Why is American politics so heated?

[Redalgo]

My best guess would be that a number of factors are converging to make politics in the United States, especially as it pertains to laymen, a highly-informed yet highly-ignorant facet of public life. A two-party system provides authoritarian individuals with exactly the kind of good/evil, us/them dichotomy they are so prone to embracing. For their part, it also offers politicians a rather enticing incentive (which gets stronger the higher up within the federalist tiers one goes) to internalize a ruthless, corrupt culture of clientelism in which they tell strategically-important voters whatever they want to hear, abandon principle at the first sign of trouble, and avoid taking an unambiguous stand on ideology for fear of alienating a large bloc of their constituents (alas, one of the perils of large, "big tent," coalition-like parties).

These conditions are exacerbated by long campaigns where party machines and groups with large volumes of private money at their disposal have ample room to maneuver in waging expensive "air wars" in their clamoring efforts to exercise decisive measures of influence in framing various issues, debates, and - ultimately - entire elections. Appearances come first and facts second (if at all), which I suppose is a gentler way of saying that elections become popularity contests designed to maximize turnout among ones own base, minimize turnout from the other side's, and claim the temporary loyalty of enough undecided folk caught in-between to secure a majority of the vote.

Meanwhile, on the citizens' end of the battle, 24/7 news networks and the internet afford hoards of busy and/or intellectually-lazy people easy, quick access to whatever "facts" or "evidence" can conveniently rationalize their strong, pre-existing opinions. Despite their best efforts to make their opponents see the perceived error and irrationality of their ways, adversaries in American politics remain in solid disagreement. This, in conjunction with damaging political stereotypes being built around and toxic rhetoric getting spewed by loud, embarrassingly-biased and/or prejudiced minorities in every major faction, gives the Average Joe a pretty wretchedly distorted perception of how and why their opponents in politics think and believe what they do. What ideally ought to be a mutually-respectful disagreement between ideological blocs of American voters thus becomes a matter of, "I am a <insert positive adjective> person because I think and do this, and you are a <insert negative adjective> person because you think that." Am I generalizing much? Sure. But I do not think it is a bad way to conceptualize what is transpiring in American politics.

To put this all in simpler, albeit jargon-laden terms, American politics tends to be so very heated because political actors are using 21st century tools and strategies to efficiently compete in a game where long-term success requires that one secure control of and wisely manipulate symbolic capital in such a way as to derive power from it. Those who make themselves look best and their opponents worst shall thrive, and the skills necessary for one to do so are unfortunately distinct from those that nudge one toward being a great public servant. Everything else we see in this dilemma of negativity is a symptom of that greater disease, the absence of effective regulation of political conflicts forever raging on betwixt numerous, self-interested individuals, party factions, PACs, etc. That is not to suggest political actors are bad folk, per se, just that the rules that bind them suck right now and immerse them in environs where socially harmful behavior is rewarded.

A bit of a ramble I know, but what do ya'll think of that? Are there any important pieces missing? I see a lot of posts here about the passions of the people and their tendency to care about personalities more than ideas, which I don’t think is incompatible with what I am saying about contests of image and voters’ inclination to rationalize rather than to be strictly rational. There is also some Marxian analysis provided earlier on in the thread that I must reject, however, as I adhere to a relatively Bourdieuan perspective (which at times sounds a bit Marxist but is actually influenced somewhat more by Weber) on how to explain social conflict.