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Source: Alexander Glandien
As the U.S. population has passed the 325 million mark and the nation continues becoming more diverse, this article asks the question of whether the nation is becoming impossible to govern. Polarization is causing elections so close that the Electoral College has produced a winner who did not win the popular vote in two of the past five presidential elections. Popular mistrust of government continues growing with Congress having abysmal approval ratings and the president has been under investigation for the past year. Federalism was supposed to be a system the nation could grow into and help prevent any group from gaining too much power, but political factions have evolved into unprecedented levels of opposition.
Discussion Questions
1. Is the 21st century polarization in politics a sign that parts of the governmental system need to be reconsidered?
2. Is our political structure robust enough to accommodate a diverse group of people approaching 330 million?
3. How can popular trust of government be improved?
13 comments:
A very diverse populations can lead to hyperpluralism, which divides Congressional representatives and leads to less cooperation and compromise. I think the polarization of politics also contributes to the increased aggression of interest groups. It seems, although it might not be true, that interest groups have started catering to more extreme views, especially splintered third party factions whose representatives act more like lobbyists than representatives of the people.
How can the government restore popular trust? I don't have much hope that it will improve in the near future, definitely not within the next two governments. I think Congressional representatives, especially those who belong to one of the two parties, need to reevaluate their positions on issues and go back to their constituents to find out how to better balance their interests in the larger, national picture.
I have to categorically disagree with Juliet's solution for this: that congresspeople "need to reevaluate their positions on issues and go back to their constituents to find out how to better balance their interests." That is an option that is doing too little too late in this process. There will always be a large section of the population that will find elected politicians in Washington lacking in terms of trustworthiness or competence.
What the government needs to do is step back and give more power to the states. States are more manageable and smaller than the federal government, and less diverse. The federal government needs to cut off as much excess unnecessary federal institutions, and give more power back to the states, who can actually wield this power effectively. People trust their state governments more than Washington, and why not? The states actually do more in our daily lives than the federal government, and the average state representative or state senator is much more ideologically similar to their constituents than their federal counterparts. They also have more political integrity, as much more lobbying is done at the federal level.
I think it is true that our nation is as polarized as ever, and a big part of this is because of diversity. However, it has been shown that in the next century, a majority of our population will no longer be white, but be Hispanic, Latino and full of minorities (ironically). People believe that when this happens, and if young adults start to vote more in elections, the majority of our population will vote democratically, thus not continuing the polarized characterization of our country. I think our country is like a parabola. We are at the peak of our country's polarization, but are soon going to go downhill and unite more. I think also a huge reason for our polarization is due to the controversial Presidency of President Trump. Because of his previous history and lack of involvement in politics, and his crass and honest statements he consistently feels the need to make has definitely caused polarization. I am somewhat hopeful that at the end of Trumps first term, if he is replaced by another President, and if our country does become less white (less conservative) and more diverse, our country will seize to be polarized.
The previous comment seems to oversimplify the issue of polarization, and I disagree with both the blame on Trump's presidency and the general view of the trend of polarization. I don't think Trump is responsible for the political climate of the nation; rather, that climate is responsible for him and his controversial route to the white house, which in hindsight has to have been well calculated because it worked. I don't think our changing population will change the trend of polarization at all because that is not an issue of demographics, but rather just a trend of human behavior. Perhaps the percentages of people at either side of the spectrum will change, but both polarizing perspectives will continue to exist and worsen on all issues.
Many countries that are deemed the "happiest countries in the world" are countries that are not diverse, such as Finland, Norway, and Switzerland. It is not that people in these countries are inherently happier or that they are not as racist as anyone in the United States. They are simply not confronted with their prejudices and do not have the same tension that is pervasive throughout American culture. It is not surprising then that there is hyper-pluralism in the United States. The country should adjust its system, for example removing the electoral college, in order to adjust to an ever-evolving population.
Discussion Questions
1. Is the 21st century polarization in politics a sign that parts of the governmental system need to be reconsidered?
- i believe that the beliefs of the us have made this product and it is as it should be. we designed our system so that everyone is entitled to their opinion.
2. Is our political structure robust enough to accommodate a diverse group of people approaching 330 million?
-i believe that our political structure was designed to handle diversity and bring new groups up sucyh as the libretarians. and as expected the two major parties are decreasing in size because of the increasing change in people
3. How can popular trust of government be improved?
-it cant, people have become too sensitive to many topics, or at least oo diverse with opinion.
I think the polarization does not directly have to do with Trump himself, but with his beliefs; they are definitely located farther right than they are central right. Not everybody in the US has the same right-leaning views as him (obviously), so it is hard to govern a people who have conflicting beliefs. It also becomes increasingly difficult to do so as views become more opposite. This holds true for any president; his/her views may not always agree with those of the population, whether they are right or left. Disagreement is bound to happen, as one individual's views cannot possibly reflect a whole nation's. Therefore, I think it is not the best idea that the governmental system needs to be reconsidered, especially since not everyone will always share the president's beliefs.
I think that having a diverse community is good and opens people's minds, but I do think our system is a little outdated when it comes to dealing with so much diversity and so much prejudices and ideas. If our system was to be reconsidered a bit we could maybe get different ideas. I think that it's okay to disagree with whoever is in charge, but there should be a way to represent what majority really wants.
I believe that our current system is the best we can do at the moment. Unless we can have someone think of a drastically new system that promotes less polarization, it will always be a thing. Polarization will never go away because people are just inherently stubborn with their own beliefs. It is very difficult to accommodate all the diversity in America. I think this case is similar to colleges. Many of the high end colleges have lack of diversity and it is difficult for them to do anything about it just as it is difficult to do anything about the view represented in the government. Maybe something similar to affirmative action for governmental positions, but that itself has problems.
I agree with Michael in that Trump's election was made possible by the current trend of polarization, and I don't think this problem will simply go away as young adults start voting more- even if in the future minorities will be the new majority. Although more young adults tend to vote liberally right now, we can expect that to change with time. The Guardian reports a study that measured the trend of different age group's voting patterns, it found that age can have a .32-.38% effect on increasing conservative votes each year (based on data from British elections). I don’t think that our current structure is doing the best job at representing all 300 million of us, but I can’t think of a change that would improve the situation.
With a growing diverse population, and only one president at any time, there was never a way to please everyone. As Juliet said, this follows the hyper-pluralism theory of democracy, where there are too many groups for any single one to be pleased. Popular trust in government can never be high because there will always be many political groups warring with the party holding office. The nature of majority rule will always leave some minority groups in discontent.
I think that the polarization of our country will always be prevalent just because of the nature of us. I don't think that there is anything the government can really do to change this just because of the way our government is set up. There is no way to please everyone which is why the majority is always important, and there will always be a majority. As long as the government can listen to the majority, I think that the government is doing the best it can. As for restoring government trust, I'm not sure that'll happen anytime soon, especially with our current president.
I think that it is impossible to please everyone. The polarization in the country is something that should be addressed, and I think the only way to fix it is to educate people. There are no problems with the way the government is set up, there is also little that changing the government can do to solve this problem. It is important to please the public, but those in the government should be careful with listening to the public and doing what is best for the country. I'm not sure how the government trust can be restored, as it will be extremely hard to accommodate to everyone's expectations.
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