Partisan America
Aug. 23rd, 2017 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcEven beyond the current administration there appear to be various objective indications that over recent decades the American populace has become increasingly divided politically, especially in terms of negative opinions of the
I wonder about the future: how stable the current strong divide is, how it improves or worsens. I do not see how it improves while people favor their echo chambers' demonization over constructive outreach; I cannot help but be thus reminded of Ozymandias' plan in
It is not clear to me what will happen over coming years nor how. It may all be in the hands of a few, such as the Supreme Court, or perhaps the small acts of enough appalled individuals can still change the flow of the tides though I wonder how difficult it is to know which actions cause more good than harm. I have no more intuition on that last point beyond a vague, even trite, inclination toward substantively engaging with others, about concrete issues rather than abstract principles, while being slow to think ill of them.
otherparty, and Congress has similarly become very partisan. There are plausible theories about what happened and why: increasingly gerrymandered districts increasing the significance of primaries, distortions due to large campaign donations, the segmentation of news media markets, etc. It is frustrating living outside the US for a while and not now seeing much first-hand; my decade in Ohio was much more illuminating.
I wonder about the future: how stable the current strong divide is, how it improves or worsens. I do not see how it improves while people favor their echo chambers' demonization over constructive outreach; I cannot help but be thus reminded of Ozymandias' plan in
Watchmen. I also do not see that it can get much worse although history does offer various examples of unpleasant social shifts that are both severe and surprising. Demography may favor the liberal progressives in the medium term but it is not as if conservatism has a monopoly on the narrow-minded.
It is not clear to me what will happen over coming years nor how. It may all be in the hands of a few, such as the Supreme Court, or perhaps the small acts of enough appalled individuals can still change the flow of the tides though I wonder how difficult it is to know which actions cause more good than harm. I have no more intuition on that last point beyond a vague, even trite, inclination toward substantively engaging with others, about concrete issues rather than abstract principles, while being slow to think ill of them.
