Ramblings on a Polarized America

I wish there were trustworthy statistics that outlined where the actual American people stand on the issue of reform. I fear most would be in the uninformed category. When I read the comments on news articles, it is clear the people who follow the news seem to be either progressive or liberal and Conservative or libertarian. [following the news doesn't make you an honest arbiter of the facts though] Little wonder Obama's polls are suffering. He can't get anything right as far as those of us who comment and read the news are concerned. Those who don't comment are the ones who often don't know that Hawaii is a state, or that there are three branches of government. They are often completely manipulated by the mainstream media [MSM]. While conservatives say that the media has a liberal bias, I would think that would be really hard to prove. The only people ever provided a a platform in most MSM are either moderates, centrists, pragmatists, mildly liberal or right wingers. Only recently have three fairly liberal programs on cable TV been added to the noise. Otherwise, its mostly conventional thought peppered with the incredibly ubiquitous and noisy right-wing. As an aside, I'm always amazed at the percentage of black right wing pundits vs. white who are given a platform considering the makeup of the Republican party is about 2% non-white.

This lack of an informed citizenry may be the end of hope for democracy. Because there is such polarization, the vast middle need to wake up and take sides. But they need to take sides as a result of becoming informed, not as a result of media manipulation. There was a HuffPo video of a women over 65 outside the CO town hall saying all of these totally factually inaccurate things about the proposals currently in Congress. The questioner asked her how she knew these things and she said Fox news because that is the only factual source of news and she claimed to have carefully researched all this information on the web. And yet, she still didn't seem to realize that her Medicare, supplemented by BC/BS which she said couldn't survive without, was government-run.

Meanwhile, many of the people I know, who would fully support a public option or even a single payer system are not inclined to do anything to make it happen except vote for President once every four years.

We have a political system that is completely in corporate hands thanks to the hundreds of thousands of lobbyists and we have a citizenry which is either uninformed, misinformed, or apathetic to the political realities of our system. We have millions of people, almost all of whom are of modest means, willing to vote and protest against their economic interests in the political belief, fostered by the right, that government [not monopolistic corporate America] is the problem. Even when we see what complete lack of good government controls over the last eight years can do to the economy, to the environment, to health care, to labor relations, and to most other aspects of American life it doesn't seem to make a difference. Folks don't seem to understand that government is the only bulwark against corporate America. People are sheep before them. Money and organization can effect anything corporate America wants, especially if there is no government to stand in the way. Our commitment to individualism becomes self defeating when faced with a cohesive and entrenched corporate political system. It becomes a way of polarizing us and defeating meaningful reform of anything.

I don't doubt a large proportion of Americans are angry. We've seen enough stuff in the last few years to make a saint angry. Unfortunately, amorphous anger without adequate and accurate information becomes a chaotic mob which can be manipulated by extremists to accomplish the agenda of the leaders rather than change for the people following.

Hitler knew this in the late 20's and 30's; Lenin and Trotsky in 1917; France in 1780's and others throughtout history which have taken advantage of people's righteous anger to overthrow the status quo. However, this can be a very dangerous road to travel as these examples would show. Hitler = holocaust and WWII; L&T = white revolution and Stalin's purges; and France = Reign of Terror. In the 1930's, Huey Long of LA was bringing together a coalition of white and black poor people and was shot and killed. History suggests he was a demagogue, but his death just led to a deepening of the polarization between poor white and black southerners and stopped them from seeing that economics should have brought them together instead of allowing racism to drive them apart. FDR is credited with preserving capitalism in the US because he made significant economic changes in response to the cataclysmic Great Depression. He used the government to make these changes because it was the only entity that could. Failure to push through these changes would likely have led to either fascism or communism becoming the dominant system in this country during that time, circumstances were that dire.

I believe there are a small percentage of extreme radicals, left and right, in this country who do not care if the current system survives or not as long as their side prevails. There are another small percentage of people who will support these groups because of their perceived self interest. I count among them many of the Republican Congressional leaders. I really believe that they do not care about consequences as long as they remain in office and can find a way back to mainstream power. How else can you explain reasonably informed human beings spreading incredible distortions and lies with a perfectly straight face. I don't discount that there are plenty of Democrats who also care more about staying in office than about trying to do the right thing. However, these Democrats are not aligning themselves with the radical fringe like the Republicans are. Even the most leftist of the Democrats in Congress want the basic political system to remain. The changes they support are mostly at the margins of the status quo rather than really fundamental. Most so-called leftists in Congress and across the land really just want a more compassionate economic system that promotes the interests of people over corporations so that most can thrive instead of just the few. This seems hardly radical. Yet, often this "leftist" view is equated with the extreme right wing when it comes judging political options.

This is a very rambling post but my point is that the polarization of our political discourse is very dangerous and may lead to scary unintended consequences. The failure to recognize that we have a lot of people who can be swayed one way or another because they tend to be the low information voters and non voters and the failure to prevent the extremes from doing the swaying will leave us on a dangerous precipice facing real chaos.