# Why is American politics so much more polarized than it used to be? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 2, 2013, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164 "2013-08-02T16:08:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/121 "2013-08-09T04:57:47Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > [IDE](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment). If I could have an IDE for my life all would be sweet. Ah, so you’re a socialist. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/122 "2013-08-09T04:59:36Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Ah, so you’re a socialist. Hah! Well, at least I’m not Communist! Or is it Fascist? I guess it depends on who’s in the Whitehouse. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/123 "2013-08-09T05:09:03Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > Hah! Well, at least I’m not Communist! Or is it Fascist? I guess it depends on who’s in the Whitehouse. No, it depends on whether you value equality, which no doubt you do. From socialist George Orwell – ["The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part14) (1941): > [@](#): > > But what then is Fascism? > > Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and–this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathise with Fascism–generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere EFFICIENCY of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen. > > But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human INEQUALITY, the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world. Outside the German Reich it does not recognise any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have “proved” over and over again that only Nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that non Nordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles, French, etc is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitler’s forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the “semi-apes” as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery. > > However horrible this system may seem to us, IT WORKS. It works because it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, world conquest, and not allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker, to stand in its way. British capitalism does not work, because it is a competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main objective. It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not totally opposed to those of the State. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/124 "2013-08-09T16:17:25Z")
I was intending to riff on the popular complaints of the president. If he’s a Republican then he’s a Fascist who steals elections. If he’s a Democrat then he’s a Socialist/Communist who was born outside the country. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/125 "2013-08-09T17:10:23Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > I was intending to riff on the popular complaints of the president. If he’s a Republican then he’s a Fascist who steals elections. If he’s a Democrat then he’s a Socialist/Communist who was born outside the country. If the GOP does not change a great deal from its present formation – which actually does appear to bear some resemblance to fascism in some respects, particularly hypernationalism/racism, and a dissonant mixture of economic populism with wealth-worship – then the next Pub POTUS **will** be an election-stealer; no way could he win it honest. This is a party whose majority, or a very substantial plurality, now views Mitt Romney as a RINO. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/126 "2013-08-09T20:23:34Z")
Well, plenty of Democrats consider Obama to be a DINO (or at least a LINO) so I’m not sure who’s stealing what at this point. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/127 "2013-08-09T20:42:57Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > Well, plenty of Democrats consider Obama to be a DINO (or at least a LINO) so I’m not sure who’s stealing what at this point. The difference is that Obama, whatever he is, could and did win fair-and-square, twice, and so can the next Dem after him, twice. On the Pub side – as I hope you learned last year – only a RINO, or at least a candidate not one inch further to the right than Romney or McCain, has a **prayer** of beating any Dem fair-and-square; and not much of a prayer, either, if the candidate is fairly or unfairly associated in the public mind with the GOP’s RW. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/128 "2013-08-09T20:54:17Z")
Of course, [in some states Pubs are now trying to arrange things so they don’t **need** to play fair-and-square.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=695612) ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2013, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/129 "2013-08-09T22:38:21Z")
The Pubs should do everything in their power to stop Obama and the Dems and see how that works for them. I wish Dems had done something similar to Bush, but they agreed with him more often than not. > [@BobLibDem](#): > > Tea Party was an astroturf movement bankrolled by political interests and has wound up taking over a political party. Hey, the Tea Party was about holding Wall Street and the banks’ feet to the fire. Any day now. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/130 "2013-08-11T17:15:57Z")
> [@cmyk](#): > > We all know what happens when you mix politics and religion. Irrationality. No we don’t all know that. That’s certainly not how I think of the Civil Rights movement or the abolitionist movement. I’m also reasonably sure that you don’t think Martin Luther King or Mahatma Ghandi were “irrational” and it was a bad thing for them to mix politics and religion. ---
**Author:** ![computergeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e56c9b/32.png) [@computergeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/computergeek)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/131 "2013-08-11T18:17:07Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > No we don’t all know that. That’s certainly not how I think of the Civil Rights movement or the abolitionist movement. > > I’m also reasonably sure that you don’t think Martin Luther King or Mahatma Ghandi were “irrational” and it was a bad thing for them to mix politics and religion. Just to be contrary, those who were against Civil Rights and the abolitionist movement certainly thought those folks were irrational. It depends on whose ox is being gored. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2013, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/132 "2013-08-11T20:38:07Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I’m the last person to defend Fox News or national-level Republicans, but you guys are aware of the irony of posting in this thread to say “It’s the Republicans’ fault,” right? I am, but I came out of the GOP, and it kind of is some Republicans’ fault. Gingrich preached and pushed polarization. Other people supported him. Norquist is still committed to an idea he admits he thought up in junior high, to package and sell politicians like bars of soap. Other people go along with this. I don’t know how much to blame the more moderate, collegial Republicans like Lugar, McCain, Dole, etc., for going along with the party; certainly it’s that sort that have had cause to complain about polarization, and have. I think a lot of us in the 1990’s thought that Gingrich had a point, even if we disagreed with his particular platform. Maybe we were too collegial before. Maybe parties should be ideological. But trying to maintain both a two-party system and a hardline ideological major party within that system leads to revolutionary-style politics–not just combative, but seeking to oppress dissent. Add in term limits, and it gets worse: A politician’s career then depends on upward mobility, and that upward mobility is in competition with his partisan brothers, and dependent on being anointed by an ideological caucus. It gets harder to go your own way, _as a career._ These are things that come from Gingrich’s program. It is somewhat some Republicans’ fault. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/133 "2013-08-12T00:52:55Z")
At least some of the hostility came from a perception that he was NOKD, Ivy League education notwithstanding (for some reason, this is a problem that plagues Democrats more than Republicans, or else the partisan Democrats I hang out with aren’t rich assholes). That hostility spurred Rush Limbaugh et al., and the people who listened to him then are now influencing the political climate directly, and consider the left The Enemy rather than the loyal opposition. I present that only as a contributing factor, not as a complete explanation; I do think the biggest factor is perception. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/134 "2013-08-12T01:43:00Z")
> [@Deeg](#): > > The anti-vax movement is largely composed of what I would consider leftists. There are plenty more. It is? Could you produce some evidence? I know Bill Maher, who voted for Bob Dole and practically masturbates whenever someone mentions Ron “brown people and queers scare me” Paul is often labeled a lefty by ignorant people, but I’m not aware of any prominent liberal anti-vaxers. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/135 "2013-08-12T03:36:49Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > Hey, the Tea Party was about holding Wall Street and the banks’ feet to the fire. Any day now. Then they should be holding joint rallies with the OWSers. Any day now. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/136 "2013-08-12T03:37:51Z")
> [@computergeek](#): > > Just to be contrary, those who were against Civil Rights and the abolitionist movement certainly thought those folks were irrational. It depends on whose ox is being gored. Or else uncomfortably and disturbingly rational. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/137 "2013-08-12T03:59:05Z")
> [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](#): > > At least some of the hostility came from a perception that he was NOKD, Ivy League education notwithstanding (for some reason, this is a problem that plagues Democrats more than Republicans, or else the partisan Democrats I hang out with aren’t rich assholes). That hostility spurred Rush Limbaugh et al., and the people who listened to him then are now influencing the political climate directly, and consider the left The Enemy rather than the loyal opposition. > > I present that only as a contributing factor, not as a complete explanation; I do think the biggest factor is perception. Hostility to Clinton. I thought I’d said that. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/138 "2013-08-14T17:52:32Z")
I just finished [_The New Hate: A History of Fear and Loathing on the Populist Right,_](http://www.amazon.com/The-New-Hate-Loathing-Populist/dp/0307742512) by Arthur Goldwag (Jew). A fascinating study that covers the whole history of paranoid irrationality in American politics and culture, mostly RW, but not sparing black separatism, etc. Despite the title, his point is that the New Hate is not all that “new” after all. He sees a lot of common memes and themes in all past forms of it, mostly the ones [Richard Hosftadter identified,](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics) regardless of whether the demonized all-powerful Other is the Jews, Freemasons, Catholics, Illuminati, atheists/secularists, intellectuals, Communists, capitalists, bankers, whites, nonwhites, immigrants, or (as is not seldom the case) some combination of the foregoing. He concludes: > [@](#): > > Writing in _The Washington Post,_ Karen Tumulty noted that all these recent conservative disquisitions on [American] exceptionalism . . . have “a more intellectual sheen than the false assertions that Obama is secretly a Muslim or that he was born in Kenya.” Then she quotes William Galston of the Brookings Institution, who said that writing about exceptionalism provides “a respectable way of raising the question of whether Obama is one of us.” > > And there you have it – the core proposition of the not-so-New Hate: that there are those of us who are really “us” and those of us who are essentially “other” – aliens, interlopers, pretenders, and culture distorters, parasites and freeloaders, who bear the blame for the fact that being a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant American no longer suffices to make one the cynosure of the world. > > Back on November 19, 1955, in the mission statement he prepared for the first issue of the _National Review,_ William F. Buckley derided the presiding liberal orthodoxy of his day, which, he said, had as much as ceded the field to "the jubilant single-mindedness of the practicing Communist, with his inside track to history. The _National Review,_ Buckley vowed, would stand “athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.” Patron saint of conservatives as he might have been, in John Judis’s memorable phrase, Buckley was much more of a pragmatist than that. He knew that the wheels of history never do stop turning, no matter how devoutly one might wish they did; he recognized that ideological purity (or any other kind of purity, for that matter) was not to be found in our fallen world. “No sense running Mona Lisa in a beauty contest,” he replied, when an interviewer asked whom he was supporting for president in 1967. “I’d be for the most right, viable candidate who could win.” > > The New Hate is at once an expression of a quixotic desire to turn back the clock to a mythical golden age when women and minorities and gays and foreigners were less troublesome than they are today, when the government only gave and never took, and a cynical ploy to up the turnout of Republican voters. Most of the time it’s reflexive and vindictive to its core. And the vast majority of its proponents, even in the heat of the moment – dressed up in colonial costume, with powdered wigs on their heads and “Say No to Socialism” placards in their hands – know better, too. > > No one in New England in 1798 really believed that Jefferson was plotting to bring Jacobinism to the United States, any more than Maria Monk’s readers thought that the convent down the street was a nest of debauchery. Senator Joseph McCarthy never really believed that George Marshall was a Communist or even a Communist tool. For all the prevalence of anti-Semitic stereotypes, even the most vicious of Jew haters are more likely to deny that the Holocaust really happened than they are to defend it. Though millions of Americans claim to believe that Obama is a Muslim and a foreigner, and some of them hate him merely because of the color of his skin, most of them know that the real issue isn’t what Obama is but what they increasingly fear they’re not. > > And thus it has always been. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2013, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/139 "2013-08-20T15:15:22Z")
[PBS interviews three historians](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec13/governing_08-19.html) on this question. They mention various factors: [ul][li] The parties used to have broader bases (each had members from both left and right).[/li][li] “Democratic” reforms like primary elections encouraged polarization.[/li][li] Polarization of media, due to Internet etc.[/li][li] Distrust of government from both left and right.[/li][li] Influence of money on campaigning.[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![jsutter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8e8cbc/32.png) [@jsutter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsutter)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2013, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164/140 "2013-08-29T09:51:52Z")
> [@](#): > > So, let’s discuss that “variety of reasons.” Why is this level of polarization so unprecedented (since the Great Depression, at least)? Why is it happening now? Is it simply at bottom a generational conflict, or what? At bottom, it is the fact that big money, (banksters, arms, oil, drugs and media) own the USG and Joe Plumber foots the bill. Now that the big guys are too big to fail and the middle-class is reeling, it suits their purpose to maintain the status quo. This is done by financing the red on blue Punch and Judy charade of two opposed parties stalemated in mortal struggle. Change? What a laugh. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-american-politics-so-much-more-polarized-than-it-used-to-be/665164.md?page=8)