other side because no matter how much of an ass individuals may be and no matter how little Congress actually does, virtually all of them will continue to get re-elected. This is despite an approval rating of Congress that’s regularly in the sub-20% range. We’re talking approval numbers that are worse than Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush.

In addition to this, there’s also this mental sickness going around where instead of engaging with people who have opinions different than theirs and finding common ground, they cheer on their political parties like they would their favorite football or basketball teams and jeer their ideological opponents like they would their most bitter rivals. Texas vs. Oklahoma, Indiana vs. Purdue, North Carolina vs. Duke? These rivalries have nothing on Democrats vs. Republicans. So long as both sides play to win at all costs, everyone will continue to lose.